Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Happy and blessed feast of the glorious Immaculate Conception! The Church devotes this day, planted firmly in the midst of Her preparation for the arrival of the Christ child, to honour the Blessed Virgin, conceived without sin, a pure and spotless creature on whom the devil had no hold. Mary’s Immaculate Conception is of course so intimately linked to her Divine Motherhood. Could it have been, that He who came into the world to release fallen man from sin, should come of a woman who was also subject to sin? Or would it be so that she who delivered the Saviour, should be subject to the rule of satan? Truly, the Immaculate Conception of Mary is, as with all of her titles, so intimately interconnected, but especially with her vocation to be the Mother of God. St. Alphonsus Ligouri, the great Marian devotee, writes on this feast in his beautiful book, The Glories of Mary. He notes that her preservation from sin was an act of each of the three Persons of the Trinity, an act of love tow
