Today Catholics commemorate the day Mary was conceived in her mother Anne’s womb. We believe she was set aside by God to be the mother of His Son since her very conception, and that as the vessel for the God made man, she was preserved from any stain of sin so that she would be the perfect resting place for Him.
Newland uses the analogy of preparing for Christmas by joyfully and carefully making and wrapping gifts for loved ones in The Year and Our Children:
Just so, God prepared for the coming of Jesus. He prepared for His divine Son a perfect mother through whom He could come into the world. This is how He prepared:
God the Father knew that when the time came, from Our Lord’s death on the cross would flow graces which would never end, which would make it possible for Godlike powers to be given to men. For example, He knew that Our Lord would institute a sacrament through which grace would come to wash away original sin inherited from Adam and Eve, and to fill the soul with marvelous beauty where God Himself could dwell.
In creating a Mother for His Son God used this grace ahead of time — not to wash away original sin but to make a Mother whose soul was untouched by original sin. This is what we mean when we speak of Mary’s Immaculate Conception…
God does not live in time. he invented time for us so that we could keep track of ourselves, but He has no need of it, and in the foreverness of Heaven He used all the magnificent graces His divine Son poured forth from His death on the cross in time to merit for Our Lady a perfect soul from the instant He breathed it into being.
This does not mean that Mary was conceived in a miraculous manner as her divine Son was conceived. She was born of the lawful union of Anne and Joachim, loving husband and wife. It does mean that at the moment the seed of life which was to become Our Lady was united to her immortal soul, it was to a soul God had created perfect.
No sin could touch the Mother of God. She was the perfect gift wrapping to hold the perfect gift to the world, the Son of God. May she pray for us, that we, too, are preserved from the stain of sin today, that we treat our bodies as holy and that we sanctify the world through our “Yes!” to the Lord just as she did.
Be sure to attend Mass today!
Find all the Advent Daily Dose reflections here.
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I’m new to Catholicism and attended the Immaculate Conception mass for the first time today. What I don’t understand is, if God created Mary to be the perfect mother, doesn’t that take away Mary’s free will to refuse to be the Mother of God? In the bible she says “let it be done” but did she have a choice? And if she was born sinless, does that mean she didn’t have the capacity to sin? Again, wouldn’t that negate her free will? Thanks for sharing any thoughts on that…
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Katie Reply:
December 10th, 2009 at 3:15 am
Karyn,
Welcome, welcome…to the Church and to KS! I’m humbled to even try to answer your very valid and thoughtful questions. As an uneducated lay person (disclaimer!), here’s my best shot:
God created Mary without the stain of original sin. There’s a great word called concupiscence, that means our tendency to sin caused by the Fall of Adam and Eve. Because of their sin, we are saddled with things like selfishness, pride, etc. Those things about which we say, “I’m just human.” Jesus was human, too, with free will and all the human emotions, but not the “human” weakness of concupiscence. Think of the scene in the garden: He felt fear, He wanted to turn away from the pain of the crucifixion, but He turned His will toward God and united His human will with God’s divine one. Mary has similar graces, but not the same. She was not God or a god. However, she was born without the concupiscence of original sin.
She could have said, “No thanks,” to the angel. Perhaps other women did; that’s something we’ll never know this side of Heaven. Just as Adam and Eve were 100% with God and THEY still figured out how to use their darn free will to turn from Him, Mary could have gone either way. This is where the explanation gets tricky: Mary could have sinned during her life, but she didn’t. She was given extra graces to preserve her from the stain of sin that would make her body unclean for the Christ Child. But yes, there is a fine line between receiving grace to HELP her make the right choices and a FORCING of right choices, aka no free will. Many people have grappled with this before us, and I’m sure there are some amazing answers for you in Catholic teaching. I double-checked the “without sin” teaching here: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15464b.htm
Here’s my best analogy as I try to explain what I truly believe by leap of faith (because sometimes that’s what it comes down to at the end): The Lord may protect you from a fatal car crash by a small twist of action, such as being slightly more alert as you enter an intersection or slowing down for no reason and narrowly avoiding a car crossing the center line on the highway. If you could “see” into the spiritual realm with such an incident, most people wouldn’t say God took away a person’s free will; they would simply praise Him for His protection. Mary was protected from some temptations and given graces to strengthen her; she was preserved from the weakness of concupiscence that everyone except Adam and Eve have been cursed with. But in the end, each choice was hers for the making. She just had a “better hand of cards” than the rest of us who aren’t chosen to be the Mother of God have been dealt. And I’m okay with that, myself. I’ve no ambition to see my Son die on a Cross, you know?
I hope that helps clear things up just a little. I feel like it was a bit rambling, but maybe the Holy Spirit infused some truth in it all! (If I pray for the Lord to help me, I’m offering up some of my free will, too, which I would gladly do to unite it with His own perfect will. Just another piece to the free will puzzle.)
Many Advent blessings to you!
Katie
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