Immaculately concieved

MOTHER! whose virgin bosom was uncrost

With the least shade of thought to sin allied;

Woman! above all women glorified,

Our tainted nature’s solitary boast;

Purer than foam on central ocean tost;

Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn

With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon

Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast;

Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,

Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,

As to a visible Power, in which did blend

All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee

Of mother’s love with maiden purity,

Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 

"The Immaculate Conception of our Lady, was one of the Church of England's gifts to the rest of the Western Church. We borrowed it from the East in Saxon days; Norman bishops tried to ban it on the grounds that it wasn't observed in Rome; but we hung on to it and eventually Rome came round to our way of thinking. An early contribution of the Anglican Patrimony!"

So mused Fr John Hunwicke on his blog back in December 2009. Two years before that he preached at Pusey House, Oxford:

In a sermon I preached forty years ago, at the Mattins of Christmass Day in the year of my diaconate, I said that the Incarnation meant that God was in the belly of a Palestinian peasant girl who is Queen of Heaven. Critics fell into three categories: those who disliked my phrase because of its physicality and because it placed the origins of our faith among foreigners (surely Mary must have been a middle-class Englishwoman and if not a member of the WI then at least of the Young Wives); those who didn't like the phrase Queen of Heaven; and those who disliked both.

'The Immaculate Conception'. It's a lovely rolling phrase, isn't it (we classicists would analyse its rhythm as the trispondaicus). And it's a phrase, too, that can scare people silly. Is it sometimes the physicality - again, of conception - that disturbs them; conception, a process that occurs a little way south of the tummy button? Not the sort of thing the fastidious want to have dragged in front of their noses. C S Lewis points out that the devils too are fastidious in their horror at the flesh: Screwtape refers to a human as 'this animal, this thing begotten in a bed'. Or perhaps people are scared of the word 'Immaculate'; perhaps it suggests foreign religion - little old Irish women clutching their rosaries or Spanish ladies in black making their nine successive First Saturday communions in honour of the Immaculate Heart (a devotion which Cardinal Ratzinger with gentle irony once called 'surprising for people from the Anglo-Saxon and German cultural worlds'). But 'immaculate' is a completely biblical concept in its Hebrew and Greek equivalents: it means spotless; and only what is without blemish is truly for God (for example, a spotless sacrificial lamb). Because Mary is to be wholly for God, is to give God his body, to give God his endowment of genes, give God the food of her breast: so Mary by God's gift is to be the Immaculate, the one without blemish, the one in whom the Divine likeness has never been marred.

It is because Mary alone in the roots of her being is unmarked by sin that Mary alone is truly and wholly free. In our hearts, too, we should make her free and 'fear not'; she is never to be locked up in the tourist industry as a statue of doubtful taste carried in processions by foreign peasants for the English to photograph from within their coaches; Mary is not to be locked up by the Heritage business in a Merry England; she is not to be the Madonna of the Art Historians imprisoned in coffee table books.

If Mary is the Mother of God Incarnate, she is our Mother too, because we are in Christ, limbs of his body by our baptismal incorporation. Mary comes to us tonight, and what would a mother bring us her children except food; food for her children in exilio; food packed for our journey. Mary comes to this place and to this moment of time; Mary comes, bright with all the beauties known by men and angels; Mary comes to set upon our lips the blessed fruit of her womb Jesus.

Completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace . . .

Here is a homily by Fr Lawrence Lew OP for today's solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady, taken from HIS WEBSITE.

“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin”. 

Who do you suppose said this? It was Martin Luther in a sermon for this feast day in 1527, a decade after he’d nailed his Ninety Five Theses to the door of Wittenberg’s church and six years after his break from Rome. And he very nicely summarizes what the Church celebrates today. 

This tells us, at the very least, that the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was not something invented by the Pope in the 19th century and foisted onto Catholics, as some people might think. Rather, what Pope Blessed Pius IX did in 1854 was to solemnly confirm as a revealed truth what had been, from very early on, a “sweet and pious belief” held by many Christians. For although belief in Our Lady’s sinlessness was unanimous, an understanding of how Mary could have been uniquely preserved from the stain of original sin and yet remain a creature in need of redemption by Christ, still had to be worked out. It would take some time for a solution to develop and theologically mature over the centuries, and then a few more centuries for the theological position to settle and be accepted and finally be declared as infallible truth by the Church. 

