Sect. 214Mary Full of Grace—her Immaculate ConceptionMary Full of Grace—her Immaculate Conception
The “fulness of grace” of the Mother of Jesus began with her Immaculate Conception, defined in the Bull Ineffabilis in these terms: “The most blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, was, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, through the foreseen merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin (ab omni originalis culpœ labe præservatam immunem).”
I. 1. The subject of the definition is the “person” of the Blessed Virgin; hence, “the first instant of her conception” is the moment in which God united the living soul to the body, i.e. the moment Mary began to be a human being; technically, her nativitas in utero.
2. The words, “was preserved from all stain of original sin,” directly express that the habitual sin of Adam, which passed on to all his descendants as an internal stain, did not touch Mary. Indirectly, the same words imply the doctrine taught by the Church of the Virgin’s original sanctity and justice, and the consequent exclusion of the imperfections of our fallen nature. The preservation from sin is but a consequence of a positive infusion of grace.
3. “Through the merits foreseen of the Saviour,” is added to show that Mary, like every other child of Adam, was by nature liable to original sin, and that to her, as to others, Redemption from it through her Son was necessary. But whilst Christ frees us from the sin after it has been actually contracted, He freed His Mother from the necessity of contracting it at all.
4. The last words, “by a singular privilege,” etc., state that the Immaculate Conception was a gracious and unique exception to the general law. The universality of the law is thus no proof against Mary’s immaculateness, nor does her immaculateness create a prejudice against the universality of the law. “This law is not made for thee, but for all others” (Esth. 15:13).
II. 1. The proof of the Immaculate Conception contained in the formula of St. Anselm, Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit (“the Immaculate Conception was possible, it was fitting, therefore God accomplished it”), carries conviction to every faithful mind. When we consider the origin of Mary in the Father’s eternal mind, and her close association with the Divinity as described above, we cannot help feeling that God “was bound” to give His daughter every privilege that was possible and becoming: the ergo fecit follows with almost metaphysical cogency. The “Holy Virgin, the Daughter of God, the true Eve,” must be perfectly stainless.
2. Scripture speaks nowhere in set terms of this dogma. It may, however, be inferred from Gen. 3:3, 15, compared with the salutation of the Angel and of Elizabeth (Luke 1:28, 42): “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel;” “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women;” “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” The Woman, blessed among women, and her Son are here represented as jointly opposing the power of the father of sin: the victory is a crushing defeat of the enemy which—whether attributed by the text primarily to the Mother or to the Son (cf. supra, p. 51)—is common to both, and implies that neither of them, even for a single instant, was under the power of sin. The words of the angelic salutation are but an echo of the Protoevangelium. The woman full of grace and blessed above all women is she who, with her Son, crushed the serpent’s head and destroyed its seed.
3. It would be unfair to restrict the proof from tradition to such testimonies of the Fathers as directly assert the Immaculate Conception. To get at the sense of the early Church on this point, we must examine its picture of Mary’s general holiness, and of her position in the supernatural order. Two features are prominent and universally pointed out, both of which evidently imply the completest freedom from all stain of sin. They are: (a) Mary’s perfect, unqualified purity; and (b) her position as the “new Eve the mother of regenerate mankind.” St. Anselm, in the words reproduced at the beginning of the Bull Ineffabilis, sums up the Christian tradition with its motives: “It was fitting that Mary should shine with a purity than which none greater can be conceived except in God. For she is the Virgin to whom God the Father ordained to give His only Son—generated from His heart, equal to Himself, and beloved by Him as another Self—so that He should be the one and selfsame Son of God the Father, and of the Virgin. She it is whom the Son chose to be His Mother substantially, and of whom the Holy Ghost willed and effected that He, from Whom He Himself proceeds, should be conceived and born.” The idea of the New Eve is thus introduced by St. Ephrem, “Both (Mary and Eve) were established in the same purity and simplicity, but Eve became the cause of our death, Mary the cause of our life.”
Besides the general and implicit expressions of the Virgin’s Immaculateness—volumes of which can be produced—there exist, from the fourth century onwards, many witnesses testifying to an express knowledge of the dogma in the Church, and even among the common people. In the Eastern Churches the belief constantly existed without any contradiction, and manifested itself in many doctrinal utterances and in the ancient feast of the Conception of St. Anne. In the West we find fewer traces of the doctrine, yet we meet with no contradiction until the twelfth century, when the introduction of the feast of the Immaculate Conception gave rise to controversies closed only by the definition of 1854. (For details, the reader may consult Perrone, Passaglia, or Malou, De Imm. Conc.; Newman, Angl. Diff., vol. ii.)
III. The proofs from reason, Scripture, and Tradition which establish Mary’s freedom from original sin, likewise establish her freedom from concupiscence and from actual sin. As to the fact that Mary never experienced the motions of concupiscence, there exists an almost absolute unanimity among the Fathers, at least since the fifth century. Moreover, concupiscence is but a consequence of that original sin which never had power over the Mother of Jesus; hence her perfect freedom from it, although not expressly defined (de fide), is fidei proximum. The universal doctrine of her complete exemption from actual sin is confirmed by the Council of Trent (sess. vi. can. 23): “If any one say that man once justified can during his whole life avoid all sins, even venial ones, as the Church holds that the Blessed Virgin did by special privilege of God, let him be anathema.” Theologians go a step further, and assert that Mary was “impeccable,” i.e. unable to commit sin; not indeed, like Christ, by the essential perfection of her nature, but by that special Divine privilege which assimilated her as far as possible to her Son.
