(2003-01-07) Immaculate Conception




Audio Sancto show

Summary: Sermon titled "Immaculate Conception" given on Tuesday January 7, 2003. Size: 3.3 MB; duration: 14:24. Four words perfectly describe the feast of the Immaculate Conception: "Potuit, Decuit, ergo fecit--He could, He should, therefore He did it." Detailed SynopsisPotuit (He could) - God is all powerful, and therefore could have granted the singular grace of the Immaculate Conception. Decuit (He should) - It is only fitting that Mary should be preserved from any stain of sin and the grace to never fall under the dominion of the devil, so as to be worthy to be the mother of God. Ergo fecit (Therefore he did it) - Since God could create Our Lady spotless from the first moment of her conception, and since he should do this, he did. From the Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus of Pope Pius IX solemnly defining the dogma of the Immaulate Conception, 8 December 1854: "From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world. Above all creatures did God so lover her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater, and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully. "Wherefore, in humility and fasting, we unceasingly offered our private prayers as well as the public prayers of the Church to God the Father through his Son, that he would deign to direct and strengthen our mind by the power of the Holy Spirit. In like manner did we implore the help of the entire heavenly host as we ardently invoked the Paraclete. Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: '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 grace and 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.'"