A Scots Franciscan, Blessed Dun Scotus, came up with an explanation in the 13th-century that has prevailed. He argued that prevention is greater than cure and requires more skill, and so, Our Lady, in being prevented from contracting original sin, requires the Redeemer’s ‘skills’ even more. Pope Pius IX cites Scotus in his 1854 declaration and his teaching is echoed in today’s Collect. For Scotus also said that God “foresaw” the “merits of the Passion of Christ” which redeems all from original and actual sin, and God “applied them to the Virgin and preserved her from all actual sin, and also from all original sin”. 

But this understanding of Our Lady’s sinlessness and her immaculate conception is the theological fruit of centuries of pondering over the seed of truth revealed in Scripture. In the angelic greeting of today’s Gospel, Gabriel calls Our Lady kecharitomene. But this Greek form does not just denote that Our Lady is “full of grace”, or “highly favoured” as it is often translated.  Rather, it is a term that is only used once in the entire Bible; Our Lady’s immaculate conception is unique, a “singular grace and privilege”, as Pope Pius IX said. And what kecharitomene denotes is that Mary is “completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace” in a way that completely transforms her and prepares her from the very beginning for her unique role in the history of salvation.

So, in this Advent season when we prepare to celebrate the coming of Christ as our Redeemer, we rejoice today in what God has done “for us Men and for our salvation” in preparing Our Lady to be a “worthy Mother for [his] Son”. As she is also our Mother, may we be her worthy children by daily rejecting the lure of sin and trampling the Serpent underfoot. Through our Immaculate Mother’s intercession, may we also have the grace to  say to God: “Yes. Let it be to me according to your Word”.

Honouring God's grace in Our Lady

Father Ross Northing, Vicar of St Mary & St Giles, Stony Stratford, preaching in the Chapel of Pusey House, Oxford, on 8th December, 2008:

“The woman you gave to be with me; she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate.”

In most parishes of whatever tradition there always seems to be someone who takes delight in being of a different tradition. Essentially it seems to boil down to a similar condition to that of a rebellious teenager who rebels against the status quo. In nearly every Anglo-Catholic parish that I have known there have been people who claim to be evangelical and who attempt, with hardly any success, to bring people round to their way of thinking. In a strange sort of way they seem to thrive on being the odd one out.

There is a true story, told to me recently, of such a lady in a parish in the north of England. An evangelical lady, so she claimed, in a very spikey parish. As a card-carrying evangelical she attended, as a matter of duty, the Parish Bible Study Group, in order that proper biblical teaching could be defended against error. On one occasion the Group was discussing the matter of sin, and, in particular the matter of sin after baptism or conversion. In rather earnest tones she declared before the assembled group, “I can honestly say that since I gave my life to the Lord Jesus I have never done anything to offend him.” Apparently, from that moment on she was known in the parish as “The Immaculate Exception!”

If we are going to consider Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception, that is her being free from sin . . . click HERE to continue reading

Donald G Dawe, from his article in The Way magazine, The Immaculate Conception in Ecumenical Perspective.

When a powerful spring breaks forth from the earth, its waters spread in all directions from it. A great pond is formed from which streams flow out to water a parched earth. Right around the spring there is verdant growth where its abundant waters bring forth a beauty only faintly intimated in the surrounding countryside. The grace of God came into human history at a particular time and place through the coming of Jesus. And like a mighty spring this grace abounding flowed forth in all directions transforming whatever it touched. It flowed with particular fullness into Mary because of her unique closeness to her Son. It flowed backward in time to Mary to prepare her for her role in the Incarnation. This is what is celebrated in the Immaculate Conception. The grace of God in Christ flows forward in time to fulfil in Mary the promise made to all the saints for their full salvation of soul and body in the kingdom of God. This is what is celebrated in her Assumption. Such a metaphor suggests the basis for an ecumenical vision of Mary and for ecumenical prayers of thanksgiving and hope.

From Dr John Macquarrie's book, Mary For All Christians, 68-72:

Children, unfortunately, are sometimes conceived in drunkenness, sometimes in lust, sometimes by accident, and such children, alas, from the very moment of conception have been made victims of human sin. If we could imagine a child conceived out of pure love before God, would not such a child from the very moment of conception—I mean, conceived in the loving desire of the parents for the child even before they came together in sexual union—would not such a child be from the beginning the recipient of grace? This is no mere sentimentality but simply the recognition that human beings are personal beings, not just biological organisms, the recognition that sees the creative moment of conception, whether for good or bad, in the personal relation subsisting between the parents rather than in the biological phenomenon of a fusion of cells. Even before birth, a child growing into relation with its mother, and from the very beginning is receiving influences that help to mould it one way or another. Already that child is becoming an individual person within the community of persons to which it belongs . . .

. . . Instead of putting the dogma of Immaculate Conception in the negative form by stating that Mary was preserved from the stain of original sin, we may put it in an affirmative way and say she was preserved in a right relatedness to God. An equivalent affirmative expression would be to say that she was always the recipient of grace. She was surrounded with grace from her original conception in the mind of God to her actual historical conception in the love of her parents.

MARY'S IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

IN HONOUR OF OUR LADY (1):

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy Image falls to earth.
Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)


IN HONOUR OF OUR LADY (2):



This is John Tavener´s "Mother of God" performed by Libera from their album "Eternal", released in December 2008. The words are:

Mother of God, here I stand now praying,
Before this icon of your radiant brightness,
Not praying to be saved from a battlefield,
Not giving thanks, nor seeking forgiveness
For the sins of my soul, nor for all the souls.
Numb, joyless and desolate on earth,
But for her alone, whom I wholly give you.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF OUR LADY

"The Immaculate Conception of our Lady, was one of the Church of England's gifts to the rest of the Western Church. We borrowed it from the East in Saxon days; Norman bishops tried to ban it on the grounds that it wasn't observed in Rome; but we hung on to it and eventually Rome came round to our way of thinking. An early contribution of the Anglican Patrimony!"

So mused Fr John Hunwicke on his blog last week (with his tongue only half in his cheek!)

Here, then, are a few useful pointers from within the Anglican tradition for our reflection on this mighty work of God's grace:

THE OLD BATTLE: Discussing the differences between the Franciscans and Thomists of the middle ages, Eric Mascall wrote, "The point at issue was simply whether the grace which is normally conferred by baptism was given to her at the moment of her conception or while she was still in her mother's womb . . . And if there is any intellectual difficulty in the matter, I must say that it seems to me easier to believe in Mary's freedom from original than from actual sin . . . To suppose that Mary was free from actual sin without having received any special grace at her creation would seem to me to be very difficult and in fact to place an almost impossible burden upon human free will." (in The Mother of God pp 46-47)

SOME CLASSICAL ANGLICAN EXPRESSIONS: . . . Jesus Christ "Who being true and natural God, equal and of one substance with the Father, did at the time appointed take upon Him our frail nature, in the Blessed Virgin's womb, and that of her undefiled substance".

(From the Homily on Repentance, Homilies, Book 2, 1562)

Jesus . . . "born of a pure Virgin" (BCP Collect for Christmas Day) . . . "who by the operation of the Holy Ghost was made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without sin, to make us clean from all sin" (BCP Preface for Christmas Day)

"If Elizabeth cried out with so loud a voice, Blessed art thou among women, when Christ was but newly conceived in her womb, what expressions of honour and admiration can we think sufficient now that Christ is in heaven, and that Mother with him. Far be it from any Christian to derogate from that special privilege granted her, which is incommunicable to any other. We cannot bear too reverend a regard unto the Mother of our Lord, so long as we give her not that worship which is due unto the Lord himself."

(John Pearson, 1613-1686, Bishop of Chester - who, incidentally, was viciously anti-Roman - in his Exposition of the Creed.)

In England, the feast of the Conception of Mary was intimately associated with what was later defined as the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and had been especially kept in England. Its retention in the Book of Common Prayer Calendar indicates at the very least that the Church of England did not intend to exclude belief in the doctrine.

(A quote from a paper I gave nearly 20 years ago to a group of clergy).

Later on, I said:

Until the early 18th century the Immaculate Conception was generally held by those of the "high church" Anglican Divines who wrote about our Lady. In beautiful but unremarkable language from a Catholic perspective Bishop Thomas Ken's poem for the Sunday after Epiphany includes these verses:

As Eve when she her fontal sin reviewed.

Wept for herself and all she should include,

Blest Mary with Man's Saviour in embrace

Joyed for herself and for all human race.

The Holy Ghost his temple in her built,

Cleansed from congenial, kept from mortal guilt,

And from the moment that her blood was fired,

Into her heart celestial love inspired.

FROM THE EVANGELICAL TRADITION and at the same time echoing the teaching of Lumen Gentium: "The Immaculate Conception of Mary gives the clue to understanding her particular place among her son's people. She is the first Christian, the first of the redeemed, the first of our flawed human race to have received the fullness of redemption. From first to last - in Catholic dogma, from Immaculate Conception to Assumption - she was a human being, transformed by the grace of God into what, in the divine purpose, she was intended to be."

