What Is the Immaculate Conception? Catholic Teaching on Mary Explained
What does the Immaculate Conception actually mean?
The Immaculate Conception is the Catholic teaching that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her conception by a unique grace from God, through the saving merits of Jesus Christ.
It does not refer to Jesus being conceived in Mary’s womb. That is the virginal conception of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Catholics also do not believe Mary is divine. Mary is fully human, created by God and redeemed by Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church teaches that everything extraordinary about Mary comes from God’s grace.
That creates some fascinating questions.
If Mary was preserved from original sin, why did she need Jesus to save her? Does the Bible support the Immaculate Conception? What does the angel Gabriel mean when he greets Mary as “full of grace”? Why did early Christians compare Mary with Eve? What does Mary have to do with the Ark of the Covenant? And if Pope Pius IX formally defined the Immaculate Conception in 1854, does that mean Catholics invented the belief in the nineteenth century?
In Episode 39 of Rebel Saints, a Catholic podcast for restless hearts, we follow those questions through Scripture, Catholic theology and Christian history.
We begin with original sin and the difference between sin that is personally committed and the fallen condition humanity inherits. Then we explore the Catholic belief that Mary experienced what theologians sometimes call preservative redemption: Jesus truly saved his mother, but the grace of his redemption preserved her from falling into original sin rather than rescuing her from it afterward.
From there, we follow the biblical and historical threads behind Catholic Marian theology: Genesis 3:15, Gabriel’s greeting in Luke 1:28, Mary as the New Eve, the parallels between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant, the early Church Fathers, St. Augustine, the Council of Ephesus, John Duns Scotus and finally Pope Pius IX’s solemn definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854.
We also look at the apparitions at Lourdes, where St. Bernadette Soubirous reported hearing Mary identify herself four years later with the words, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Most importantly, this episode asks why any of this should matter to Catholics trying to follow Jesus today.
The Immaculate Conception is ultimately a teaching about grace. Mary’s vocation is unique, but her life reveals something Christianity claims about every human being: sin does not get the final word. God’s grace is capable of healing, sanctifying and transforming us into the saints we were created to become.
What is the Immaculate Conception?
The Immaculate Conception is the Catholic dogma that Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin from the first instant of her conception by a singular grace of God, through the merits of Jesus Christ. Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the dogma in 1854, but the belief developed from much earlier Christian reflection on Mary, grace, Scripture and redemption.
Is the Immaculate Conception the conception of Jesus?
No. The Immaculate Conception refers to Mary's conception, not Jesus' conception. The conception of Jesus in Mary's womb through the Holy Spirit is the virginal conception of Christ.
Do Catholics believe Mary is divine?
No. Catholics believe Mary is completely human and was created by God. She is not part of the Trinity and does not possess a divine nature. Catholic teaching honors Mary because of God's grace and her unique vocation as the mother of Jesus Christ.
Was Mary sinless?
The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was preserved from original sin from her conception and, through God's grace, remained free from personal sin throughout her life. CCC 493 specifically teaches that Mary remained free from personal sin by God's grace.
If Mary was sinless, did she still need Jesus?
Yes. Catholic theology teaches that Jesus Christ is Mary's Savior. Mary herself calls God her Savior in Luke 1:47. Her redemption is unique because Christ's saving grace preserved her from original sin rather than cleansing her from it after she had inherited it.
Your pit analogy is actually terrific for explaining this in the episode: one person is rescued after falling into the pit; another is saved from falling into it at all. Both were saved.
Where is the Immaculate Conception in the Bible?
There is no Bible verse containing the later theological phrase “Immaculate Conception.” Catholics understand the doctrine through Scripture read within Sacred Tradition. Important biblical foundations include Genesis 3:15, Luke 1:28, the New Eve typology, and biblical parallels between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant.
What does “full of grace” mean?
In Luke 1:28, Gabriel greets Mary with a Greek term traditionally rendered “full of grace.” Catholic theology sees Gabriel's greeting as part of the biblical foundation for understanding Mary's extraordinary relationship with God's grace, while the doctrine does not depend on that single word alone. Your episode is appropriately careful about that distinction.
Why is Mary called the Mother of God?
Mary is called Mother of God, or Theotokos, because the person to whom she gave birth is Jesus Christ, who is truly God and truly human. The title does not mean that Mary created God or existed before God. It protects the Christian teaching about the identity of Christ.
That is exactly the Christological distinction you explain in the episode around the Council of Ephesus.
Did the Catholic Church invent the Immaculate Conception in 1854?
No. 1854 was when Pope Pius IX solemnly defined the dogma, not when Christians first began reflecting on Mary's holiness. Earlier Christian writers, liturgical celebrations and centuries of theological debate preceded the definition. Pius IX's definition itself says Mary was preserved from original sin “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ.”
What does the Immaculate Conception have to do with Lourdes?
Four years after the 1854 definition, St. Bernadette Soubirous reported apparitions of Mary at Lourdes, France. Bernadette said the woman identified herself as the “Immaculate Conception.” The Church regards Lourdes as private revelation, meaning it does not create or add to the Catholic deposit of faith.
SOURCES
The Immaculate Conception and Original Sin
Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (December 8, AD 1854): solemn definition of the Immaculate Conception; particularly the formula stating that Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin from the first instant of conception, by singular grace, “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church 490–493: Immaculate Conception, Mary's redemption through Christ and lifelong freedom from personal sin.
CCC 404–405: original sin is “contracted” rather than “committed”; it is a state rather than a personal act and does not have the character of personal fault in Adam's descendants.
Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 53: Mary is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son.”
Council of Trent, Session V, Decree Concerning Original Sin, no. 6: the decree does not intend to include the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin Mary.
Council of Trent, Session VI, canon 23: lifelong avoidance of all sin requires a special privilege of God, as the Church holds regarding the Blessed Virgin.
Mary's Virginal Conception of Christ
Matthew 1:18–25
Luke 1:26–38
CCC 495–507: Mary as Mother of God and the virginal conception of Christ.
Scripture and Tradition
Vatican II, Dei Verbum 9–10: Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the teaching office of the Church.
CCC 80–83: relationship between Scripture and Tradition.
Biblical Marian Foundations
Genesis 3:15: the Protoevangelium.
CCC 411: Christ as the New Adam and Mary as the New Eve.
Luke 1:28: Gabriel's greeting, kecharitōmenē.
Luke 1:38: Mary's fiat.
Luke 1:39–56: the Visitation, Elizabeth's greeting and the Magnificat.
2 Samuel 6:1–15; Luke 1:39–56: parallels frequently associated with Mary as Ark of the New Covenant.
John 2:1–5: Cana; Mary as “Woman” and “Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye.”
