Immaculate Conception of Mary

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates the solemn celebration by various Christian denominations of belief in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Why is it important?

Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic dogma asserting that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was preserved free from the effects of the sin of Adam (usually referred to as "original sin") from the first instant of her conception.

First debated by medieval theologians, it proved so controversial that it did not become part of official Catholic teaching until 1854, when Pius IX gave it the status of dogma in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus.

The feast day of the Immaculate Conception is December 8 and is usually a holy day of obligation (on which Catholics are required to attend mass).

Significance

Common misconceptions

Some people mistakenly think that the term refers to Christ's conception in Mary's womb without the intervention of a human father. Others think the Immaculate Conception means Mary was conceived "by the power of the Holy Spirit," in the way Jesus was, but that, too, is incorrect.

Immaculate: "without stain"

The essence of original sin consists in the deprivation of sanctifying grace, and its stain is a corrupt nature. Mary was preserved from these defects by God's grace; from the first instant of her existence she was in the state of sanctifying grace and was free from the corrupt nature original sin brings.

The debates

The view that Mary had been spared also from the disposition to evil inherent in original sin was not clearly articulated until the 12th century, when considerable debate was centered on an English celebration of Mary's conception. The discussion was clouded by medieval views of the biological aspects of conception and by a concern that the belief in the universal redemption effected by Jesus should not be threatened. While both the Eastern and the Western traditions believed that the Blessed Virgin Mary was free of sin throughout her entire life, there were disagreements about what this actually meant.

St. Thomas Aquinas

In the 13th century, he argued that the Blessed Virgin could not have been redeemed of "original sin" if she had not been subject to it at her conception. However, other theologians and believers disagreed with this thought and believed that it was certainly possible.

John Duns Scotus

The issue reached a conclusion and was resolved when a Franciscan theologian, John Duns Scotus, defended the Immaculate Conception. Once the Christian community reached an amicable conclusion about the origins of the Immaculate Conception, it was decided that a feast be organized by the Western church in the day's honor.

Pope Sixtus IV

Pope Sixtus IV brought the doctrine fully into the Western church in 1476 and threatened anyone who might oppose it with ex-communication. However, the controversy surrounding the feast of Immaculate Conception Day would die down. By the mid-17th century, it was accepted as one of the most important days of Christian celebrations.

source: nationaltoday.com

The dilemma, explained

John Duns Scotus argued that Christ's redemptive grace was applied to Mary to prevent sin from reaching her soul and that this special intervention resulted in a more perfect redemption in her case. Mary's privilege, thus, was the result of God's grace and not of any intrinsic merit on her part.

Suppose a man falls into a deep pit, and someone reaches down to pull him out. The man has been "saved" from the pit. Now imagine a woman walking along, and she too is about to topple into the pit, but at the very moment that she is to fall in, someone holds her back and prevents her. She too has been saved from the pit, but in an even better way: She was not simply taken out of the pit, she was prevented from getting stained by the mud in the first place.

This is the illustration Christians have used for a thousand years to explain how Mary was saved by Christ. By receiving Christ's grace at her conception, she had his grace applied to her before she was able to become mired in original sin and its stain.

source: catholic.com

The Dogma Declaration

(Pope Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 1854)

"We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin"

Artistic representation

The Immaculate Conception became a popular subject in literature, but its abstract nature meant it was late in appearing as a subject in art.

The iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception shows Mary standing, with arms outstretched or hands clasped in prayer. Many artists in the 15th century faced the problem of how to depict an abstract idea such as the Immaculate Conception, and the problem was not fully solved for 150 years.

Iconography

The definitive iconography for the depiction of "Our Lady" seems to have been finally established by the painter and theorist Francisco Pacheco in his "El arte de la pintura" of 1649: a beautiful young girl of 12 or 13, wearing a white tunic and blue mantle, rays of light emanating from her head ringed by twelve stars and crowned by an imperial crown, the sun behind her and the moon beneath her feet.

Pacheco's iconography influenced other Spanish artists or artists active in Spain such as El Greco, Bartolomé Murillo, Diego Velázquez, and Francisco Zurbarán, who each produced a number of artistic masterpieces based on the use of these same symbols. The popularity of this particular representation of The Immaculate Conception spread across the rest of Europe, and has since remained the best known artistic depiction of the concept: in a heavenly realm, moments after her creation, the spirit of Mary (in the form of a young woman) looks up in awe at (or bows her head to) God.

The moon is under her feet and a halo of twelve stars surround her head, possibly a reference to "a woman clothed with the sun" from Revelation 12:1–2. Additional imagery may include clouds, a golden light, and putti.

source: wikipedia.org

El Greco, The Immaculate Conception with St John the Evangelist, c. 1585

Rubens, Immaculate Conception, 1628–1629