The Immaculate Conception refers to Mary’s preservation from original sin from the very moment of her conception. The formal definition of this dogma was given to the Church by Pope St. Pius IX in 1854:
We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful (Ineffabilis Deus).
This teaching is very much rooted in Scripture, particularly in the event of the Annunciation, as contained in the Gospel of Luke:
And [the angel Gabriel] came to [Mary] and said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:28-30).
According to many biblical scholars, what on the surface looks like a simple greeting is much more than that. Greeting Mary with the salutation kaire kecharitomene, the angel communicated to Mary a new name or title. Generally speaking, when one greeted another with kaire (hail), a name or title would often be found in the immediate context. The fact that the angel replaces Mary’s name in the greeting with “full of grace” is significant.
In Hebrew culture, names and name changes tell us something permanent about someone. When you add to this the fact that St. Luke uses the perfect passive participle—kekaritomene literally means “she who has been graced” in a completed sense—we have a profound indication of Mary’s uniquely holy state. This verbal adjective, “graced,” is not just describing a simple past action. Greek has the aorist tense for that. The perfect tense is used to indicate that an action has been completed in the past, resulting in a present state of being. That’s Mary’s name!
So what does it tell us about Mary? Well, the average Christian is not full of grace in a permanent sense (see Phil. 3:8–12). But according to the angel, Mary is. You and I sin, because of a lack of cooperation with grace in our lives. This greeting of the angel is one clue into the unique character and calling of the Mother of God. Although Mary continued to grow in grace and holiness throughout her life, she was at every moment full of grace, with a unique fullness troubled neither by sin nor by the inclination to sin.
It is important for us to recall that New Covenant fulfillments are always more glorious than—perfections of, if you will—their Old Testament types, which are “but a shadow of the good things to come” in the New Covenant (see Heb. 10:1). The fall of Adam and Eve is an excellent example of this. In Genesis 3:15 we find, immediately after the fall of our original parents, God telling Satan about the advent of “the woman” (Mary) and her “seed” (Jesus), who would reverse the curse, as it is said, that Adam and Eve had brought upon humanity through their disobedience:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
In the beginning, Adam and Eve are named simply “the man” and “the woman.” When we then look at the New Covenant, Jesus is explicitly referred to as “the man” ( John 19:5) and the “New Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45). And Jesus himself indicates Mary to be the prophetic “woman,” or “New Eve,” of Genesis 3:15, when he refers to his mother as “woman” in John 2:5 and 19:26. As the first Eve brought death to all of her children by heeding the words of the ancient serpent, the “New Eve” brings life and salvation to all of her children through her obedience.
The same “serpent” who deceived the first woman is unable to overcome this New Woman, who takes refuge in God (Rev. 12:1-16). The New Eve overcomes the serpent, and as a result, “the serpent was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God, and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev. 12:17).
Since she is revealed to be the New Eve, it would be unthinkable for Mary to be conceived with original sin. If she were, she would be inferior to Eve of old, who was created in a perfect state, free from all sin.
from Catholic Answers
https://shop.catholic.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment