Msgr. Beaulieu – Immaculate Conception of the BVM

Encyclical – Ineffabilis Deus

On December 8, 1854, Bl. Pope Pius IX published the papal Bull Ineffabilis Deus, which declared that the doctrine of Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception of the BVM was dogma. “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” The declaration in regard to Immaculate Conception applies to Mary and means that from the first moment of her existence, Mary’s soul was, by the work of prevenient grace, preserved from the effects of the fall of Adam and Eve. As a result, she was “full of grace” right from the moment of conception.

This special gift was given to her on the basis of the merits of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Since God exists beyond all time, and all times are present before Him, God can apply the graces of Christ’s redemptive work to people living at any time in human history. It was on this basis that He poured out graces upon the patriarchs and prophets even before the coming of the Savior. He did so for Mary, too, but uniquely, in her case, right from the first moment of her existence. Cardinal Newman wrote, “By original sin we mean … something negative, that is, the deprivation of that supernatural, unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation – deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God’s free bounty, from the first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege in order to fit her to become the Mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit her … spiritually for it. So that, by the aid of the first grace, she might grow in grace, that, when the angel came and her Lord was at hand, she might be ‘full of grace,’ prepared as far as a creature could be prepared to receive him into her bosom.”

In Genesis 3:15, after the fall of Adam and Eve, the Lord says to the serpent who tempted them, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Known as the protoevangelium, it is the first biblical reference to salvation. The verse declares that there will come the “seed” of the woman who will crush the “serpent’s” head that can only be Jesus Christ, who is to crush Satan victoriously by His work of redemption. It follows that the “woman” prophesied in this same passage must be the Mother of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, since, elsewhere, Jesus makes reference to Mary by the generic term “Woman” (Jn 2:4;19:26). In that Genesis verse, both Jesus and Mary are said to be in a state of “enmity” against the serpent, which in the original Hebrew means “complete and radical opposition” to Satan. It is for this reason that it is not likely that God would have permitted Mary to inherit the condition of “original sin” from Adam and Eve. Any participation by her in that disorder and corruption of the soul that all of us inherit from Adam and Eve would place the Mother of Jesus at least partially under the sway of Satan and evil, and thereby contradict the complete “enmity” between Mary and Satan prophesied in Genesis 3.

The second Bible passage that points to the truth of the Immaculate Conception is Luke 1:28, the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary at the Annunciation, “Hail, full of grace.” In the original Greek of the New Testament, the phrase “full of grace” is encompassed in the one Greek word kecharitōmenē (Gk. κεχαριτωμένη). In this passage, “full of grace” is used as a name or title for Mary, and she is the only one addressed in this fashion in the entire Bible, so it must indicate something special or distinctive about her. Some modern versions of the Bible loosely translate that expression as “Hail, O favored one.” But that is not an entirely accurate translation. It’s not literally “full of grace,” but its root word is the Greek verb “to give grace” (charitoo). The word is in the past perfect tense, meaning that the action of giving grace has already occurred. It was not something that was about to happen to Mary but something that has already been accomplished.

The word was also used as a title. The angel did not say, “Hail Mary, you are kecharitomene” but rather, “Hail kecharitomene.” Therefore the word is not simply an action but an identity. The root word of kecharitomene is the Greek word charis, which is usually translated into English as “grace.” The English word “favor,” on the other hand, can refer merely to an external gift of some kind, whereas God’s highest “favors” are never merely external honors or gifts because an interior gracing of some kind is always involved. Thus, in this passage of Scripture Mary is said to be “graced” in some interior, spiritual sense.

Some Bible commentators argue that by using the word kecharitomene, the angel only meant that Mary was being “graced” in the sense that at that very moment she was called to be the Mother of the Savior. However, the angel Gabriel went on to say in verse 30, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” This implies that she had already been graced in some special way in the past. It is on that basis alone, based on that earlier divine gift of grace, that she was being called by God to her special vocation. Recall the tense of the word kecharitomene (“full of grace”) used by the angel that it is framed neither in the present nor the future tense, since it is a perfect passive participle. The angel speaks of a gift that Mary had already received, even before the angel came to her. In effect, the angel says to her: “Hail, you who have already been graced, in a completed way, in the past.”

The only other place in the entire New Testament where the same Greek verb form, charitoo (Gk. χαριτόω = to bestow grace upon), is used is in Ephesians 1:6. We know from the Greek-speaking Church Father, St. John Chrysostom, that in that particular passage the verb charitoo means to be completely “transformed by grace.” Thus, the most accurate translation of the angel Gabriel’s salutation to Mary would probably be: “Hail, transformed-by-grace-one, the Lord is with you!” What could such a complete transformation by the grace of God consist of other than a plenitude of sanctifying grace, poured into Mary’s heart from the Holy Spirit, right from the start of her personal existence? As the Catechism (CCC, n. 492) puts it, she was “enriched from the first instant of her conception” with “the splendor of an entirely unique holiness.”

Saint John the Baptist was sanctified by the Holy Spirit in his mother’s womb, according to Luke 1:15. Is it likely that Mary would receive a lesser grace to prepare her for her role as Mother of the Savior than John did in the preparation for his special ministry? From the earliest centuries, the Eastern liturgies hailed the Blessed Virgin as Panagia (all-holy one), Achranatos (the one without even the slightest stain), and Hypereulogoumene (the one blessed beyond all others). How can Mary be called all-holy, without any stain if from the first moment of her existence her soul lacked a complete outpouring of the Holy Spirit and sanctifying grace? Otherwise, she thereby would carry within her soul that disorder, corruption, and inclination to sin that is passed down to all of us from Adam and Eve. Implicit in the teachings of the early Fathers and early Liturgies, therefore, is the doctrine of Mary’s fullness of grace, right from the start of her personal existence. As Mary revealed at Lourdes, “Que soy era Immaculada Counceptiou.”

Excerpted from http://www.thedivinemercy.org. Dr. Robert Stackpole. “What’s the Case for the Immaculate Conception?” 5 December 2014.