John 19:25–27: Mary at Calvary; Jesus again addresses her as “Woman.”
Apocalypse 12:1–17: the Woman and the dragon; read within its ecclesial and Marian dimensions rather than as an isolated proof-text.
Early Church
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies III, 22, 4: Mary and Eve; Mary's obedience in contrast with Eve's disobedience.
St. Ephrem the Syrian, Nisibene Hymns 27, 8: striking language concerning the spotless purity of Christ and his Mother.
St. Augustine, On Nature and Grace 36 [42]: Augustine's famous exception of Mary when discussing personal sins, made “for the honor of the Lord.”
Ephesus and Theotokos
Council of Ephesus, AD 431: especially St. Cyril of Alexandria's Second Letter to Nestorius as received by the council.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Nestorius: unity of the Person of Christ and the legitimacy of confessing Mary as Theotokos.
Formula of Reunion, AD 433: reconciliation between Cyril and John of Antioch and confession of Mary as Theotokos.
Council of Chalcedon, Definition of Faith, AD 451: one and the same Christ, truly God and truly man, born according to his humanity from Mary the Virgin, Theotokos.
CCC 466: Ephesus and the title Mother of God.
Medieval Debate
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 174, To the Canons of Lyons: objections concerning the developing celebration of Mary's conception.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III, q. 27, a. 2: Mary's sanctification and Thomas's concern that she truly be redeemed through Christ.
Bl. John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio III, dist. 3, q. 1: theological reasoning associated with Mary's preservation through the merits of Christ.
Development Toward AD 1854
Pope Sixtus IV, Cum Praeexcelsa: approval of liturgical observance connected with Mary's conception.
Pope Sixtus IV, Grave Nimis: intervention in the theological controversy surrounding the conception of Mary.
Council of Trent, Session V, no. 6: explicit exclusion of Mary from the council's general decree concerning original sin.
Pius IX, Ubi Primum (AD 1849): consultation of the bishops concerning the proposed dogmatic definition.
Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (AD 1854): solemn definition.
Lourdes and Private Revelation
CCC 66–67: public Revelation is complete in Christ; approved private revelations do not add to or complete the deposit of faith.
Pius XII, Le Pèlerinage de Lourdes (AD 1957): papal reflection on Lourdes and the Immaculate Conception.
Romans and Mary's Need for Salvation
Romans 3:9–26: Paul's broader argument concerning Jew and Gentile alike standing in need of justification and redemption through Christ.
Luke 1:46–47: “My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”
CCC 492: Mary's extraordinary holiness is entirely from Christ's saving merits.
Freedom, Grace and Mary's Fiat
Luke 1:38: Mary's free response to God.
John 8:34–36: sin as slavery and Christ as the source of true freedom.
CCC 1731–1742: human freedom, sin and grace.
Closing
John 19:25: Mary standing by the Cross.
St. Augustine, Confessions I, 1: “our heart is restless until it rests in you,” source of the closing Rebel Saints line.
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to Rebel Saints, the Catholic podcast for restless hearts, curious souls, and anyone who's really just interested in learning what the Catholic Church actually teaches and how to live as a fully functioning Catholic Christian in the modern world. I'm Nicole, I'm your host, and I am so glad you are here. So today we're gonna be talking about the Virgin Mary, and I know that means we're gonna have a totally calm conversation. Nobody on the internet is gonna have feelings about it.
For real. I mean, I can already see the comments, right? All caps and idolatry. Anyway, all kidding aside, this episode I've actually been trying to record for gosh, probably like two weeks now.
But between work, it's the summer, and my busy season with respect to my photography business, it's it's been a challenge because I just I these episodes to put together kind of take some time. But because Mary is one of those subjects where I think
Almost everybody has heard something about what Catholics believe. Unfortunately what people think Catholics believe and what the Catholic Church actually teaches are often two totally different things. And this episode actually started with a listener question.
And I am going to read it for you so that you know where I'm coming from. And it's it goes like this. Hey Nikki, first off, I love what you're doing with the content and your podcast. Excited for you.
Would you be able to touch on Mary's divinity? Specifically, the church's stance on her being sinless throughout her life. I have a great appreciation for the Catholic Church and for the Church Fathers. My answer is yes, absolutely.
Because there are actually a few different questions packed into that. Big question, right? So first with respect to does the Catholic Church believe Mary is divine? And my answer to that right off the bat I can tell you no.
Not even a little bit. Second, does the church teach that Mary was sinless? Yes. And that answer is where things get interesting.
Because to understand what Catholics believe about Mary's sinlessness, we actually need to kind of go backwards a little bit to see how we got here. Okay, so that means we gotta understand original sin, grace, salvation, scripture, some early church doctors, right? And basically two thousand years of Christian history. So yeah, we need to talk.
I'll be right back after the theme song. Okay, let's start with the first part of that question. Does the Catholic Church think Mary is divine? No, Mary is not divine.
Catholics do not believe Mary is a goddess, and we certainly don't worship her. I touched on that in a previous episode. Yes, we call her holy, we call her queen. Catholic prayers can get very flowery about Mary.
We are Catholics. We like incense, stained glass, and adjectives. Subtly has never really been our strongest suit. But Mary was still human.
Is still human. She isn't part of the Trinity. And she doesn't have a divine nature like God and Jesus. So she did not create the universe.
And she does not possess a supernatural power independent of God. Mary was created by God. And so Mary was also saved by Jesus Christ. Everything extraordinary Catholicism teaches about Mary comes from the grace of God.
And that is a sentence I want you to keep in your pocket, okay? Because as we go through all of this stuff, like the history and all of this stuff and how we because Catholics and Catholic teachings have come to that conclusion about Mary's sinlessness, I want you to remember that grace of God, okay? So
Everything extraordinary about Mary comes from God. And once you understand that, like Catholic teaching about Mary, I promise you, it really does start to make more sense.
Which brings us to the actual subject of this episode, and that is the Immaculate Conception and what exactly is that? So if you're Catholic and
You believe the Immaculate Conception concerns Jesus' birth? I need I need you to promise me something. Please.
I am literally, literally begging you. Never again tell somebody that the Immaculate Conception is when Jesus was conceived in Mary's womb. Okay? Please.
Like I understand. This can happen. I really do. Like, I am a catechist, okay?
And you've got Mary and you've got Jesus, you've got conception, and miraculous things happening, right? There are a lot of moving parts, but the Immaculate Conception refers to Mary's conception. Okay. Jesus being conceived in Mary's womb by the power of the Holy Spirit is the virginal conception of Jesus.
Totally different conception here. We're talking about different doctrine as well. Okay. So
The Catholic Church does not teach that Mary herself was conceived virginally.
Mary had human parents. And the miraculous virginal conception is the conception of Jesus Christ in Mary by the Holy Spirit. Now that I've made that clear, what is the Immaculate Conception exactly? And here is the Catholic Church teaching, okay?
Straight from the catechism. From the first instant of Mary's conception by a singular grace of Almighty God, and because of the merits of Jesus Christ, Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin. That is the dogma. But that sentence creates about
17 more questions, right?
Like, what exactly then is original sin? And does this mean Mary never personally sinned either? And if Mary was preserved from original sin, why would she need Jesus to save her? Good.
These are the exact questions we need to ask. And honestly, they're questions that the original Christians, like early Christians, were asking. Okay. So
Original sin is not the same thing as committing a sin.
And that distinction matters with respect to this conversation we're having, okay? Original sin does not mean that you personally committed Adam and Eve sin. You're not like you weren't there hiding in the Garden of Eden behind a bush, right? You didn't personally eat the fruit.
The church teaches that humanity receives from our first parents, Adam and Eve, a human nature deprived of the original holiness and justice God intended for us. Okay. It was never God's intention for us to be in a fallen and broken world like we are today. Okay.
And it was never his intention for our human natures to be wounded. But because of our original parents, our relationship with God is wounded in that way. So we experience disordered desires, suffering, and death as a result of our original parents' original sin and the fall. Okay.
And here is one of the most helpful distinctions in the catechism. Original sin is contracted. It's not committed. It is a state, not a personal act.
So what that means is the baby, when a baby is born, they don't emerge from their mother's womb already having personally made a terrible series of moral decisions. That is not what Catholics mean when we speak about original sin. We mean that every human being ordinarily enters the world already sharing in humanity's fallen condition and deprived of that original holiness. Okay, so because we live in this, we have this fallen condition, that's why we're geared to having those disorder desires and everything I just spoke about.
Okay. The Immaculate Conception means that God gave Mary a singular grace from the
Instant, like the very moment she was conceived. And what he that grace that he gave her preserved her from the stain of original sin. So when she was born and when she was conceived, that original sin was already wiped clean in her.
Our listener asked a second question. Was Mary also personally sinless throughout her life? And the Catholic Church says yes, she was. The catechism says by the grace of God, Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.
Did you hear those first words? Did you notice them? By the grace of God. Mary's sinlessness is not some heroic personal achievement where like she wakes up every morning, cracks her knuckles, and says, Okay, well, it's like day 7362, and I'm still perfect.
Okay, she doesn't do that. She's remains sinless because of grace. So let's distinguish two related teachings, okay? The Immaculate Conception specifically means that Mary was preserved from original sin from the instant of her conception.
Okay? The church also teaches that by God's grace, Mary remained free from personal sin throughout her life. Are they related? Absolutely.
Are they identical statements? Absolutely not. Mary's holiness comes from the grace of God. But Catholicism never treats grace as though like God simply bulldozes human freedom either.
So let's look at the Annunciation, okay? The angel Gabriel comes to Mary and gives her a message, right? Mary, then what does she do? She asks a question.
Mary gets an answer. And then she responds, Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word, right? Essentially, that's like her fiat, okay? That is her yes.
But in order for her to like be able to be
open to that she had all that grace okay which she got from god does she have to say yes no but she received that grace first she responded so you have the gift of grace her response her grace and her freedom that is a pattern
This really did cause theologians like headaches for centuries,
If Mary never had original sin, then did Jesus save her? And here's the problem Christianity teaches that the human race needs salvation, right? Jesus Christ is literally the savior of the world. And Mary herself says, My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
So there's no
Question about whether Mary needed a savior. She did. But if Mary was preserved from original sin from the very instant of her conception, what then exactly did Christ save her from? Because if Mary somehow did not need redemption, then we have like a much bigger theological problem here, rebels right?
Because then
There would be apparently one member of the human race who did not need Jesus. But Mary herself has already told us that isn't true. Catholic theologians wrestled with precisely this question. And I want to be honest here about like church history because the development like wasn't in like this perfect straight line.
You know, where I guess every Christian immediately understood the definition that we received in 1854, which is the definition Catholic state today. Major saints and theologians struggled with this question for centuries. Okay. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux raised objections concerning the developing feast of Mary's conception.
St. Thomas Aquinas strongly defended Mary's extraordinary holiness, but in his mature treatment, he had difficulty placing her sanctification before the point at which, according to the biology of his day, he believed the rational soul was infused. And underneath that discussion was a major Christian concern. Mary has to need Jesus, right?
Because if you simply say,
Mary never required redemption. You have protected Mary at the expense of Christ, right? And Catholic theology doesn't do that. So how could Mary be immaculately conceived and genuinely redeemed?
And then we have this Franciscan theologian named John Duns Scotus come into the picture. Duns Scotus lived in like the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and he became famous for the precision of his theological reasoning. Later generations would call him the subtle doctor, which I g like when I read that, I was like, This sounds less like a medieval theologian and more like somebody Batman finds operating out of a basement and gotham,
But Scotus helped articulate a crucial answer. Does a savior have to wait until after someone is wounded before he can save them?
Or can a savior save someone by preventing the wound? And you know, we've been hanging out with medieval theologians for a few moments now, right? Like a few minutes. At least, I mean, I don't know, I've been hanging out with them for weeks now.
So I need a story break, and I'm thinking you do too. So I'm gonna give you a much simpler way to picture what Duns Scotus was getting at. Okay. Imagine there is like a huge pit on a road you're walking in.
Right? It's deep, it's smuddy, absolutely disgusting. Maybe there is a sewage leak involved. You know, I live in the Metro DC area, so sewage has been a thing that people have been talking about this year a lot.
But for purposes of this analogy, the pit represents the fallen condition humanity inherits through original sin. And before somebody emails me, no, falling into the pit does not represent you personally committing Adam's sin. Okay, I mean an analogies can only carry so much weight, rebels. So yeah, no, you didn't dig the pit.
You did not choose the pit, and you simply find yourself in it. You're covered in mud, you're stuck, you cannot climb out of it on your own. Lovely situation to find yourself in, right? But then somebody reaches down, grabs you, and pulls you out.
And you look up at the person and you say, You saved me. Right? Obviously. Now, imagine the same pit and the same rescuer.
But this time, before you fall into the mud and require several baths and new clothes because I mean not even the best dry cleaner is getting that stench out, the rescuer stops you from falling in at all. You never become trapped. Did that person still save you from the pit? Of course they did.
