Dom Raymond

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 2009 The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is not, of course, to be found explicitly mentioned in Sacred Scripture. However, the meaning of Sacred Scripture is not to be found only in the grammatical analysis of its words and sentences. It’s meaning is also, and perhaps more fundamentally, to be found in the comparison of events and personages of the past with events and personages of the future. It is to be found in the images, types and foreshadowings which reveal the meaning and purposes of these future personages and events. So it is with the mystery of faith which we call the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Namely, that at the first moment of her conception Mary was personally free from all those implications of original sin which affect the rest of the human race. The very first intimations of this mystery are to be found in the very first chapters of Genesis. They are to be found in the account of the creation of the first Adam and of his companion Eve and their being placed in a paradise and commanded to multiply and fill the earth. Now Tradition tells us that Christ is the new Adam and Mary the New Eve and the implications of that fact are enormous. We can argue that just as the first Eve was created immaculate to partner the first Adam in the settling of the human race in the first paradise of grace, so also the second Eve had to be created immaculate to partner the second Adam in resettling the now-fallen human race back into the realparadise of grace – a paradise which had only been symbolised by the first paradise, and thus to people it for the glory of God. The real recipients of the command to increase and multiply and fill paradise were, not the first Adam and Eve, but the New Adam and Eve. Mary was to join with Christ in his work of begetting a people for God, and indeed each one of us too has his role to play in the ultimate peopling of the kingdom of God. We are all made in God’s image and likeness and at the very heart of the Godhead is the reality of ‘generation’, a reality in which every child of God must participate in their own way. Each one of us is called spiritually to increase and multiply and fill the new paradise which is the church of God with new sons and daughters begotten by grace. Finally, besides this foreshadowing of Mary’s complete triumph over Satan in sacred scripture, there is what we might call a well nigh explicit reference to it in the passage where St Paul tells us that “in the same way as death came to all through the one man, Adam, so also life comes to all through the one man Christ Jesus. Now it was precisely by his involvement with the first Eve that Adam brought death to the world and so, according to the reasoning of St Paul it must be precisely through his involvement with the second Eve that the second Adam conquers death and brings life to the world. The immaculate conception of Christ’s blessed Mother follows from this as does the day from the night.