Second Sunday of Advent

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
9th December 2018

Why the Immaculate Conception?
by Rev. Fr. Joseph Wilhelm D.D., Ph.D.

The proof of the Immaculate Conception contained in the formula of St. Anselm, ("the Immaculate Conception was possible, it was fitting, therefore God accomplished it"), carries conviction to every faithful mind. When we consider the origin of Mary in the Father's eternal mind, and her close association with the Divinity as described above, we cannot help feeling that God "was bound" to give His daughter every privilege that was possible and becoming: The "Holy Virgin, the Daughter of God, the true Eve", must be perfectly stainless.

Scripture speaks nowhere in set terms of this dogma. It may, however, be inferred from Gen. 3:15, compared with the salutation of the Angel and of Elizabeth (Luke 1: 28, 42): "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel"; "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women"; "Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb". The Woman, blessed among women, and her Son are here represented as jointly opposing the power of the father of sin: the victory is a crushing defeat of the enemy which - whether attributed by the text primarily to the Mother or to the Son - is common to both, and implies that neither of them, even for a single instant, was under the power of sin. The words of the angelic salutation are but an echo of the Protoevangelium. The woman full of grace and blessed above all women is she who, with her Son, crushed the serpent's head and destroyed its seed.

To get at the sense of the early Church on this point, we must examine its picture of Mary's general holiness, and of her position in the supernatural order. Two features are prominent and universally pointed out, both of which evidently imply the completest freedom from all stain of sin. They are: (a) Mary's perfect, unqualified purity; and (b) her position as the "New Eve the mother of regenerate mankind". St. Anselm, in the words reproduced at the beginning of the Bull "Ineffabilis" (of Pope Pius IX), sums up the Christian tradition with its motives: "It was fitting that Mary should shine with a purity that which none greater can be conceived except in God. For she is the Virgin to whom God the Father ordained to give His only Son - generated from His heart, equal to Himself, and beloved by Him as another Self - so that He should be the one and selfsame Son of God the Father, and of the Virgin. She it is whom the Son chose to be His Mother substantially, and of whom the Holy Ghost willed and effected that He, from Whom He Himself proceeds, should be conceived and born".