Conceived Without Sin

Public service announcement for the Catholics among us: the Immaculate Conception (December 8) is a holy day of obligation. Every year. Even if it’s on Saturday or Monday. So get to Mass tonight or tomorrow morning because by the afternoon it’ll be Sunday and you will have missed Mass.

Yes, that’s two days in a row. Or twice in three days if you go to a vigil tonight. Keep in mind that you’re only required to go to Mass 57 times in a year. If Mass is about an hour long, that’s 57 hours a year. There are 8,760 hours in a year.¹ That’s less than one percent of your life.

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I once had a student look at me stubbornly and declare, “I think it’s kind of ridiculous that y’all think Mary was only pregnant for, like, 3 weeks.”

I blinked rapidly a few times, absolutely baffled, before I realized what was going on.

“You know that Immaculate Conception is about Mary’s conception, right? Like, little embryonic Mary in her momma’s womb? Nobody thinks Jesus was conceived on December 8 and born on December 25. That would be ridiculous.”

This kid’s assumption wasn’t an unusual one, more’s the pity, so before we get started, let’s clarify our terms right quick. The Immaculate Conception is Mary’s conception in her mother’s womb. It tells us that Mary was conceived without sin. It’s not talking about Jesus’ conception.² It’s also not telling us that Mary was conceived in a supernatural manner; when Mary was conceived, her parents were decidedly not virgins. Her conception took place in the ordinary way; the miracle was that in the moment of her natural conception she was supernaturally preserved from Original Sin.

This dogma³ is a very difficult one for Protestants to understand, let alone accept. There’s an undercurrent in Protestantism that finds its roots in John Calvin’s theology: the idea of total depravity. Calvin (and Luther) believed that people were inherently sinful, defined by their sin. Luther is famous for having declared that he was “a lump of dung covered in snow.”⁴ Luther was so overwhelmed by his own sinfulness and God’s grace that he believe that he was worthless and sinful but was covered by God’s grace so as to make him pleasing to God. To the minds of the reformers, to be human was to be sinful.⁵ Because of this, the Catholic claim that Mary was without sin sounds like a claim of divinity. It’s important to clarify first of all that being immaculate is not the same as being divine. As Christians, we know that God made us very good.⁶ Sin mars us, but not having sin doesn’t make us superhuman, it makes us fully human. Adam and Eve were immaculate before the Fall, after all; they, like Mary, were created immaculate but merely human.

A common objection to the teaching that Mary was without sin is Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” While Paul says “all” here, I think it’s clear that doesn’t mean that every single human person ever has committed a sin. Obviously Jesus didn’t. Neither do infants who die or the mentally handicapped who don’t have sufficient reason to commit sin. Clearly there are exceptions to this rhetorical “all.” So why not Mary?

Obviously, though, it’s not enough just to argue against those who oppose this doctrine. Let’s look instead at the affirmative. Clearly, the angel Gabriel’s approach to Mary indicates that she’s something special.

In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:26-30)

Angels don’t typically go around calling sinful humans “full of grace,” a term that could be better translated “you who have been completely grace-ized” if grace-ized were a word. Which it’s not. Hence the usual “full of grace.” Think about this: grace is God’s life within us. Sin separates us from God. So if Mary is sinful, a regular old village girl chock full of Original Sin, how can she be full of grace?

And then there’s the fact that she has found favor with God. If she was lost in her sin, as we all were before Christ, how did she find favor with God? There’s something about the way she’s addressed that indicates that she’s different, something special.⁷

Naturally, Scripture isn’t entirely clear on this–if it were, there’d be no disagreement. But as Catholics, we recognize the Word of God as coming through Scripture and Tradition.⁸ So check out some super old stuff about Mary Immaculate.⁹

• Hippolytus: He [Jesus] was the ark formed of incorruptible wood. For by this is signified that His tabernacle [Mary] was exempt from defilement and corruption.—235 AD
• Origen: This Virgin Mother of the Only-begotten of God is called Mary, worthy of God, immaculate of the immaculate, one of the one.—244 AD
• St. Ambrose: Mary, a Virgin not only undefiled but a Virgin whom grace had made inviolate, free of every stain of sin.—387 AD
• St. Augustine, in response to Rom 3:23: All have sinned, except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish no question to be raised at all, when we are treating of sins. After all, how do we know what greater degree of Grace for a complete victory over sin was conferred on her who merited to conceive and bring forth Him Who all admit was without sin.–415 AD

Now, that’s not to say that anything some dude said forever ago has to be doctrine, but it’s certainly not a theological innovation if it was old news by the beginning of the third century.

