Father Dom Homily: Exploring the Mysteries of the Immaculate Conception and Mary's Role in Catholicism

The name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you. This is where we get the fullness of the dogma in which we celebrate today Mary, the immaculate conception. Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee. The early church fathers begin to unpack the beauty of who Mary is, beginning with Scripture, and this is where they start. In Greek, what we hear is the angel declaring to someone before him right, angel Gabriel, someone who is full of grace. This type of statement isn't said to anyone in all Scripture except Mary. Hail full of grace. She's full of grace, but what does that mean? It means she doesn't have original sin. It doesn't mean she struggles with concupiscence. She has no staining. She is full of grace. The angel would not have said that to Mary if she wasn't, but she is. So that's what we celebrate today the immaculate conception, one of the great four dogmas of the Catholic Church. Mary just isn't for Catholics. Mary is for everyone. She's always pointing to Jesus. Isn't she Our mother? How lovely she is, how beautiful, how powerful. And she points us to Jesus. You want to have a deep relationship with Jesus? It's okay. Go to Mary, she'll show you. A mother knows her son better than anyone. So why not go to the mother to understand the son? And when she does show you Jesus, what does she say? Do whatever he tells you. And she also says, fiat, when you go to Jesus, say the same thing, fiat, just like Mary did. So we celebrate the immaculate conception, one of the four dogmas of her promulgated through the Catholic Church. All four dogmas of Mary can be found in Scripture. The one we celebrate today is found in our gospel Hail full of grace. Pope Pius, the night, definitively, through the Holy Spirit, promulgated this dogma in 1854. Right, was it 1854? Someone help me out. I'm usually good with dates. Yes, thank you. 1854. Pope Pius the ninth. He wrote a beautiful document. It's a high document. It's called an apostolic constitution. What does that mean? Well, the Holy Spirit put on Pope Pius the ninth's heart this dogma, this idea of the immaculate conception, which has always been proclaimed. But sometimes the Holy Spirit, throughout church history, will finally say, in a definitive moment in time okay, let's bring this to the public. And so the Holy Spirit put this on Pope Pius the ninth's heart. And it's an apostolic constitution, because when he had this idea, prompted by God, he goes to the bishops and he presents this idea apostolic. These are the bishops, so he puts this before the bishops and the bishops pray about it and they vote upon it. This is the authority, the magisterial teaching of the church. This is how the church works. We have scripture, the oral tradition of the church and the magisterium. These are the three pillars of our faith in which God's church stands. And so Pope Pius the ninth is leaning on the power of the Holy Spirit through this apostolic constitution. All the bishops unanimously say yes, of course, the church has always believed this, the church has always taught this, but let's definitively promulgate this here and now. So all the bishops vote yes. And so when that happens through God, pope Pius wrote a beautiful exhortation promulgating this dogma. When a dogma is promulgated, doctrine or dogma such as the incarnation or the trinity, or the Eucharist, or Mary's perpetual virginity, her immaculate conception, she being the mother of God, or her assumption, or any other dogma or dogma doctrine or dogma of the Catholic church, it's binding on all people, so we have to believe it. We may not understand it, but we have to believe it, and we have to preach it and uphold it, both in our private lives and publicly. To go against and preach, privately and publicly, doctrine and dogma of the church is called heresy. So we may not understand these things, but because they come from God's church, we have to believe with faith and hope. So, just for the next five to seven minutes, I pulled out a couple pieces from this beautiful document from Pope Pius IX on this doctrine and dogma of the immaculate conception called enough of O God. I encourage you to look that up. Just the dogma of immaculate conception. This will pop up. I encourage you to read it today. It's a little lengthy but it's full of so much beauty and goodness. So I'd just like to spend the next five to seven minutes unpacking just a little bit of that writing from Pope Pius IX. When the fathers and writers of the church meditate on the fact that the most blessed virgin was, in the name and by order of God himself, proclaimed full of grace by the angel Gabriel when he announced her most sublime dignity of mother of God, they thought that this singular and solemn solutation, never heard before, showed that the mother of God is the seat of all divine graces and is adorned with all gifts of the Holy Spirit to them and he's talking about the apostolic fathers or the early church fathers who are writing about Mary in the first century, second century, third century. He's going back and pulling all this beautiful language from them about Mary. To them, the apostolic fathers, mary is an almost infinite treasure and an inexhaustible abyss of gifts, to such an extent that she was never subject to the curse and was, together with her son, the only partaker of perpetual benediction. So they're talking about original sin. Mary was conceived in the womb of Anna in a natural way, but when she was conceived because Mary had a father and a mother, joachim and Anna. When she was conceived in Anna's womb, it was immaculate. It wasn't by the