The Immaculate Conception

On December 8 the Church celebrates the belief, defined as dogma by Pius IX in 1854, that Mary from the first moment of her conception was preserved free from original sin by the merits of her Son. Four years later Mary herself confirmed it at Lourdes — "I am the Immaculate Conception" — to a fourteen-year-old peasant girl. The feast is the patronal feast of the United States.

The doctrine had been debated for centuries — Franciscans championed it while Dominicans questioned it — but the sensus fidelium never wavered. In Mary conceived without sin, the Church sees the first fruit of her Son's redemption: the dawn already bright before the sun has risen, a sign of the glory that awaits every soul redeemed by grace.