Really, though, Mary’s sinlessness is just reasonable. People like to argue this by saying that a sinless person can’t come from a sinful one, which is a good instinct, I suppose. Of course, then Mary’s mom had to be sinless, and her mom, and hers, and eventually we have to trace it back to a sinless Eve, and that’s absurd.

Part of this idea is right, though–that Mary’s sinless nature was necessary for Jesus’ conception. Let’s try looking at it this way instead:

1. Before the Fall, we were in relationship with God.
2. Sin breaks this relationship.
3. According to moral law, babies must be created through a loving, committed relationship between their parents.¹⁰
4. This relationship would have been impossible if Mary had had Original Sin.¹¹
5. God doesn’t break moral laws, so he had to be in relationship with the mother of Christ.
6. Mary had to be preserved from Original Sin.

Now this is just my reasoning here, not doctrine, so reject it if you like but it makes a lot of sense to me. There’s also the Ark of the Covenant connection: if the Ark was created so intentionally, formed out of perfect and pure materials in order to bear the symbolic presence of God, how much more would the tabernacle of the living God (the Blessed Virgin Mary) be pure and undefiled?

But–and this is the key to this question–Mary did NOT save herself. Yup, that was a bold, italicized, capital not. Her immaculate nature is not due to her merit. You see, the rest of us had to be redeemed–saved after we fell. Mary was preserved instead–saved preemptively–by the power of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. God who is outside of time used future graces to save her in order to make those graces possible.¹² Pius IX made it very clear that Mary’s holiness comes entirely from God when he declared this dogma ex cathedra in 1854:

“The Most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.”

So let’s make sure we’re clear on this. Mary did not save herself. Like you and me (God willing), she was saved by the merits of Christ’s death and resurrection. In order to make her the perfect vessel for the incarnation of his Son, the Father applied those graces to her in the moment of her conception to preserve her inviolate, untainted either by Original Sin or by its consequences. The Church reminds us of this in the prayers of the Mass and the Office for the Solemnity:

“O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin prepared a worthy dwelling for your Son, grant, we pray, that, as you preserved her from every stain by virtue of the Death of your Son, which you foresaw, so, through her intercession, we, too, may be cleansed and admitted to your presence. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.”

As always with the Blessed Mother, it’s essential that we remember that all doctrines about Mary are doctrines about God. All honor given to Mary is honor given to God. All love of Mary is love of God. When we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary, we celebrate God’s incredible goodness in preparing the way for the Messiah. We celebrate his power to work miracles. We celebrate his ability to set things in motion that will only bear fruit years down the road. We recognize his providence and his desire to save us, whatever it takes. And with Mary we recognize our unworthiness and God’s unceasing clemency. With Mary, we proclaim the greatness of the Lord and rejoice in God our Savior.

This Advent season, let’s join our Mother in saying yes to God and allowing him to flood us with grace.

 

Want more on Mary? Here are all my posts tagged Mary. Enjoy!

1. 8,784 this year. [↩]
2. Jesus was immaculately conceived as well, of course, but that’s not what this term is referring to. [↩]
3. And yes, it’s dogma. Proclaimed ex cathedra by Pius IX in 1854. [↩]
4. Which, by the way, is an extraordinarily unpleasant surprise to discover in the midst of a snowball fight. [↩]
5. While this line of thought is dominant in many Protestant traditions today, there are others that focus far less on sin. The idea that sinfulness is integral to the human condition maintains at least a subtle influence, though, on even the most “accepting” of communities. [↩]
6. Gen 1:31 [↩]
7. It probably doesn’t help with the Annunciation-Immaculate Conception confusion that this reading describing the Annunciation is read on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception…. [↩]
8. 2 Thes 2:15, 1 Thes 2:13 [↩]
9. Probably courtesy of www.catholic.com, although I’m reading it out of a Word document of mine. [↩]
10. This doesn’t mean that those babies who are created in unloving or uncommitted acts are less human, just that God desires better for them [↩]
11. See point 2. [↩]
12. Which is rather brain-twisty but pretty cool if you ask me. And you did. [↩]