Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

What do you know about this remarkable solemnity?

 

In teaching that Mary was conceived immaculate, the Catholic Church teaches that from the very moment of her conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary was free from all stain of original sin. This simply means that from the beginning, she was in a state of grace, sharing in God’s own life, and that she was free from the sinful inclinations which have beset human nature after the fall.

“The dawn of a new world”

In his Angelus address on 8th December 2015, Pope Francis explained:

In the Immaculate Conception of Mary we are invited to recognize the dawn of the new world, transformed by the salvific work of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The dawn of the new creation brought about by divine mercy. For this reason the Virgin Mary, never infected by sin and always full of God, is the mother of a new humanity. She is the mother of the recreated world.

History of the doctrine

The solemnity is universally celebrated on 8th December, nine months before the feast of the Nativity of Mary, which is celebrated on 8th September. It is one of the most important Marian feasts in the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, celebrated worldwide.

The Eastern Christian Church first celebrated a “Feast of the Conception of the Most Holy and All Pure Mother of God” on 9th December, perhaps as early as the 5th century in Syria. By the 7th century, the feast was already widely known in the East. However, when the Eastern Church called Mary achrantos (“spotless” or “immaculate”), this was not defined.

After the feast was translated to the Western Church in the 8th century, it began to be celebrated on 8th December. It eventually spread from southern Italy through Germany, France, England and eventually Rome.

Prior to Pope Pius IX’s definition of the Immaculate Conception as a Roman Catholic dogma in 1854, most missals referred to it as the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The festal texts of this period focused more on the action of her conception than on the theological question of her preservation from original sin.

In 1854, Pius IX made the infallible statement Ineffabilis Deus:

The most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.

This of course marks no change in doctrine, but only stands as the official definition of that doctrine.

Since 1953, the Pope as Bishop of Rome visits the Column of the Immaculate Conception in Piazza di Spagna to offer expiatory prayers commemorating the solemn event.