The Immaculate Conception - Part I

I. Adam and Eve came into existence immaculate, in the state of grace. This was to have been the birthright of humanity; but Adam, at the suggestion of Satan, chose the lower state of the mere natural existence, and so lost the power of transmitting what He had rejected. Thenceforth all men are born defective, deprived of supernatural life; and in that fallen state they resemble Satan in his inaptitude for God and propension towards evil. This privation of grace and the higher life is the state of original sin. From this the Blessed Virgin was preserved. She was antecedently liable to it, as being descended by ordinary generation from Adam. She was saved by the Redemption, as we are, but in a better way, by prevention, and not by cure. No act of hers nor of her parents, but the intervention of the merits of her Divine Son, saved her from the torrent which was about to descend upon her. She came into life then, like Adam and Eve, adorned with sanctifying grace, living with the supernatural life, possessing God with her. This is her Immaculate Conception. Our Lady can say, and she alone: “I am clean and without sin; I am unspotted and there is no iniquity in me” (Job xxxiii. 9). Admire here the great goodness of God, the great power of the merits of Jesus, who is “wonderful in His saints” (Ps. lxvii. 36), and most of all in His Mother.

II. Holy Scripture, in the most significant way, associates the woman with her Child in the triumph over Satan. At the moment of the fall God foretold a second struggle of a man and a woman, which was to retrieve the first struggle with the serpent. A second Adam was to take up that part of the task in which the first Adam had failed, and introduce the strain of supernatural life into the race. As Eve furnished the occasion for the sin of Adam, her sex was to be rehabilitated by the action of another woman, who was to furnish the material body and blood to the Victim of the redeeming sacrifice. Christ reversed the destructive act of Adam, Mary reversed the co-operation of Eve in it. The woman shares in the enmity of her Child against the serpent and has a part in the crushing of his head. The enmity of Satan was not directed only against the Saviour, but “the dragon was angry against the woman”; “and he persecuted the woman who brought forth the Man-child” (Apoc. xii. 17, 13). Thus strangely does God associate the creature with the work of the Creator, one of the redeemed ones with the Redeemer. No one may put asunder the woman and her Child thus joined together by God. Christianity requires both the worship of Jesus and the veneration of His Mother. We need both His merits and her intercession.

III. The triumph over Satan is triumph over sin. Union with Jesus in that triumph is similarity to Him in sinlessness. This, even more than the material relationship, was the bond between Him who possessed the Divine Nature, and the Mother who was only human. It would not have reversed the disgrace of Eve if Mary had not been made equal to her as at first, but only equal to Eve in her fallen state. The triumph of Our Lord would not have been absolutely stainless, if it could be said that He was the Son of one who had formerly been under the dominion of Satan and sin. The devil would have some compensation in defeat, if he could impugn the character of the Mother of his Conqueror. But God foretold that the serpent could do no more than “lie in wait for her heel”; and St. John further tells us how the woman escaped unharmed from all the snares of the dragon, through the protecting power of God (Apoc. xii.). The Blessed Mother of God is, then, an impregnable bulwark against the power of hell, and is distinguished by her successful enmity against Satan, and his unchanging hate towards her. This indicates not only her dignity but her office. She is our natural protector. If we be on her side we shall be on the side of Jesus.