(John de Satge, in Mary and the Christian Gospel, page 74.)

ANGLICAN & ROMAN CATHOLIC STATEMENT: "It is not so much that Mary lacks something which other human beings 'have', namely sin, but that the glorious grace of God filled her life from the beginning.12 The holiness which is our end in Christ (cf. 1 John 3:2-3) was seen, by unmerited grace, in Mary, who is the prototype of the hope of grace for humankind as a whole. According to the New Testament, being 'graced' has the connotation of being freed from sin through Christ's blood (Ephesians 1:6-7). The Scriptures point to the efficacy of Christ's atoning sacrifice even for those who preceded him in time (cf. 1 Peter 3:19, John 8:56, 1 Corinthians 10:4). Here again the eschatological perspective illuminates our understanding of Mary's person and calling. In view of her vocation to be the mother of the Holy One (Luke 1:35), we can affirm together that Christ's redeeming work reached 'back' in Mary to the depths of her being, and to her earliest beginnings. This is not contrary to the teaching of Scripture, and can only be understood in the light of Scripture. Roman Catholics can recognize in this what is affirmed by the dogma - namely "preserved from all stain of original sin" and "from the first moment of her conception."

(Paragraph 59 of: "Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ", the agreed statement on Mary from the Anglican Roman International Commission (ARCIC) released in 2004 (). Go HERE for the full text of this document.)

AND TO COME FULL CIRCLE . . . Here is the last bit of a sermon preached by Fr Hunwicke at Pusey House, Oxford, two years ago.

In a sermon I preached forty years ago, at the Mattins of Christmass Day in the year of my diaconate, I said that the Incarnation meant that God was in the belly of a Palestinian peasant girl who is Queen of Heaven. Critics fell into three categories: those who disliked my phrase because of its physicality and because it placed the origins of our faith among foreigners (surely Mary must have been a middle-class Englishwoman and if not a member of the WI then at least of the Young Wives); those who didn't like the phrase Queen of Heaven; and those who disliked both.

'The Immaculate Conception'. It's a lovely rolling phrase, isn't it (we classicists would analyse its rhythm as the trispondaicus). And it's a phrase, too, that can scare people silly. Is it sometimes the physicality - again, of conception - that disturbs them; conception, a process that occurs a little way south of the tummy button? Not the sort of thing the fastidious want to have dragged in front of their noses. C S Lewis points out that the devils too are fastidious in their horror at the flesh: Screwtape refers to a human as 'this animal, this thing begotten in a bed'. Or perhaps people are scared of the word 'Immaculate'; perhaps it suggests foreign religion - little old Irish women clutching their rosaries or Spanish ladies in black making their nine successive First Saturday communions in honour of the Immaculate Heart (a devotion which Cardinal Ratzinger with gentle irony once called 'surprising for people from the Anglo-Saxon and German cultural worlds'). But 'immaculate' is a completely biblical concept in its Hebrew and Greek equivalents: it means spotless; and only what is without blemish is truly for God (for example, a spotless sacrificial lamb). Because Mary is to be wholly for God, is to give God his body, to give God his endowment of genes, give God the food of her breast: so Mary by God's gift is to be the Immaculate, the one without blemish, the one in whom the Divine likeness has never been marred.

It is because Mary alone in the roots of her being is unmarked by sin that Mary alone is truly and wholly free. In our hearts, too, we should make her free and 'fear not'; she is never to be locked up in the tourist industry as a statue of doubtful taste carried in processions by foreign peasants for the English to photograph from within their coaches; Mary is not to be locked up by the Heritage business in a Merry England; she is not to be the Madonna of the Art Historians imprisoned in coffee table books.

If Mary is the Mother of God Incarnate, she is our Mother too, because we are in Christ, limbs of his body by our baptismal incorporation. Mary comes to us tonight, and what would a mother bring us her children except food; food for her children in exilio; food packed for our journey. Mary comes to this place and to this moment of time; Mary comes, bright with all the beauties known by men and angels; Mary comes to set upon our lips the blessed fruit of her womb Jesus.

More on Our Lady's Immaculate Conception . . .

The blog of St Stephen's House, Oxford, contains an excellent sermon preached by Father Robert Farmer at their celebration of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception on Monday. This was the beginning of the college's Advent Retreat, the theme of which was the French School of spirituality. Father Farmer's sermon draws on the Fathers of the French School and their devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Go to the sermon HERE.