One rescue happens by pulling somebody out, the other happens by preserving somebody from falling in. Both are acts of rescue. And so that's the basic idea. Mary needed Jesus Christ just as completely as everyone else did.
The difference is the way Christ saving Christ's saving grace reached her. The church teaches that in Mary's case, God applied the saving merits of Jesus Christ to her in a singular way from the first instant of her conception and preserved her from original sin. So Mary wasn't standing beside the pit looking at the rest of humanity and was like, wow, good luck with that. She has been redeemed too.
But her redemption looks different. Catholic theology sometimes calls this preservative redemption. And the catechism gives us an absolutely like beautiful phrase for it. Mary was redeemed in a more exalted fashion by reason of the merits of her son.
So the point, rebels, is simple. Mary is redeemed by her son. So suddenly Mary's words in the Magnificat make perfect sense. My spirit hath rejoiced in God, my savior.
That is how Mary can truthfully rejoice in God, my savior. Her immaculate conception is itself an act of his saving grace. Except, now somebody paying attention to the timeline has like another question, right? Mary was conceived before Calvary.
So how can the merits of Christ's cross save Mary before the crucifixion has actually happened? And that is a totally fair question. You and I experience time sequentially. Yesterday comes before today, today comes before tomorrow.
No matter how convenient it might occasionally be, we can't reach backward and rearrange our Wednesday. But God's saving plan is not trapped inside our chronological limitations because God exists outside of time and space. Otherwise, Christianity then would have like another large problem involving every single righteous person who has lived before the incarnation. Okay?
And that was when the arc incarnation was when. The incarnation is when God became fully God and fully human when Mary was carrying him, right? So the death and resurrection of Jesus occur at definite moments in human history. But Christ's redemption is the source of salvation for the entire human race.
Everyone that has come before us and everyone that will come after us. Catholic teaching understands Mary's preservation from original sin as occurring because of the merits of Jesus Christ in anticipation of Calvary. The cross is still the source of Mary's salvation. Christ is still her savior.
This is why the exact language of Pope Pius IX eventually uses matters so much. Mary is preserved from original sin. In view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the savior of the human race. And like that wording closes the loop, right?
Mary's preservation, and I'm like, I know I'm repeating myself, but I want, like, I really want you guys understand this. Mary's preservation from original sin is entirely the work of Christ's redemption. So now we understand what the church actually claims. The next question is obvious.
Someone will eventually say, Show me the verse that says, Mary was immaculately conceived and never personally sinned. You're not gonna find that sentence, rebels. You're also not gonna find the word Trinity in Scripture. You will not find a Bible verse containing the table of contents of the Bible either.
Catholic theology does not work by locating one sentence that contains the fully developed theological vocabulary of a later century and declaring the case closed. Catholics believe divine revelation is handed on through script sacred scripture. And sacred tradition, with the church entrusted to authentically interpret the deposit of faith. It's not doing that.
The better question is what biblical foundations led Christians to understand Mary this way? And rebels, there are several. Let's start in Nazareth, shall we? Luke chapter one verse twenty eight, Gabriel greets Mary.
Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. The Greek word. The Greek word behind full of grace is kekeritomene. And yes, I totally practice that.
It is a perfect passive form of a verb associated with grace or favor. The language points to grace as something received from God. And Gabriel addresses Mary through that grace identity before we hear about anything Mary has accomplished. Now
I need to be responsible here, right?
With respect to how I'm discussing this, because one Greek word is not like a magical theological code that automatically proves every detail of the Immaculate Conception either. Catholic theology does not rest the entire dogma on a vocabulary trick. What matters, rebels, is the larger picture. Mary enters the gospel story surrounded by grace.
And now we need to go all the way back to Genesis. Okay, so we were in Nazareth, now we're in Genesis. Okay, so Genesis three. Okay, so chapter three.
Because this is where one of the oldest threads in Christian thinking about Mary begins. Humanity has fallen, the serpent has deceived Eve. Adam has disobeyed, and God addresses the serpent with a promise that Christians would eventually come to call Protoevangelium, or the first announcement of the gospel. In Genesis chapter three, verse fifteen, God speaks of enmity between the serpent and the woman and between the serpent's offspring and hers.
Christians have traditionally understood the ultimate victory promised there in light of Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, who defeats sin and death. This is where the new Adam and the New Eve imagery begins to take shape. Saint Paul explicitly presents Christ as the new Adam, and very early Christians began noticing a corresponding relationship between Eve and Mary. Eve receives the serpent's deception and responds with disobedience.
At the Annunciation, Mary receives the message of the angel Gabriel and responds with faith. Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word. There is a striking parallel. Eve's disobedience becomes entangled with humanity's fall.
Mary's obedience becomes part of the story through which the Redeemer enters the world. And Christians noticed this very early on. By the second century, writers such as St. Justin Martyr and Saint Irenaeus were already comparing Eve and Mary.
Irenaeus describes Mary's obedience as helping to untie the knot created by Eve's disobedience. So if Jesus is the new obedience,
Adam, Mary begins to be understood as the new Eve. And there is another biblical thread worth noticing here too, and it involves around one particular word, and that is woman. Genesis gives us the woman in conflict with the serpent.
Then at the wedding feast at Cana, Jesus addresses Mary as woman. Years later, while hanging on the Christ at Calvary, he addresses her with that same word: woman, behold thy son. And then in Revelation chapter 12, John gives us the extraordinary image of a woman opposed by the dragon. The ancient serpent.
That image is rich and layered. The woman has been understood in relation to Israel, the people of God, and the church, and Catholic tradition also recognizes a Marian dimension in her. Taken together, these passages create a biblical pattern that Christians have been reflecting on for centuries. The woman
Her offspring, the serpent, and the promised victory of God.
Genesis begins the story with a woman and a serpent. The gospel gives us Christ, the new Adam, and Mary, the new Eve. An apox and apocalypse gives us the woman and the dragon in conflict once again. The story keeps echoing.
And Luke is about to give us another one of those echoes because when you look closely at his gospel, Mary starts looking remarkably familiar to anyone who knows the Old Testament story of the Ark of the Covenant. This is honestly one of the more interesting biblical layers in Marian theology. And once it's pointed out, Luke's gospel starts looking a little different. First, we need to remember what the Ark of the Covenant actually was.
Especially if most of your working knowledge comes from Indiana Jones, and the general understanding that opening it was apparently a very bad idea. In the Old Testament, the ark was one of the holiest objects in Israel. It was associated with the presence of God among his people. And scripture connects it with the stone tablets of the covenant, which are the Ten Commandments.