The “fulness of grace” of the Mother of Jesus began with her Immaculate Conception, defined in the Bull Ineffabilis in these terms: “The most blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, was, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, through the foreseen merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, preserved free from all stain of original sin (ab omni originalis culpœ labe præservatam immunem).”
I. 1. The subject of the definition is the “person” of the Blessed Virgin; hence, “the first instant of her conception” is the moment in which God united the living soul to the body, i.e. the moment Mary began to be a human being; technically, her nativitas in utero.
2. The words, “was preserved from all stain of original sin,” directly express that the habitual sin of Adam, which passed on to all his descendants as an internal stain, did not touch Mary. Indirectly, the same words imply the doctrine taught by the Church of the Virgin’s original sanctity and justice, and the consequent exclusion of the imperfections of our fallen nature. The preservation from sin is but a consequence of a positive infusion of grace.
3. “Through the merits foreseen of the Saviour,” is added to show that Mary, like every other child of Adam, was by nature liable to original sin, and that to her, as to others, Redemption from it through her Son was necessary. But whilst Christ frees us from the sin after it has been actually contracted, He freed His Mother from the necessity of contracting it at all.
4. The last words, “by a singular privilege,” etc., state that the Immaculate Conception was a gracious and unique exception to the general law. The universality of the law is thus no proof against Mary’s immaculateness, nor does her immaculateness create a prejudice against the universality of the law. “This law is not made for thee, but for all others” (Esth. 15:13).
II. 1. The proof of the Immaculate Conception contained in the formula of St. Anselm, Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit (“the Immaculate Conception was possible, it was fitting, therefore God accomplished it”), carries conviction to every faithful mind. When we consider the origin of Mary in the Father’s eternal mind, and her close association with the Divinity as described above, we cannot help feeling that God “was bound” to give His daughter every privilege that was possible and becoming: the ergo fecit follows with almost metaphysical cogency. The “Holy Virgin, the Daughter of God, the true Eve,” must be perfectly stainless.
2. Scripture speaks nowhere in set terms of this dogma. It may, however, be inferred from Gen. 3:3, 15, compared with the salutation of the Angel and of Elizabeth (Luke 1:28, 42): “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel;” “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women;” “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” The Woman, blessed among women, and her Son are here represented as jointly opposing the power of the father of sin: the victory is a crushing defeat of the enemy which—whether attributed by the text primarily to the Mother or to the Son (cf. supra, p. 51)—is common to both, and implies that neither of them, even for a single instant, was under the power of sin. The words of the angelic salutation are but an echo of the Protoevangelium. The woman full of grace and blessed above all women is she who, with her Son, crushed the serpent’s head and destroyed its seed.
3. It would be unfair to restrict the proof from tradition to such testimonies of the Fathers as directly assert the Immaculate Conception. To get at the sense of the early Church on this point, we must examine its picture of Mary’s general holiness, and of her position in the supernatural order. Two features are prominent and universally pointed out, both of which evidently imply the completest freedom from all stain of sin. They are: (a) Mary’s perfect, unqualified purity; and (b) her position as the “new Eve the mother of regenerate mankind.” St. Anselm, in the words reproduced at the beginning of the Bull Ineffabilis, sums up the Christian tradition with its motives: “It was fitting that Mary should shine with a purity than which none greater can be conceived except in God. For she is the Virgin to whom God the Father ordained to give His only Son—generated from His heart, equal to Himself, and beloved by Him as another Self—so that He should be the one and selfsame Son of God the Father, and of the Virgin. She it is whom the Son chose to be His Mother substantially, and of whom the Holy Ghost willed and effected that He, from Whom He Himself proceeds, should be conceived and born.” The idea of the New Eve is thus introduced by St. Ephrem, “Both (Mary and Eve) were established in the same purity and simplicity, but Eve became the cause of our death, Mary the cause of our life.”
Besides the general and implicit expressions of the Virgin’s Immaculateness—volumes of which can be produced—there exist, from the fourth century onwards, many witnesses testifying to an express knowledge of the dogma in the Church, and even among the common people. In the Eastern Churches the belief constantly existed without any contradiction, and manifested itself in many doctrinal utterances and in the ancient feast of the Conception of St. Anne. In the West we find fewer traces of the doctrine, yet we meet with no contradiction until the twelfth century, when the introduction of the feast of the Immaculate Conception gave rise to controversies closed only by the definition of 1854. (For details, the reader may consult Perrone, Passaglia, or Malou, De Imm. Conc.; Newman, Angl. Diff., vol. ii.)
III. The proofs from reason, Scripture, and Tradition which establish Mary’s freedom from original sin, likewise establish her freedom from concupiscence and from actual sin. As to the fact that Mary never experienced the motions of concupiscence, there exists an almost absolute unanimity among the Fathers, at least since the fifth century. Moreover, concupiscence is but a consequence of that original sin which never had power over the Mother of Jesus; hence her perfect freedom from it, although not expressly defined (de fide), is fidei proximum. The universal doctrine of her complete exemption from actual sin is confirmed by the Council of Trent (sess. vi. can. 23): “If any one say that man once justified can during his whole life avoid all sins, even venial ones, as the Church holds that the Blessed Virgin did by special privilege of God, let him be anathema.” Theologians go a step further, and assert that Mary was “impeccable,” i.e. unable to commit sin; not indeed, like Christ, by the essential perfection of her nature, but by that special Divine privilege which assimilated her as far as possible to her Son.
Seção 72% da obra, de A Manual of Catholic Theology (Wilhelm & Scannell, sobre a Dogmatik de Scheeben). Ver o original.