OF course, this
is the biggest privilege given to a human
person. Mary, of all people, was exempted from original
sin from her
conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, and
remained
immaculate, unstained by any sin all throughout her earthly
life.
The basis for
this dogma is, first of all, the general
acceptance of this belief in the early Christians. Of
course, the
Church authorities had to come up with the theological
basis for this
dogma and succeeded in doing so.
In the gospel,
Mary was addressed by Archangel Gabriel
during the Annunciation that she was “full of grace.”
That assertion
from a most reliable messenger of God can already tell us
that Mary
was not lacking in grace even from the moment of her
conception.
We have to
remember that original sin is not a sin that a
person commits. It is rather a state of being conceived
and born
without God’s grace as we were meant to be in the
original design of
God before the sin of our first parents. With this dogma
of the
Immaculate Conception, we affirm our belief that Mary was
conceived
and born already in the state of grace.
Besides, as the
one chosen from all eternity to be the
mother of the Son of God who had to become man, it is but
fair to
presume that she must be filled with grace from the
beginning without
any stain of sin. Also it can be presumed that the
inclination to sin
that is associated with anyone who lacks grace was not
with her all
throughout her life.
The question to
ask now is whether in the whole lifetime
of Mary, she was exempted from the usual condition of man
where
temptations, sin and all sorts of evil abound, and if she
could manage
to remain immaculate all throughout her life.
I believe the
answer to this question is, No to the first,
and Yes to the second conjecture. Like Christ, with whom
she was so
identified that no one else could attain a better
identification, she
had to grapple with all the temptations, sins and evil in
the world.
We can even say
that next to Christ, she it was who was
exposed and tried by all the dirt in a world that is
alienated from
God. And still she remained immaculate, sinless!
How could she
manage?
Again, I
believe that it was her perfect identification
with Christ that enabled her to remain immaculate all throughout
her
life. She reflected in a perfect way the love that Christ
showed to
all of us and commanded us to emulate.
It was this
love that both exposed her to all the evils in
this world and protected her from all of them. It is the
love that we
have to learn to develop ourselves, with God’s grace and
our effort.
We may not be
immaculate like Our Lady, but we can always
try to follow her, since by following her, we ultimately
follow
Christ. She is actually the shortest, easiest and surest
way for us to
be with Christ and to be like him, unafraid of all the
evils in the
world and bold enough to conquer all of them.
We cannot
overemphasize the relevance of having a strong,
deep devotion to Our Lady. We should not take it for
granted, since
Christ himself, before he died on the cross, gave her to
us as our
mother through St. John. Remember some of the last words
of Christ:
“Woman, behold your son! Then he said to the disciple,
‘Behold your
mother!’” (Jn 19,26-27)
May we have
this love that can embolden us to reach out to
those who are lost, unafraid of the effort and the dirt
that may be
involved in doing so. If we want to at least minimize our
sinfulness
and work more in reaching out to the others, we have to
learn to have
the real love, the one Christ and Mary are showing us.
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