Tuesday, 12/8/15
This feast of the Immaculate
Conception is the day set aside for thanking the Father for keeping Mary
completely sinless and lovable.
Although we were raised to believe
that Adam’s sin stains every child conceived, our Church has been having second
thoughts about that.
For one thing, Pope John Paul II
told us that there is no such place as Limbo where unbaptized infants are shut away fro God’s presence. He said
the existence of such detention goes against what we know of God’s mercy.
For another thing, Vatican II
clearly stated that from the first moment our existence we receive an
invitation from God to converse with him. Here is paragraph 19 of the 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.
This invitation to commune
with God
is addressed to him as soon
as he comes into being.”
Then, there is nothing about
Original Sin in the Bible. The first use of the term came from St. Augustine
around the year 400.
There was a priest named Pelagius
who was saying we have the inborn ability to make ourselves perfect. Against
that St. Augustine quoted St. Paul when he said:
“I take delight in
the law of God in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at
war with the law of my mind, taking my captive in law of the sin that dwells in
my members.”
By that other principle in our
members, St. Augustine had in mind all
of our hereditary weaknesses. The following Christian generations that believed
in Adam and Eve as historical persons, took Augustine’s term of “Original Sin”
to be a black mark on the soul that could only be washed off by the Sacrament
of Baptism.
By the Immaculate Conception we
look on Mary as the one person who never fell prey to hereditary inclinations
toward evil.
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