First Saturday’s Meditation: Sins against Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception

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“Hail Mary full of Grace” every time that we say the Hail Mary we make a reference to Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception.  The Angel Gabriel’s angelic salutation confirms the fact that Our Lady was “full of grace” which means she was full of God.  In 1854 Pope Pius IX promulgated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception which confirms that:

“The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtues and merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin”.  Pius IX Ineffabilis Deus

Why is it therefore important to believe and honour Our Lady by the title of the Immaculate Conception?  
Our Lady’s title is important because it relates to Mary’s vocation to become the Mother of Christ.  She was given a special mission from God.  It was from the humanity of the Virgin Mary that Christ was born.  Sr Lucia from Fatima emphasises this fact saying:

“It was in this heart that the Father enclosed His Son, as if it was the first tabernacle.  Mary was the first guardian that protected Him, it was the blood from her Immaculate Heart that gave the Son of God His human life ….” Sr Lucia (Calls from Fatima)

In honouring Our Lady as the Immaculate Conception, we are reminded that God worked from Eternity to bring about man’s salvation sending His Son through Our Blessed Mother.  St Augustine reminds us that “the world […] was unworthy to receive the Son of God directly from the hands of the Father and so He gave Him to Mary that the world might receive Him through her.” (True Devotion to Mary n 16)  The preparation for this mission was the concession of that special grace given by Almighty God to Mary, the Immaculate Mother of God.

Mary is the “woman” of who the book of Genesis speaks, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed: he shall crush your head” (Gen 3:15).  Therefore, it is not perhaps surprising that the devil wishes to dishonour Mary with doubts and blasphemies about her Immaculate Conception.  The more we fail to grasp the greatness of Mary, the more we will cease to honour her and invoke her motherly protection during our earthly pilgrimage towards Her Son.

The Book of Genesis speaks of this “enmity” between Our Lady and the devil and so we must be ready to stand with Our Lady, as part of her army, to console her Immaculate Heart that is filled with love for all mankind.  Through her Immaculate Heart can we also receive all the graces we need to win the battle of the faith.  To console Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, it is only right that our “Hail Mary’s” today send to heaven our unceasing assent to the belief in the concession of this grace to Mary.

What are the blasphemies against Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception for which we are to offer reparation?
1)    Refusal to accept the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception as the truth.
2)    Refusal to accept that Our Lady was given this singular grace from God as part of His Divine Plan of Salvation.
3)    The erroneous belief that Our Lady at some time in her life committed a personal sin.
4)    Refutation of Our Lady’s purity.

Ways to Make Reparation to Our Lady
Offer this first Saturday in reparation for the blasphemies against Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception.