Our Lady’s identification of herself as “the” Immaculate Conception is something which goes beyond mere title: it is, rather, a state of being, referring to the very substance of a thing’s existence, a permanent state. In this regard, some orthodox theologians have gone so far as to draw an analogous comparison between this aspect of Mary’s “I am” of the Immaculate Conception to the “I AM WHO AM” of God in the Book of Exodus (3:14). In this Book, God identifies Himself to Moses as the First Cause of all, God, Whose essence and existence are one and the same: “THE” Almighty God, Who is the Creator, Preserver and Provider of all. Everything else besides God is not existence, but has existence, having received it from Him. In other words, what God IS to all that exists, Mary is, in an analogous way, to “immaculateness” itself. As noted by St. Maximilian Kolbe, she is “the Immaculata.”

It is a sad reality today that many Catholics do not know or understand the Church’s teaching on the Immaculate Conception; this is a consequence, mostly, of poor catechesis. Many will say that the Immaculate Conception refers to the virginal conception of Christ in Mary’s womb, or that it concerns the fact that Mary herself was not conceived in a natural human manner, with natural parents. These and other mistaken beliefs concerning the Immaculate Conception are not correct.

The Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception did not evolve from the Lourdes apparitions; rather, St. Bernadette’s visions were a confirmation of something the Church had already held for centuries. In 1854, some four years before the apparitions of Our Lady to young Bernadette, Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception which stated that “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 Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of Original Sin” (Ineffabilis Deus, 29). According to this doctrine, Mary was conceived in the state of perfect justice (just as Adam and Eve were created), free from Original Sin, and all its consequences and penalties, in virtue of the redemption won by Jesus Christ on the Cross. In other words, whereby the rest of humanity benefits from the Cross after the Cross, it may be said that Mary benefited from the Cross before the Cross. In this sense, the privilege of the Immaculate Conception was the anticipated fruit of Christ’s saving Passion, Death and Resurrection – indeed, of the entire Paschal Mystery!

This dogmatic teaching presented nothing new for the Church. The perfect sinlessness of Mary had, since Apostolic times, been taught by the Fathers of the Church who appealed to such Scriptural texts as Genesis 3:15 (known as the proto-Evangelium or “First Gospel”) and Luke 1:28, readings which appear in the Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th. For this Mass, the First Reading from Genesis constitutes the drama of the beginnings of Original Sin. In it, we are given a prelude as to the opposition between Eve’s descendant and Satan — the first implicit reference to the promised Redeemer: Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity and Only Begotten Son of the Eternal Father, Who took on our human nature.

In the first chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel we are told of the Annunciation, the story of Mary’s election by God to be the Mother of the Redeemer (Lk 1:26-38). This same Gospel passage is the very Gospel read for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Applied to the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, the early Church Fathers taught that it was fitting that she who was to bear the Savior of the world should herself be preserved by Him from sin and its consequences and thus be the first to benefit from what He would win for the whole human race. In the East, the Church has commemorated a Feast in honor of the conception of Our Lady since the seventh century, and in the West since the ninth century. By the sixteenth century, when the Council of Trent (1545-1563) excluded Mary from Original Sin in its decree on that topic, the doctrine had become the common teaching of all theologians.

Does the teaching of the Immaculate Conception, then, imply that Mary is divine, or that she at least possesses some element of divinity? No. In fact, the very notion of “conception” per se implies a beginning in time! As taught by St. Maximilian Kolbe, “She (Mary) is called ‘Conception.’ Therefore, she is not God, Who has no beginning; neither (is she) an angel created directly by God; nor (is she) like our first parents who did not begin their existence by conception.” Mary, indeed, is human; she came forth as other children of this earth, having been born of a family and having a real father and mother. But the Church has infallibly defined that her case is different in that she was preserved from all stain of Original Sin which we inherit from our first parents by way of its being transmitted to all human generations.

What, then, does the Immaculate Conception mean for all of us? The Solemnity’s Second Reading from Ephesians is a profound revelation as to how God elected Mary — and us, too! — from all eternity. The Solemnity’s Responsorial Psalm, whereby the gathered faithful chant the words from Psalm 97, “Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous deeds!” is yet another revelation of all this. We know, of course, that Mary’s election was unique. She alone was called to be the Mother of the Incarnate Word; for this, God graced her with freedom from Original Sin from her very origins. But Mary’s election and ours both belong to the same mystery of God’s infinite love: that of redemption and a hoped for salvation for all! By preserving Mary from sin, God wished to show us that we, too, could be freed from sin. Although our freedom occurs after our birth through the rebirth of baptism, both what happened to Mary, and what happens to us, reflect God’s overwhelming, gracious love for mankind.