Holy Spirit, like Jesus was in her womb, but it was immaculate. She was preserved from the stain of sin because she is the tabernacle, soon to be the tabernacle of God. Hence she was worthy to hear Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, exclaim Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Hence it is clear and unanimous opinion of the fathers that the most glorious virgin, for whom he who is mighty has done great things, was resplendent with such an abundance of heavenly gifts, with such a fullness of grace and with such innocence that she is an unspeakable miracle of God, indeed the crown of all miracles and truly the mother of God, that she approaches as near to God himself as is possible for a created being, and that she is above all men and angels in glory. Hence, to demonstrate the original innocence and sanctify of the mother of God, not only did they frequently compare her to Eve, while yet a virgin, while yet innocence, while yet incorrupt, while not yet deceived by the deadly snares of the most treacherous serpent, but they have also exalted her above Eve with a wonderful variety of expressions. Eve listened to the serpent with lamentable consequences she fell from original innocence and became his slave. The most blessed virgin, on the contrary, ever increased her original gift Not only never lent an ear to the serpent, but by divinely given power, she utterly destroyed the force and dominion of the evil one. Not only the fathers have never ceased to call the mother of God the lily among thorns, the land entirely intact, the virgin undefiled, immaculate, ever-blessed and free from all stain of sin, she from whom was formed the new Adam, the flawless, brightest and most beautiful paradise of innocence and mortality and delights, planted by God himself and protected against all the snares of the poisonous serpent. The incorruptible wood that the worm of sin had never corrupted. The fountain, ever clear and sealed with the power of the Holy Spirit. The most holy temple, the treasure of immortality, the one and only daughter of life, not of death. The plant, not of anger, but of grace through the singular providence of God, growing evergreen contrary to the common law, coming as it does from a corrupted and tainted root. As if these splendid eulogies and tributes were not sufficient, the fathers proclaimed, with particular and definite statements, that when one treats of sin, the Holy Virgin Mary is not even to be mentioned, for to her more grace was given than was necessary to conquer sin completely. They also declared that the most glorious virgin was Reparatrix of the first parents, the giver of life to posterity, that she was chosen before the ages, prepared for himself by the most high foretold, by God, when he said to the serpent I will put emnities between you and the woman, unmistakable evidence that she crushed the poisonous head of the serpent. And hence they affirmed that the blessed virgin was, through grace, entirely free from every stain of sin and from all corruption of body, soul and mind, that she was always united with God and joined to him by an eternal covenant, that she was never in darkness but always in light and that, therefore, she was entirely a fit habitation for Christ, not because of the state of her body but because of her original grace. To these praises, they have added every noble word Speaking of the conception of the virgin. They testified that nature, yielded to grace and unable to go on, stood trembling, the virgin mother of God would not be conceived by Anna before grace would bear its fruits. It was proper that she be conceived as the first born, by whom the first born of every creature would be conceived. They testified, too, that the flesh of the virgin, although derived from Adam, did not contrapt the stains of Adam. There, on this account, the most blessed virgin was the tabernacle created by God himself and formed by the Holy Spirit, truly a work in royal purple, adorned and woven with gold, which that knew Queen had made. They affirmed that the same virgin is and is deservedly the first and a special work of God escaping the fiery arrows of the evil, one. That she is beautiful by nature and entirely free from all stain. That, at her immaculate conception, she came into the world all radiance like the dawn. For it was certainly not fitting that this vessel of election should be wounded by the common injuries, since she, deferring so much from the others, had only nature in common with them, not sin. In fact, it was quite fitting that, as the only begotten has a father in heaven, whom the seraphimic stole as thrice holy, so he should have a mother on earth who would never be without the splendor of holiness. And finally, this doctrine so filled the minds and souls of our ancestors in the faith that a singular and truly marvelous style of speech came into vogue among them. They have frequently addressed the mother of God as immaculate, as immaculate in every respect, innocent and verily most innocent, spotless and entirely spotless, holy and removed from every stain of sin, all pure, all stainless, the very model of purity and innocence, more beautiful than beauty, more lovely, more lovely than loveliness, more holy than holiness, singularly holy and most pure in soul and body, the one who surpassed all integrity and virginity, the only one who has become the dwelling place of all the graces of the Holy Spirit. God alone accepted Mary. Accepted Mary is more excellent than all and, by nature, fair and beautiful and more holy than the cherubim and seraphim. To praise her, all the tongues of heaven and on earth do not suffice. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.