Immaculate Conception: Saved by Grace

The Immaculate Conception – our Catholic conviction that Mary was preserved from contracting original sin at her conception – is something that seems to set us apart from our Protestant brothers and sisters. The truth, however, is that it expresses a point of faith particularly dear to the Protestant Reformers: We are brought into relationship with God, or justified, not through any works or merit on our part but solely by the grace of God. Mary was saved from sin as a result of Christ’s redemptive work. . .reaching back through time to preserve her from sin and unite her soul to God from the first instance of her existence. And we Catholics have strong biblical precedents that we can share with separated brothers and sisters to help illuminate this Marian dogma.

Let’s begin with a principle that is embraced by all Christians: The realities of the New Testament far surpass their “shadows,” their prefigurements, in the Old (Heb 10:1; 8:5-6; 12:22-24). Saint Paul, for example, referred to Adam – God’s created son, the physical head of our race – as “a type of the one who was to come,” Jesus (Rom 5:14). So too, Christ is the head of a new, redeemed humanity; but in a glorious contrast to Adam: Adam was God’s son by adoption, but Christ by divine filiation. The first man was of earth, the second of heaven (1 Cor 15:45-49). “As one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men” (Rom 5:18). The New does not just equal, but vastly surpasses the Old; and what is true of Adam and Jesus is also true of Eve and Mary.

When we meet Eve in Scripture, she comes to us fresh from God’s creative hand. She was a daughter bearing His image and likeness (Gen 1:26; 5:3), living in intimate friendship with God. When her sin, however, placed her under the dominion of death and the devil (Gen 3:3; Wis 2:24; Eph 2:1-3; 1 Jn 5:19), God immediately spoke of another Woman – one at “enmity” with the devil – and her Seed, who would crush the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15). In the Gospel of John we find Jesus referring to Mary as the prophesied Woman (2:3-4; 19:26-27), with this point reinforced in John’s Book of Revelation (12:1-5, 17). If the first woman, the “mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20), was created in God’s friendship; the biblical principle we have observed up until this point, would say that the same was true of Mary. When we turn to the annunciation narrative we find the Angel Gabriel addressing Mary exactly as we would expect – “Hail Kecharitōmenē”(Lk 1:28) – meaning one who has been, and is now, absolutely filled with the grace, the supernatural life, of God.

But how could Mary experience such freedom from Original Sin and union with God prior to Christ’s incarnation and redemptive sacrifice? It was because her Son is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rv 13:8). Jesus is a divine Person, Who offered himself to the Father “through the eternal Spirit” (Heb 9:14). His redemptive sacrifice reached forward in time to embrace us; but it also reached backward, meriting God’s mercy toward Abraham and his descendants (Heb 10:3-4; 9:24-26; 11:1-2, 17-19, 39-40).  Christ’s merits – and they alone – redeem man from the curse of the Fall. There is no supernatural life, no union with God, apart from Him, whether we are talking about the saints of the Old Covenant or the New. We can do nothing to merit this gift of divine adoption, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2:8-9). And at times, God does not even require our faith to appropriate this gift of grace – He is free to distribute His gifts however He wishes (Mt 20:15)!

We see this in the Old Testament and the New. God’s grace, given in view of the merits of Christ, cleansed the prophet Jeremiah of original sin and “consecrated” him a prophet in utero (Jer 1:5). It caused St. John the Baptist to be “filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb” (Lk 1:15).  God extended this grace to Jeremiah and John to mold them for the divine work that lay ahead. He did the same for Mary when He called her to the most sublime work, the most intimate union possible between God and a creature - her divine motherhood. Jesus’ sacrifice reached back to not just cleanse Mary of original sin as in the case of Jeremiah and John, but to preserve her from even contracting that damage to our nature that inclines us toward selfishness and sin. She was saved by grace – as are we – but in the most radical way possible; and that grace consecrated her as the New Eve, the new mother of all the living!

After centuries of pondering God’s Revelation the Church came to the point where it could clearly enunciate the truth of Mary’s “Immaculate Conception” to itself and the world. It was not adding something new to the deposit of Faith (Jude 3) from the outside but clearly articulating a truth implicit since the beginning. On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX invoked his authority as the Successor of Peter to teach infallibly:

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. (Ineffabilis Deus)

When the Church calls us each year to celebrate what God did for Mary, we recognize and praise what He has done for us too: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved [Christ]” (Eph 1:3–7).

Adapted from  The Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in Light of Scripture (TAN Books, 2022).

God's Timing: The Story of a Book

Each of us has dreams that we work to see realized because we believe God has planted them in our souls. We become confused, however, when obstacles arise. We ask ourselves whether these dreams have their source in the Lord or in our own wishes. I had an experience like this that I want to share.

