Dec. 8,  2025 – Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception 



Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, 

I welcome you all here to this Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. This refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as the Immaculate Conception. 

So what does this mean, the immaculate conception? Well, the first word, “Immaculate” means with no stain, perfectly clean. This is referring to the state of Mary’s soul, that her soul was perfectly clean with no stain of sin on it. 

And conception? We know that this means from the very first moment of her existence … so even before she was born and still in the womb of her mother, St. Anne; So Mary’s soul was perfectly clean … she didn’t even have the stain of original sin. 

All of us were born with original sin. It is the sin that was passed on to us from our first parents. We hear about that story in the book of Genesis. 

Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree from which they were not supposed to eat; that was the first sin, the original sin, and the effects have been passed on to us. It is why we recognize in ourselves how it is so easy for us to do things that are bad rather than what is good. We call that concupiscence: that inclination in us … that desire in us … to sin. 

We see how sin separates us from God. If you recall, after Adam sinned, the Lord God calls out to Adam: “Where are you?”  After Adam sinned, there was a separation, he was distant: “Where are you?” Suddenly there was a distance between God and man, and there was nothing that we could do to fix it. It was beyond our power. So, Adam and Eve, and indeed the whole human race, were expelled from the paradise. They were expelled from the garden of Eden, and there was no way for us to get back in. 

We found ourselves in a very sorry state.  There is no solvent, there is no soap, there is no detergent that could wash away our sins and restore us to paradise. What were we to do?  Where was our hope for being restored to relationship with God?   

Well, God decided to do something about the terrible mess that we had gotten ourselves into. Today, we hear from Luke’s Gospel, and it speaks of how the Angel Gabriel came to deliver a message.  St. Gabriel, as you know, is not just an Angel, but he is an Archangel.  Angel is a word that means messenger … angels deliver messages from God to humanity. But in this case, this was a message of supreme importance, so God sent an archangel. God sent this archangel Gabriel to Mary who is the highest honor of our race, the pinnacle of God’s creation.  And what does he tell her? That she is going to give birth to the Savior, to Jesus.  To the wonderment of nature, Mary was a virgin who bore her Creator. 

And we know, of course, that Jesus would save us from our sins. He would wash us clean by the shedding of his most precious blood. 

So, to save us, Our Blessed Lord, decided to become like one of us, but he didn’t want his mother to have that original sin, so he preserved her from sin by the merits of his future passion and death on the Cross. 

This was all proclaimed to be true … was recognized to be true by the Church on December 8, 1854 when Pope Pius IX proclaimed this as a doctrine of the faith. He thought it so important that we understand this that made it a solemnity, something that we celebrate ever year. 

Only a few years later, in 1858, Our Blessed Mother appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous and identified herself by that name, she called herself, “the Immaculate Conception.” 

This Solemnity, then, reminds us that we have a mother in heaven who we can call upon in any need, a powerful intercessor … one who wants to be involved in our daily lives. 

Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant—she is the pure vessel which would bring forth Savior of the world. .  She contained within herself, the incarnate God-man.  Whereas the old Ark of the Covenant contained merely symbols of God’s presence with his people, Mary contained Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity within her womb. 

When discussing the Immaculate Conception, an implied reference may be found in the angel’s greeting to Mary. The angel Gabriel said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you" (Luke 1:28). The phrase "full of grace" is a translation of the Greek word kecharitomene. The Greek word expresses a characteristic quality of Mary. Now I don’t claim to be Greek scholar, so I rely on experts who are a lot more knowledgeable than I am. So, the traditional translation "full of grace" is better than the one found in many recent versions of the New Testament, which give something along the lines of "highly favored daughter." Mary was indeed a highly favored daughter of God, but the Greek word used implies more than that (and it never mentions the word for "daughter"). The grace given to Mary is at once permanent and of a unique kind. Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of charitoo, meaning "to fill or endow with grace." Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present. So, the grace Mary enjoyed was not a result of the angel’s visit. In fact, we Catholics understand that it extended over the whole of her life—from conception onward. She was in a state of sanctifying grace (and a sinless state) from the first moment of her existence.  And how fitting it is, that Jesus, the Second person of the Trinity, would create for himself a Mother who was sinless and full of grace, and the most beautiful and humble of God’s creation. 

Now if you are looking for a kind of proof text in the Sacred Scriptures for Mary’s immaculate conception, I don’t have one for you.  This comes out of our Tradition.  But there are texts, like the one I’ve spoken of to you that point us toward her immaculate conception. 

Besides, it is fitting that Mary be preserved from the stain of Original Sin, for she bore her Creator in her virginal womb. 

We do not deny that even Mary as exalted as she is above all creatures in heaven and earth had need of Christ’s redemption on the Cross, but it was by a prevenient grace that she was preserved. This means that it was a “freely-bestowed divine grace that precedes any human decision or action.”1 It was indeed by the merits of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, but because Christ is God, and because God is outside of time, he was able to apply the merits of his passion and death through a special grace that preserved her from the stain of sin, even original sin.  At the moment of her conception, simultaneously with her conception, she was infused with sanctifying grace, and throughout the rest of her life, she did not commit the slightest sin nor the slightest offense against God. 

It is tempting to argue that because of that she was not like us, that she cannot truly be our model.  But, if you think about it, our first mother Eve too was conceived without Original Sin; she was conceived with Original Justice, yet she sinned, she succumbed to temptation, even though she already lived in paradise!   

Therefore, Mary is our Model, for it was her cooperation with God’s grace and by her own free will that she chose never to offend God in the slightest, and she lived her life for God.  She was integral to our salvation because her “yes” resulted in the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ, and her part to play in the history of salvation did not stop when she gave birth to her Son.  She is still an integral part to our own development in the faith.  She is indeed a model for us to follow, a mother to us, and one who is always interceding for us to her Son.  Embrace her as a gift to us from her Son.  She is our mother, too. I’d like to conclude with a prayer: 

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quae pervia caeli 

porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti, 

surgere qui curat, populo: tu quae genuisti, 

natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem, 

Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore 

sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere. Amen.  

Loving mother of the Redeemer, 

gate of heaven, star of the sea, 

assist your people who have fallen yet strive to rise again. 

To the wonderment of nature you bore your Creator, 

yet remained a virgin after as before. 

You who received Gabriel’s joyful greeting, 

have pity on us poor sinners. Amen. 

Mary, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, pray for us! 

- Fr. Ron Nelson