It’s beautiful, really. The Church seems to say that if you know anything about parental love, then you know about grace. If either you’re a parent yourself, or if you have been blessed by the genuine love of your mother or father; then, the Church suggests, you already know a great deal about the grace of God.

Grace, the Catechism says, is the “free and underserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God.”[1] Grace, in all its power and form, is nothing more than the gift of the life of God, a gift we receive in being adopted children of the Father in Christ. Look at the love around you, the Church seems to invite us. Children, contemplate the trust you put in the nurturing love you rely on, given you unreservedly by your parents. Parents, meditate upon that intoxicating, dominating sort of zealous love you have for your children—that powerful, different love born the first instant your child was born. This is the new sort of love I received the moment my first child was born, love carrying me now—often the only brightness in my life. I didn’t know anything about a father’s love for his children until it was born in me in the birth of my children. It’s been a remarkable lesson in love, and I’ve learned a lot about grace these past few years simply by being a parent. Perhaps you understand this better than I.

And the Church seems to understand this too when she speaks of grace in terms of our being children of God through adoption. The love between parent and child is written into the fabric of nature, and the Church holds this natural gift before our eyes and invites us to contemplate the mysterious grace of God. And exploring this gift and mystery further, the Church seems to say that just as the love which creates and nurtures children is completely free and unfettered—“gratuitous,” the Catechism calls it—and just as the love parents have for their children is born in them practically ex nihilo, so too does God’s grace come to us—freely, from out of nowhere, and without any sort of work done on our part. Grace is totally gift, the Church says, like life.

And so on one hand it seems perfectly appropriate—“fitting,” to speak dogmatically—that at the heart of God’s gift of grace is the mystery of a young girl, herself both child and mother. It seems right that at the heart of God’s gift of grace should be the mystery of her conception—her human and divine birth at once. It is fitting, given what we know of human nature and of God’s grace, that the Church should declare specifically that “the Blessed Virgin Mary at the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God…was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin.”[2] Given what we know of the love parents have for their children, we should not doubt that God would act so instantaneously for her. It all seems to fit together, our nature and the mystery of this grace. It is theological beauty, an experience of the motherhood of grace, the proper advent of the incarnation of Christ, especially given to that free woman, that young girl who said, “Yes.”

Yet this beauty is not plain to see. Beauty is rarely plain to see. It requires faith—faith in the Church and faith in the perfection of God’s economy of salvation. Many are troubled by this dogma of the Immaculate Conception. They point to its controversial history. Augustine was vague when he said we must make an “exception” for the Virgin Mary, excluding her from all sin “out of honor to the Lord.”[3] Saint Bernard and Saint Thomas Aquinas were against the idea of her immaculate conception, fearing that such a notion meant that, as Thomas said, “she would not have needed redemption and salvation which is by Christ.”[4] Theologians were afraid the dogma of the Immaculate Conception implied that man did indeed play an active part in his own salvation, that he achieved redemption in some part by his own effort. If Mary was immaculate from the moment her conception, they feared, then the grace of God was not truly gratuitous, truly a gift. Man needs grace. Grace doesn’t need man. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, on the surface at least, seemed to contradict this truth. It seemed to make man part author of salvation. It seemed to deform, if not destroy, our understanding of grace. Or, as Karl Barth said rather forcefully, it creates a “rivalry with Christ.”[5]

So, what are we to make of this criticism? Does our belief that Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin compromise our belief in the gratuitousness of God’s grace? This is a serious question because at the heart of it lay the fear and misunderstanding by which so many people doubt our basic Christianity. Barth, for example, said “where this whole doctrine with its corresponding devotions is current, there the Church of Christ is not.”[6] This is a serious matter we Catholics must understand and answer. How does our belief in God’s grace and Mary’s immaculate conception coexist? We mustn’t simply retreat in Catholic pride. We must speak up and give an answer, as best we can, for the hope that is in us.[7]

God created us in freedom and with freedom. That’s because he created us to love. And if love is truly love, it is love given freely. There is no such thing as forced love. It is human nature to love, and so it is human nature to be free. Even after the fall, we remained free although with a distorted sort of freedom. Freedom is necessary to love. So, when the fullness of time had come and God wanted to redeem his fallen but still free creation, he needed to make use of the freedom of his creation and not obliterate it. As Augustine mysteriously said, “Without your own will, the righteousness of God will not be in you.”[8] God’s grace couldn’t simply overrun creation without violating the integrity of creation itself. God needed to solicit a free response, a genuine “Yes,” which was truly open to God’s saving action but also truly free and truly human.

