Monday, 12/8/13
In
1854, in defining the Doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, Pope Pius IX
said that Mary was sinless from the first moment of her being; and so what we
celebrate today is our close relationship with a person who is goodness through
and through.
Modern
Theologians do not go along with the picture of original sin planted in our
minds in grade school. We’d been taught to picture original sin as a big black
mark on our souls that was washed away by the water of Baptism. That has not
been the Church’s teaching.
Listen
to paragraph 19 of the Dogmatic Constitution On The Church in the Modern World.
“The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion
with God. The invitation to communion with God is addressed to man as soon as
he comes into being.”
The
Church tells us that far from being buried in sinfulness at our conception,
from the first moment of our being we are called to communion with God. That
communing with God is a supernatural activity of which only those in the state
of grace are capable.
So,
today we commemorate Mary’s goodness. It has us calling to mind the people we
have known who were good through and through. That could be children,
grandmothers, young teacher, or gallant young men. We should make an attempt at
isolating the qualities that made those souls precious. We can think of Mary as
having those same fine qualities.
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