The manna from the wilderness and Aaron's priestly rod, which was the staff belonging to Aaron, Moses' brother, and Israel's first high priest, which God caused to miraculously bud and produce blossoms as a sign confirming that Aaron's priesthood had been chosen and set apart by God. So you have the word of God, the bread God provided from heaven, and the sign of the priesthood all associated with the ark. Then Luke gives us Mary. And Mary is carrying Jesus Christ.
The word of God has become flesh. The true bread from heaven has entered the world. The eternal high priest is growing inside her womb. Already the symbolism is pretty hard to miss.
Then Luke tells the story of Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth, and this is where things get really interesting. Because his account begins echoing the Old Testament story of David and the Ark of the Covenant in some like very specific ways. In 2 Samuel, David asks, How can the Ark of the Lord come to me? Then Mary arrives at Elizabeth's home and Elizabeth asks, And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
That is parallel number one. The ark is brought into the hill country of Judah. Mary travels into the hill country of Judah. The ark remains there for three months.
Mary remained with Elizabeth for about three months. When the ark comes before David, David leaps and dances before the Lord. When Mary arrives carrying Jesus,
John the Baptist leaps in Elizabeth's womb. At some point you have to look at Luke and say, Okay, sir, we see what you're doing.
Luke is a careful writer, and Christians reading his gospel began recognizing Mary through the imagery of the Ark of the Covenant, of the New Covenant. And think about what that means. The Ark was sacred because of God's presence of the Ark was sacred. Because of the presence of God associated with it.
Israel treated it with extraordinary reverence because this was the place God had chosen to associate in part in a particular way with his presence among his people. Luke's parallel becomes even more striking because Mary is carrying the incarnate son himself. And wherever Mary goes during those months, Jesus goes with her. When Mary walked into Elizabeth's home, Jesus entered Elizabeth's home.
John leapt in the womb. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and she cries out. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. That is scripture.
Luke gives us that language. And this is the key to understanding why the ark imagery matters in Catholic theology. Mary's significance comes from who she carries. But now there's another question.
How did Christians move from those biblical patterns to the precise dogmatic definition we have today? Which means now we need some history. This is where we need to talk about doctrinal development. Because Catholic teaching does not appear fully formed in the exact vocabulary the church will use centuries later.
The apostles handed on the faith they had received from Christ. The generations that followed prayed, worshipped, read scripture, preached, confronted heresies, and kept asking increasingly precise questions about what Christians. Already believed. That process is why the church eventually develops very exact language about things like the Trinity and the two natures of Christ.
Christians believed in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit long before anyone sat down and produced the theological vocabulary of later councils. The same thing happens with Mary. The earliest Christians are not walking around in the second century, quoting the definition Pope Pius IX will eventually give the church in 1854. That would be asking Christians in the year 180 to use theological language the church had not developed yet.
What we can do is look at what they were saying and watch the theological picture become more precise over time. And
One of the earliest people we need to meet is Saint Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus was a second century bishop and one of the most important theologians of the early church. He was writing around what AD 180, which puts him remarkably close to the apostolic period compared with many of the theologi are going to meet later on.
Okay. Remember, the New Eve pattern we just walked through, Irenaeus matters here because he gives us one of the earliest surviving Christian witnesses to it. He described what had been bound through Eve's unbelief as being loosed through Mary's faith. That does not give us the 1854 definition, but it shows that Christians were already giving Mary a distinctive place in the story of Christ and redemption by the second century.
And then, you know, the conversation, of course, it continued, right? A few centuries later,
Other major Christian writers start talking about Mary's holiness in stronger and stronger language. One of them is Saint Ephrem the Syrian. He was a fourth century deacon, poet, and theologian from Mesopotamia.
He is venerated as a saint in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Catholic Church named him a doctor of the Church. Ephrem writes about Christ and Mary with. Striking language about purity and spotlessness, you can already hear how highly Christians were thinking about Mary's holiness. And then our favorite saint here at Rebel Saints entered the chat.
And that is Saint Augustine, because obviously he is the original OG Rebel Saint. Augustine was a bishop and a theologian in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. And
If there's a like a conversation happening anywhere in Christianity about sin, grace, human nature, or why all of us are a theological mess, Augustine probably has thoughts. A lot of thoughts.
He is one of the most important figures in the Western church's theology of sin and grace, which makes what he says about Mary especially interesting. In On Nature and Grace,
Augustine says that for the honor of the Lord, he does not want the blessed virgin Mary included when he's discussing personal sin. The man could probably locate fallen human nature blindfolded in the dark. And he even pauses when the subject is Mary.
Yes, the language is still developing. He's not giving us the full later definition that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first instant of her conception, but the pattern is getting clearer. Christians are speaking about Mary as the new Eve, they're describing her holiness in extraordinary terms, they're connecting that holiness with God's grace, and over the centuries, theologians are going to keep asking the next obvious question. Exactly.
How far does that grace go? Augustine, Saint Augustine died in 430 AD. Keep that date in your head because we're not gonna jump ahead a few centuries. We're moving almost immediately into the next major chapter of this story.
In fact, while Augustine was still alive in North Africa, writing about sin and grace and another theological controversy was already brewing. Hundreds of miles away in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. This one was going to be enormous because Christians were about to have a very public argument over a title for Mary that was really an argument about a much bigger question. Who exactly is Jesus Christ?
And that controversy would eventually bring bishops from across the Christian world to the city of Ephesus in. Four hundred thirty one The council that affirmed Mary as Theotokos, mother of God precisely because the person she conceived and bore is God the Son made man. But before we get into the drama, one thing needs to be clear. The Immaculate Conception wasn't defined at the Council of Ephesus either.
We're still more than fourteen hundred years too early for that. And calling Mary the mother of God does not automatically prove the immaculate conception either. You can't just say, she's mother of God, therefore she was immaculately conceived, boom, case closed. That's not the argument.
Ephesus matters because it clarifies something fundamental about Mary. By first,
clarifying something even more fundamental about Jesus Christ. Christians believe Jesus is truly God and truly human. The real fight was over how to speak accurately about that mystery.
More specifically, who exactly was the child Mary gave birth to? And this is where things get spicy. To understand why a council was needed in 431, we have to back up just a few more years. To AD 428, Nestorius became Bishop of Constantinople, and this was the imperial capital and one of the most influential Christian sees in the world.
Nestorius soon found himself in the middle of a controversy over a title Christians were already using for Mary, and that is. Theotokos literally means God-bearer. In English, we usually say mother of God. Nestorius objected to the way the title was being used.
He preferred language like Christotokos, mother of Christ. That disagreement quickly became part of a much larger argument about who Jesus actually is, and it led straight to Ephesus. Now, if you've never heard the theology behind the phrase Mother of God, I completely understand why your first reaction would be like, excuse me? Because without an explanation, it can sound like Christians are claiming Mary existed before God, created God, or somehow supplied Jesus with his divinity.
Catholic theology teaches none of those things. God the Son is eternal. Mary is a human creature of God. Title is trying to answer a different question.
Who did Mary give birth to? And that is where Cyril of Alexandria enters the story. Saint Cyril Saint Cyril was the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt and one of the major theologians of the 5th century church. He would later be recognized as a saint and doctor of the church, and subtle disagreement.
Was not exactly his preferred communication style. And I kind of love him for that. Cyril believed Nestorius' way of speaking risked dividing Christ too sharply, as though there were a human Jesus on one side and the eternal Son of God on the other. For Cyril, the identity of Jesus had to stay clear.
There is one Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, truly became human. Once you understand that, the logic behind Theotokos becomes surprisingly straightforward. Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the God, the Son made man.
Therefore, Mary can rightly be called mother of God. This is about the identity of the person she gave birth to. My mother did not give birth to Nicole's human nature. She gave birth to Nicole.
In the same way, Mary did not give birth to some independent human nature that was later attached to God the Son. She gave birth to Jesus Christ, who is God the Son incarnate. That is what the title Theotokos protects. So once again, we have managed to begin with a question about Mary and end up in the middle of a theological argument about Jesus.
At this point, I mean that should be clear, right? Super familiar by now. All right, so now we're at Ephesus. It's 431.
The controversy has become so serious enough that Emperor Theodosius II summoned a council to Ephesus. He was like, Y'all need to straighten this out, right? Because I can't have all this like disagreement or whatever. And because these are fifth century bishops discussing one of the most explosive theological controversies of their age, I am sure.
Everyone arrived on time, they communicated early, listened patiently to one another, and resolved everything in a spirit of like calm Christian fraternity, right? Obviously. Yeah, no, the exact opposite of that happened. There were delayed bishops, rival factions, accusations, condemnations,
and enough ecclesiastical chaos to make a modern parishcouncil look like extremely well adjusted.
Cyril and his bishops began proceeding before John of Antioch and his delegation arrived. Nestorius was like irritated by that, and so he's like, You guys are trying to decide my future and not everybody's here. No, I'm not participating. I will not accept that.
Nope. And so the council like condemned and deposed him. When John of Antioch finally arrived and discovered what had happened, he was furious. So his group held their own meeting and then condemned Cyril.
And so now we have, you know, one group of Bishops saying Nestorius is deposed, and then you had another group essentially responding saying,
Actually, Cyril is deposed. Not disposed, deposed. The council was supposed to restore unity. Things were going absolutely beautiful, right?
Eventually the judgment against Nestorius stood,
and Cyril and John of Antioch later reconciled. The whole controversy was fundamentally Christological. The question surrounding Mary was inseparable from the question of the identity and unity of Christ. The church affirms that Mary can rightly be called Theotokos because the person born from her is the eternal son of God made flesh.
The theological language will later equal. Become even more precise. Twenty years later at the Council of Chalcedon in AD four fifty one, the church will articulate more fully how Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man while remaining one person. But for our purpose, the point of Ephesus is this.
One of Christianity's most famous statements about Mary was defended because the church was protecting a truth about Jesus. Mary is the mother of God because the child she bore is God, the Son made man. And that is the peace that was needed before the story of Mary's holiness could move forward. So this idea, it just kept gaining ground, right?
By the late 15th century, Pope Sixtus IV approved a feast celebrating Mary's conception. Theologians are still working out exactly how to explain all of this, but the church is already praying about it publicly and celebrating it in liturgy. Okay, and you have to understand, at this time,
The church is still united. Everybody believes the exact same thing and they're all in agreement.
Then in 1546, we get to the Council of Trent. If you've never heard about Trent, this is one of the biggest councils in Catholic history. It takes place during the Protestant Reformation when the church is being forced to answer some major questions about sin, grace, salvation. Scripture, the sacraments, basically everybody has notes and they're bringing them.
And one of the things Trent addresses is original sin. The bishops issue a decree explaining what the church teaches about humanity's fallen condition
they essentially say what we have just said about original sin is not meant to settle the question of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Now that is like worth noticing. We are still more than 300 years away from the Immaculate Conception being formally defined as dogma.
And Mary is already being signaled out when the church talks officially about original sin. The question is still being worked out, but by this point, it is very much part of the Catholic conversation. Devotion continues to spread, and by the early 18th century, Pope Clement. The eleventh extends the feast of the Immaculate Conception through the Latin Church.
So now we finally arrive in the nineteenth century. We are walking into a conversation Catholics have already been praying about, debating and celebrating for hundreds of years. All of that history finally brings us to Pope Pius IX, and the year is 1854. This is the date people sometimes point to when they say, see, the Catholic Church invented the Immaculate Conception in 1854.
At this point, though, we have followed the conversation through the early church, the Church Fathers, centuries of theological debate, Duns Scotus, liturgical celebrations, and the Council of Trent. So 1854 is not the first appearance of this belief. It is the moment when the Catholic Church finally gives the doctrine a solemn and precise definition. Pius IX did not make that decision in isolation though.
In 1849, five years before the official definition, he formally consulted the bishops of the world about the belief and devotion of their clergy. And faithful concerning the Immaculate Conception. This was a serious attempt to listen to the faith of the Church throughout the Catholic world before making such a significant definition. Then, on december eighth, eighteen fifty four, Pius IX issued Ineffabilis Deus and solemnly defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
The heart of the definition is this. From the first instant of her conception, Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race. So after everything we've talked about, you can probably hear why those final words matter so much. In view of the merits of Jesus Christ.
The definition itself places Christ's saving work at the center. Mary's Immaculate Conception is an act of God's grace made possible through the redemption accomplished by her son. That is what the Catholic Church formally defines in eighteen fifty four. And then four years later, something extraordinary happens in France.
In eighteen fifty eight, a fourteen year old girl named Bernadette Soubirous reported seeing a woman at a grotto called Massabelle, near her hometown of Lourdes in southern France. Bernadette came from an impoverished family, had very little formal education, and suffered from poor health. She was hardly the person anyone would expect to wander into the middle of one of the most famous theological moments in modern Catholic history. Over the course of the reported apparitions, Bernadette was questioned repeatedly about what she had seen and heard.
Eventually,
She asked the woman to identify herself. According to Bernadette, the answer was I am the Immaculate Conception. Now think about the timing. Four years earlier, Pope Pius IX had solemnly defined the Immaculate Conception.