In the summer of 2014, I approached a handful of Catholic publishers with an outline and sample chapters for a book on consecration and devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. The book was to be a fusion of apologetics and devotion, grounding Marian consecration and other expressions of devotion to the Immaculate Heart (e.g., the Rosary, wearing the Brown Scapular, First Saturdays) in Scripture: all elements that flow to us from the earthly lives of Jesus and Mary. I had just finished a book on the human prayer of Jesus, and this seemed to be the natural next step in my writing. Plus, if I started working immediately, a publisher would be able to offer it to readers in time for the Fatima centenary in 2017. The only problem was that all of the publishers I contacted were either just releasing books on the Blessed Mother, or my focus wasn’t what they were interested in publishing at the time.

As summer turned to fall, I took these difficulties to prayer. I recall lying in bed one night and saying, “Lord, I felt like this book about the Blessed Mother was something You wanted me to do, but I could be wrong. Maybe You don’t want me to write any more books. And honestly, that is fine. If You would let me know, though, one way or the other, I would be very grateful.” As I continued to lie in bed, a friend’s words came back to me.

My pal Tony, a coworker, had been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews and dropped by my room every now and then to ask me a question about the text. In the course of our conversations, I shared how, over a decade before, I had developed a five-part study on Hebrews for a prayer group and occasionally thought of turning that into a book. Tony loved the idea and, when he returned the following week with another question remarked, “Man, I hope you write that book!” As I laid in bed praying, those were the words that popped into my head. I realized that if I did pursue the topic, I would want it to focus upon seven elements in Hebrews instead of my original five. Hmm...was this something the Lord wanted me to pursue?

I received the Lord’s answer two days later, in the form of an email from my friend and collaborator, Dr. Kevin Vost: “In your last email you mentioned St. Thomas, and I seem to recall your special interest in Hebrews. Well, when I ordered the beautiful Latin and English Commentaries on the Letters of Saint Paul, they "accidentally" sent me two copies of St. Thomas's Commentary on Hebrews and did not request it back. I supposed the other was for you, so I've been holding this to give to you if you don't already have a copy.” Within a week I had contacted Angelico Press with the proposal for The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Seven Core Beliefs of Catholics and received the green light to proceed. The book was released in May, 2016 and was so well received that, by August, Marcus Grodi and I were discussing it on EWTN’s The Journey Home!

I continued to purchase and read books about the Blessed Mother and Marian Consecration, adding to my notes, in the hope that the Lord might still allow me to write on the subject. Again, however, the timing didn’t seem right. Before the end of 2016, the Lord opened the door to publish a book on “marrying” the praying of the Rosary to that of the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I then found myself starting work on a master’s program in theology, and soon thereafter writing a book on the Epistle of James that was released in 2021.

Shortly after its release, my dear friend Michael Vento phoned to say that he had been catching up with an old buddy who had just gone to work as a content manager at TAN Books. Michael knew of my desire to write about a book on Marian Consecration and, thinking that TAN would be a good fit, said he would like to introduce me to this editor.

Perhaps a month later I received an email, completely out of the blue, from a content manager at TAN Books named Patrick O’Hearn. The gentleman who edited my book James for another publisher had been approached by TAN with a special project – updating the entire text of a large, older catechism with footnotes referencing the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church. He was not able to take on the job for TAN but, for some reason, recommended that they contact me about it. Patrick O’Hearn . . . that sounded like the same name that my friend Michael had mentioned to me. (A quick call to Michael confirmed that it was, but he had not yet had the chance to speak to Patrick about me. Needless to say, I sensed the Lord’s hand.) I emailed Patrick back to say that I was interested in hearing more about the Catechism project and told him how we shared a mutual friend. As Patrick and I began to correspond, I mentioned the book on Marian Consecration and how, once I completed the editing project, I would love to submit a proposal to TAN. He asked me not to wait but to go ahead and send it. Three months later we had signed a contract stating that I would deliver a completed manuscript by December 1, 2022. 

Ah, but that was not the end of the story. I went to work on the manuscript in August 2021, and completed my first draft on January 1, 2022 – giving me eleven months to make changes before the due date. I still felt driven to work and completed my content editing by February. I shared the manuscript with a few trusted friends; and as they began reading, I started double-checking my thousands of scriptural citations. Then, completely out of the blue, on March 15, Pope Francis announced his intention to consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart on the Solemnity of the Annunciation! He asked the world’s bishops and all of the world’s faithful to gather in their parish churches and join him in the consecration. As I was at Mass the weekend before the consecration, the thought occurred to me to contact TAN and see if, since the manuscript was ready, they wanted to move it into production. They did. I had until the end of the week – the same week I was already scheduled to be off work for spring break – to finish checking scriptural citations. TAN immediately went to work and this October, the month of the Rosary, The Biblical Roots of Marian Consecration: Devotion to the Immaculate Heart in Light of Scripture will be released.

I share this story because I want to encourage you: Yes, God truly grants us the deepest desires of our hearts. But He does so in a far better way than we could envision. He is the Lord of time, Who with infinite wisdom moves each piece into position. We walk in the darkness of faith, but with the firm conviction that darkness is not dark to Him; rather, it is as bright as day (Ps 139:12). I do not know the next step or even how many steps I have left in this world, but I know that I have great reason to trust Him - as do you. “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? . . . What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? . . . No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:32-39).