Celebrating the Immaculate Conception

Immaculate Conception (Observed)

December 9, 2024

“She told me she was the Immaculate Conception”

St. Bernadette Soubirous

Today Christians around the world celebrate the Blessed Mother, who was conceived without sin. And how fitting that Mary is the patron saint of the United States.  Just as we were given a saint’s name at Baptism, in 1846, the bishops of the United States asked Mary to watch over our country and its people in a new way. They selected “Immaculate Conception” as the title of Mary to be used on this Feast Day, December 8.  

Mary came into this world free of sin, preserved of sin, and is “full of grace.” Though today’s Gospel is about the encounter between Mary and the messenger Gabriel at what is called the Annunciation, we don’t have another Gospel that talks about the conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in her own mother’s womb. Instead, we used Mary’s motherhood to Jesus Christ as a commemoration of Mary’s own conception.  

By giving Mary this grace from the first moment of her conception, God showed us an image of our own destiny. He shows us what is possible for humans by His grace.  

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Pope St. John Paul II noted:

In contemplating this mystery in a Marian perspective, we can say that “Mary at the side of her Son, is the most perfect image of freedom and of the liberation of humanity and of the universe. It is to her as Mother and Model that the Church must look in order to understand in its completeness the meaning of her own mission”

(Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Libertatis conscientia, 22 March, 1986, n. 97; cf. Redemptoris Mater, n. 37).

Through the story of the saint-visionary of Lourdes, St. Bernadette Soubirous, who at the age of 14 experienced 18 visions of “a small young lady” who never identified herself as the Virgin Mary, we learn that Bernadette was told that “she was the Immaculate Conception”.  

And further, by reading her tale to completion, you will also find a very moving article written in 1941 by St. Maximillian Kolbe. It is the last article written by St. Maximillian Kolbe before his arrest and deportation to Auschwitz by the Nazis. He, too, had an extraordinary spiritual experience, when, at the age of ten, the Blessed Mother came to him in a vision. He was one of the most serious devotees and scholars of Our Lady.

Let us pray.  

Loving God, as we approach the celebration of your saving engagement with us in the nativity of your Son, help us rejoice in the role you prepared your daughter Mary to play in your fulfillment of the hope of Israel we hear in the promises of Isaiah. Help us be moved to compassion, so that even our own suffering can lead us to live lives in sympathy with the least and the rejected among us. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.

~ Dennis Hamm, S.J.

Resources:

• https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120924.cfm
• https://themarianroom.com/st-bernadette-and-the-immaculate-conception/
• https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/saints/saints-stories-for-all-ages/feast-of-the-immaculate-conception/
• https://www.ncregister.com/blog/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-immaculate-conception
• https://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/120820.html
• https://themarianroom.com/the-last-essay-of-st-maximilian-kolbe/
• https://saintmaximiliankolbe.com/who-are-you-o-immaculate-conception/

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