Then in eighteen fifty eight, this poorly educated teenage girls in the foothills of the Pyrenees reports hearing the woman at the grotto identify herself with that very title. Saint John Paul II later specifically noted that Lourdes occurred four years after the proclamation of the dogma. One of the details that makes Bernadette's story so compelling is that she reportedly did not understand the theological expressions she had been given. According to the traditional account, she repeated the words to herself as she hurried to tell the parish priest because she was afraid she would forget them.
There is something wonderfully human about that image. You have a 14 year old girl hurrying through town, concentrating on this complicated phrase. She barely understands, completely unaware that Catholics are going to be talking about this moment more than a century and a half later. Immaculate conception, Immaculate Conception, Immaculate Conception.
Just get us the priest without forgetting it, right? Catholic theology does make an important distinction here. Lourdes belongs to what the church calls private revelation. The revelation goes.
God has given definitively in Jesus Christ remains the foundation of the Christian faith. Approved private revelations can help Christians live that faith more fully during particular moments in history. They do not add another gospel or create new articles of faith. That means Lourdes does not have to carry the entire theological argument we have just spent this entire episode building.
The doctrine already has centuries of history behind it and had been solemnly defined before Bernadette ever went into that grotto. Lourdes simply becomes an extraordinary chapter in that history. You can understand then why Catholics have found the timing difficult to forget. Because once you understand what the Immaculate Conception means and how the doctrine developed, another question would naturally flow, Right?
Why, Mary? Why would God give this particular human being such an extraordinary grace? The first thing to remember is that
Grace is a gift. God calls different people to different vocations and gives them the grace necessary to fulfill those vocations.
Peter's vocation is not Paul's, Paul's is not John's, Francis of Assisi is called to something different than Teresa of Avila. And none of that makes one person's life a photocopy of another. Mary receives a singular grace because she receives an
absolutely singular vocation. There is only one mother of God.
Mm. And I think, you know, that title can become so familiar to Catholics that like we risk losing our sense of how astonishing the incarnation actually is. Jesus Christ, the eternal son of God, truly becomes human by the power of the Holy Spirit. He takes his human nature from Mary.
His humanity is real. His body is real. The pregnancy is real. The body that will eventually be crucified at Calvary begins its human life with Mary's womb.
The hands that will touch lepers, bless children, break bread at the Last Supper, and eventually be stretched across the cross are formed inside her. The voice that will preach at the Sermon of the Mount. First, he develops human lungs and vocal cords inside the body of his mother. That is Christianity.
Sometimes we become so accustomed to saying the word become flesh that we forget how completely outrageous the claim would sound if we heard it for the first time. God the Son enters human history as an embryo. He grows in a womb. He is born.
He needs to be held and fed. He slept in his mother's arms, he was scolded, I imagine, by his mother. He grows into childhood and adulthood. His human body can become tired, hungry, wounded, and eventually killed.
Then he rises bodily from the dead. Christianity is intensely physical because the incarnation is intensely physical. God does not save humanity from a safe distance. He enters human history and assumes our nature.
Mary stands at the center of the mystery because God freely chose her to be the woman from whom the son would take his humanity. The Catechism's summary connects Mary's immaculate conception with the mission for which God chose her, to be the mother of his son. So when Catholic theology speaks about Mary receiving an extraordinary grace, it does so in the context. Of an extraordinary vocation.
She is the woman who will carry the incarnate word in her body, gave birth to him, feed him, raise him, and eventually stand beneath his cross. That gives us the larger picture of Mary. Every extraordinary thing we have discussed about her exists within the mystery of what God is doing through her. And now that we have worked through the theology, scripture, and history, I want to take some of the most common objections to the Immaculate Conception and deal with them directly.
Because I know some of you have been storing them up. Like I can feel it. So I'm gonna treat this as like a rapid fire question around where I list the question or the objection and I give you the answer. Okay.
Let us begin with Romans chapter three, verse twenty three, because this verse enters almost every conversation about Mary's sinlessness sooner or later. For all have sinned and do need the glory of God. At first glance, that seems pretty straightforward. Paul says, all have sinned.
Mary is human. Therefore, Mary sinned. Roll the credits. Everybody go home, right?
Paul's argument in Romans 3 is about humanity's universal need for God's saving grace. The word all is doing a very specific job in that chapter. Christianity already recognizes one obvious human exception to personal sin, right? Jesus Christ, who is fully human and without sin.
Catholics therefore understand Romans three twenty three as proclaiming their universal need for salvation, a truth that includes Mary because she too is saved by Christ. She like literally said it, right? So the next question is if Mary was sinless, was she really free? And this is actually a really good question because we sometimes assume that freedom requires the ability to choose evil.
Christianity has a different understanding of freedom. Sin enslaves us. Holiness makes us increasingly free to love God and choose the good. Jesus gives us the clearest example.
He is perfectly sinless and perfectly free. So the ability to sin cannot be what makes a person free. The same principle applies to Mary. Her holiness does not turn her into a robot or remove her freedom.
Her fiat at the annunciation is a real and free human yes. So Mary's sinlessness does not diminish her freedom. Catholic theology would say that grace makes her more capable of freely choosing the good for which human freedom was created. Next question.
Doesn't this make Mary too important? This objection actually deserves some respect because Catholics can practice Marian devotion badly. We can use sloppy language, assume everyone understands what we mean, and then act surprised when another Christian hears us talking about Mary and thinks, okay. What exactly is happening over there?
And that's a fair question. Catholics should care about that because authentic Marian devotion should always be clear about where Mary points. And scripture gives us a remarkably consistent answer. At Cana, Mary tells the servants, Whatever he shall say to you, do.
And in the magnificat, she says, My soul doth magnify the Lord. That is Mary's posture throughout scripture. And if you want to learn more about the Magnificat, go ahead to my previous episode on Mary. It's a few back from this one.
She listens to God. She says yes to God. And she directs other people toward her son. So when Catholic devotion to Mary is healthy, it should do the same thing.
It should make Christ easier to see, not harder. And that's like probably the simplest test. Next question. Did sinlessness make Mary's life easy?
One of the easiest ways to misunderstand Mary is to confuse holiness with an easy life. Catholic art can sometimes make her feel almost like untouchable. She's got the blue veil, folded hands, serene expression, everything perfectly composed, beautiful, yes. But if that is the only image we carry around,
We can forget that Mary lived an actual human life.
She knew poverty and uncertainty. She fled into Egypt with Joseph and Jesus. She searched for her missing son for three days. She heard Simon tell her that a sword would pierce her soul, and then she lived long enough to understand exactly what he meant.
Mary's sinlessness did not place her outside suffering. Her holiness did not take her. Insulate her from grief, fear, exhaustion, or loss. It simply meant that she met those things without turning away from God, which a lot of us can do when we're faced with hardship.
We will question God, why do you let this happen? Why I'm a good person. Why is this happening to me, right? Her life eventually leads her to Calvary, where that fidelity is tested in the most painful way imaginable.
And I think that matters when we talk about the Immaculate Conception, because holiness is sometimes presented as though it makes a person less human, less complicated, or somehow untouched by ordinary suffering. And Mary shows us something very different. Grace does not make her less human, grace allows her humanity to become what. God intended it to be.
And so then we have to ask, what does the Immaculate Conception then say about us? And this is where the doctrine stops being an obscure Catholic trivia question and starts saying something about us. It is very easy to look at the world or frankly at ourselves and begin lowering our expectations of what grace can actually do. We sin, we confess, we fall again, we go back to confession.
Eventually, Father recognizes our voice before we finish the first sentence, which is always a lovely little exercise in humility. Am I right? Over time, holiness can begin to sound like an unrealistic goal for unusually impressive people who lived several centuries ago and apparently had much better self-control than the rest of us. But then Mary enters the story.
The Immaculate Conception reminds us that sin does not have the final word about what a human being can become. Mary
Is human and that exactly and that is exactly why her holiness matters. She shows us a human life completely receptive to the grace of God. Her vocation is unique, and the grace given to her is unique, but the larger Christian promise belongs to all of us.
God intends to sanctify human beings, heal what sin has wounded, and
draw us into communion with him. Christianity aims higher than simply helping us become marginally less terrible before we die. The Christian goal is holiness, transformation by grace, union with God, and ultimately sainthood. Mary's life gives us a glimpse of what grace can accomplish when a human being is completely open to God.
And that is why the Immaculate Conception ultimately is a hopeful doctrine. The doctrine leaves us with a hopeful claim about our own lives. God's grace can truly transform human beings into the saints he created us to become. So let's bring this back to the question that started this entire episode.
Does the Catholic Church believe Mary is divine? No, Mary is fully human, created by God and completely dependent upon his grace. Does the church call Mary Mother of God? Yes, the title tells us who Jesus is, the child Mary conceived and gave birth to is Jesus Christ, God, Son made man.
Does the church teach that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first instant of her conception? Yes, that's the Immaculate Conception. Does the Church also teach that Mary remained free from personal sin throughout her life? Yes, by the grace of God, Mary remained free from personal sin.
That teaching is closely connected to the Immaculate Conception, although the two statements are not identical. And did Mary need a savior? Abso-freaking-lutely. Jesus Christ is Mary's savior.
Her preservation from original sin is itself an extraordinary work of his saving grace. So that's the Catholic answer. And to the person who sent me this question, thank you. Seriously, I didn't want to say your name because I didn't think to ask you ahead of this.
So I'm I'm sorry about that, but thank you so much for asking that really great question. I love questions like this because Catholics should never be afraid of asking why we believe what we believe. And other people who aren't Catholic, this person isn't, also shouldn't be afraid to ask us. Okay.
And we as Catholics should be able to answer these questions. Some of the richest parts of the faith begin with somebody saying, Okay, I have a question. As a catechist, when I started, I started with kindergartners, right? So I
would get these questions and here I am, a cradle Catholic.
I did my C D, my Catholic children's doctrine, right? And I was like, yeah, I got this and then they would ask a question and I'd be like,
I'll come back next week with that answer. And I would go get the answer or find a priest or somebody. And that's kind of you know how I learned.
So open scripture, read the catechism, meet Arrhenius, Augustine, Aquinas, and Scotus, ask un uncomfortable questions, follow the history, let the theology challenge you. Okay, and pull up a chair and let's talk about it. Truth does not require us to be afraid of questions, and neither does Jesus. You know, when I was a youth minister, I would often use Mary's Way of the Cross with the teens during Lent.
And I'll link to it in my show notes and on the show notes on my website, RebelSaintsPodcast. Com. But while I was, you know, going through this episode, researching it and putting it all together, I kept coming back to this one image. And you know, that's Mary standing at the foot of her son's cross.
After everything that we've talked about in this episode, I really want you to think about that image for a moment. The woman the church teaches was preserved from original sin is standing beneath the cross where her sinless son is giving his life for the sins of the world. Mary's holiness did not give her an easy life. Her yes to God asked more of her than she could possibly have understood when Gabriel first appeared in Nazareth.
At the annunciation she said Be it done to me according to thy word. Years later she is still living that yes. She can't take Jesus down from the cross. She can't make his suffering stop.
She can't even fix what is happening to her. But John tells us that she is there, that she stayed with him when the others couldn't, right? And I kept like I keep thinking about that, because sometimes faithfulness looks exactly like that. Sometimes we follow Jesus with joy and clarity, and sometimes we follow him into places.
We never would have chosen for ourselves. There are moments when we understand what God is doing, and there are moments when all we can do is remain close to Him and trust that the story is still in His hands. Mary's life contains all of it grace, freedom, joy, uncertainty, suffering, fidelity,
And ultimately the victory of her son. The cross is followed by the resurrection.
But when she was standing there at his cross, she had no idea that was coming. The resurrection reveals where the Christian story is going toward the victory of Jesus Christ over sin and death. And maybe that is one reason why. The church keeps placing Mary before us.
Her life teaches us what it looks like for a human being to receive the grace of God and keep saying yes to him through an entire lifetime. From Nazareth to Calvary, Mary says yes to God, carries Christ within her, gives birth to him, raises him, follows him, and finally stands beside his cross. And throughout the gospel, her life keeps directing our attention toward her son. At Cana, she gives us what may be the simplest summary of authentic Marian devotion anywhere in Scripture.
Whatsoever he shall say to you, do it, right? Do whatever he says, do whatever he asks of you. Trust him, follow him, receive his grace. And when God calls you, have the courage to say yes.
Let's pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Amen. If you have a question about Catholicism, the Saints, prayer, church teaching, or one of those Catholic things that makes you stop and say, okay, seriously, why do you people do this? Send it my way. It might just become an episode.
And if you are a Catholic and you'd like to join me for a conversation, I would love to talk to you about it. But keep asking questions, rebels. Keep chasing holiness. Until next time.
I'm Nicole. And this is Rebel Saints. It's a podcast for restless hearts called to be saints. Restless heart.
You are welcome here. Bye and enjoy the rest of my theme song after this.