And so by God’s grace—at all times gratuitous—Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin in order that her “Yes” would be genuinely free. Because it is God who saves us, our salvation must be the achievement of pure grace; but, since God also made freedom part of our human nature, our response to God’s redemption had to be free. This is the needful paradox of Mary’s immaculate conception. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception actually preserves our understanding of grace as God’s free gift. Mary is still subject to redemption in being preserved from original sin, but she is also enabled by that same act of God to respond freely to the angel’s annunciation. As Benedict XVI taught, this dogma is meant to “show that it is not a human being who sets the redemption in motion by her own power; rather, her Yes is contained wholly within the primacy and priority of divine love, which already embraces her before she is born.”[9] Those afraid the dogma of the Immaculate Conception takes away from God’s grace harbor a good and devout fear, but they need to look more deeply at the beauty and wisdom of God in his gift of grace—grace so perfect that it makes use of our freedom and in turn also makes use of our true created nature without taking anything away from the priority of grace and the sovereignty of God. God is still God, and Mary is still his handmaiden, a creature but also a queen—an election of pure grace. Fitting, as we know, because love is so at home in the love of a mother for her child. Why shouldn’t this be the way grace enters into the world? Why shouldn’t this be the way God saves us?

All of this, of course, is theology. But how does this touch us personally? We should give thanks for our Catholic faith, faith in its fullness. However, we come here to do more than revel in theology. We come here to worship, to venerate and pray. How does this Feast of Immaculate Conception affect our prayer? What is the spiritual effect of this dogma?

First, I think we can learn something wonderful about the way God deals with us from this dogma. There is something about grace, it seems, that is maternal and therefore warmly human. As Saint John Paul II said, “the mystery of redemption took shape beneath the heart of the Virgin of Nazareth.”[10] Grace is not some cold theological idea or some mysterious spiritual substance God injects into the faithful. Grace, as Von Balthasar said, is a “relational term.”[11] That is, grace names our relationship to God and to each other. Mary is gratia plena. She is uniquely related to God, and thus our relationship to God by means of the flesh of Christ inevitably also relates us to her maternity. Her “Yes” always goes before ours; and we say “Yes” like her only after her. We share in her “Yes” in order to share in the life of her divine Son, and we cannot but feel her maternal openness to the Holy Spirit when we, like her, hear the annunciation of the birth of Christ within us. Mary was present at the birth of the Church, and she’s present when Christ is born in us.[12] Or as Augustine said, “she is clearly the mother of his members, which is ourselves, since she has cooperated with charity for the birth of the faithful in the Church.”[13] What does Mary teach us? She teaches us that grace is near, that it is warm, welcoming and holy. She teaches us about God what every mother knows about her child—that love is the lasting bond between us.

And if this is what we’ve learned about grace—that it is maternal and warmly human—then we’ve also learned something about spiritual desire. Mary said “Yes” before us, and her “Yes” makes our “Yes” possible. In her giving birth to Jesus, in her pilgrimage, and in her assumption and coronation, we see the path and progress of every Christian soul. Contemplating her journey, we contemplate our own, and we desire the gifts and graces she received. Exalted and praised by her divine Son in heaven, we dare to dream about our own spiritual perfection. Christ achieved redemption for us. In Mary we see the first fruit of that redemption, and we’re inspired to follow her in following her Son. “To you we cry…to you we send up our sighs…show us the blessed fruit of your womb.”[14] Mary adorns Christian hope. In her our hope becomes something like that love we experience in the arms of our own mothers—gentle, warm, close. Mary makes Christian hope more possible.

On this Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we see heaven in her. In her assumption and exaltation, we see heaven. We sing her praises because she is our Mother, our sister in heaven. She is the Mother of Grace. She calls us to share in the life of her divine Son. Behold her, immaculately conceived, the free woman of God’s grace. Pray and feel the grace she has been given to share. Have faith and believe. She prays for you now. She’s praying for you right now. What is this spiritual warmth we feel? What is this comfort? It’s her. It’s her grace, the grace of her Son. And it’s grace for you. Amen.

[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church 1996

[2] Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, Denzinger 1641

[3] Augustine, On Nature and Grace 36.42

[4] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 3.27.2

[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, p. 145

[6] Ibid., 143

[7] 1 Peter 3:15

[8] Augustine, Sermon 169.13

[9] Hans Urs Von Balthasar and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Mary the Church at the Source, 89

[10] John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis 22

[11] Hans Urs Von Balthasar and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Mary the Church at the Source, 67

[12] Acts 1:14

[13] Augustine, Holy Virginity 6.6

[14] Salve Regina

© 2019 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield