Mary conceived without sin: the dogma of the Immaculate Conception guides us home

When in 1857 an assassin’s blade felled Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour, then Archbishop of Paris, some parts of the Catholic press were quick to proclaim the slain prelate a martyr for the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. His murderer, a censured and mentally unbalanced priest, had cried “down with the goddesses!” as he attacked; the killer’s hatred for Blessed Pius IX’s dogmatic definition of 1854 would be spelled out at trial. Yet those who sought to cast the murdered archbishop as a martyr had to reckon with the fact that he was one of those who had counselled the pope against defining the dogma. This was not because he had considered it untrue, but simply inopportune. When the bull <em>Ineffabilis Deus</em> came, he accepted it with docility and clearly expected as much from his clergy. It was an expectation which in at least one case proved ill-founded. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception – this “doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful”, per Blessed Pius – continues to attract hostility and misunderstanding in our own age, albeit rarely to the point of weapons being wielded. Every year there is need for the customary reminders: no, this is not about the virginal conception of Our Lord; yes, Our Lady was conceived by two human parents; no, Catholics do not claim that Our Lady was not in need of a Redeemer – or, for that matter, that she is a goddess. But the celebration of the Immaculate Conception should be more than just a pedantic re-treading of catechetical clarifications, for today’s Feast reminds us of the beauty and holiness of Mary and draws attention to the reality of our own condition. To take the Immaculate Conception seriously, we must take sin seriously and recognise the power of our loving God to defeat sin – even in ways which may surprise us, which may challenge our understanding of ourselves and our world. As we ponder the beauty of Mary conceived without original sin, we begin to see the truth of Fr Faber’s observation that “the Immaculate Conception is the foundation of all the other mysteries of Jesus and Mary, and of the Church, and of the Seven Sacraments.” Far from being an obscure point of Marian theology, in the Immaculate Conception we find the news of our redemption declared with full fanfare, a portion of Creation rescued in a most marvellous way from the darkness of rebellion. Contemplation of the Immaculate Conception is thus, as the late Fr Cadoc Leighton wrote, “the natural, the <em>right</em> way to enter into the Christian Revelation, because it is the fountain from which the other mysteries of our Faith flow, and their meaning and end (our freedom from the captivity of sin and our ultimate union with God) are already clear to us.” In this Our Lady serves not only as illustration. The Immaculata takes us by the hand and leads us, helping us to better see what her Divine Son has in store for us. She teaches us how His grace can heal and elevate our nature; by her prayers she helps us to understand and cooperate with God’s gracious initiatives. She, who has been given to us as our Immaculate Mother, guides us home. St Maximilian Kolbe, the soldier for the Immaculata who would come to lay down his life in Auschwitz, put great emphasis on the fact that when Our Lady spoke to St Bernadette in Lourdes, she referred to herself not as “one immaculately conceived”, but “<em>the</em> Immaculate Conception”. There is a weight, an import, to that title which goes beyond process or moment. It is a question of the Blessed Virgin’s identity. In honouring Our Lady with this title, we do more than take note of a wondrous gem in the crown of Mary. We begin to see her as she is: luminous and without blemish, with eyes full of purest love. In his “triptych“ in Our Lady’s honour, <em>The Radiance of Her Face</em>, Dom Xavier Perrin contends that the “longing to gaze upon the Immaculate Virgin is not a matter of superficial devotion… but rather a genuine requirement of Christian contemplation”. As we celebrate her great feast today, may the Blessed Virgin continue to inspire in us that longing, and so draw us ever more deeply into union with her Son.