Yuku free message boards

HP0, may I say that I also used to find the Immaculate Conception a difficult idea to grasp. In the end I prayed to God to explain it to me, if it was true, and to do so in a way I would understand.

He did so, and for me it was enough. I meditated a lot about this, and to describe my thoughts would take too long here.

The Immaculate Conception is the dogma that teaches that Mary, by virtue of her motherhood of God, was conceived in the normal way, but without the stain on her soul of original sin.

Briefly, my personal approach to this dogma is this (and it is personal, just my own way of seeing it). God could have snapped his fingers and said 'you're saved!' but did not; as semperidem said. Instead, he became incarnate in the womb of a young woman and grew exactly as a human being would. This being the case, what DNA did Jesus have? Not Joseph's, we are told. However, he must have had some of his genetic inheritance from Mary, though not all of it, or he'd have been a clone.

The Old Testament says "I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51). The Old Testament writers had no idea of DNA but there is implicit here the idea that sin is in our genes. We can't help it, we are born that way.

The Jews have never believed that married sex was sinful, and so what the Psalmist is talking about here must be original sin, as I've explained. Jesus as God made man cannot have been sinful in any way, and to have been carried in the womb of a woman born with original sin, inheriting her sin-carrying genes, would have been impossible. This isn't because we aren't dearly loved by God, but because His nature is such that he cannot be connected with sin in this genetic way.

Later we are told 'he became sin who knew no sin' - on the Cross, when he bore all our sins and atoned for them. The Cross is the only time when he came in his person close to the effects of sin.

A pregnant woman is closer to her unborn child than to anyone else alive (apart from the time when she was also unborn). The mother's emotions pass to the baby (adrenaline, for instance crosses the placenta), her diet affects the baby (wine will make it jumpy!). The physical and emotional connection, while not necessarily conscious, is very real.

Mary needed a saviour like we all do; in her case, God allowed the merits of Jesus' sacrifice on Calvary to be applied backwards to her - God is outside time, after all. (A poet wrote 'see how Christ's blood streams across the universe'). Mary was given this unique privilege not because of any intrinsic merit in herself, but to equip her for her maternal role.

I feel that to understand the implications of the Immaculate Conception is to understand more closely the holiness of God, what it really means, and what God did when he became Man to save us. Jesus is the true unspotted, perfect lamb, required for the Passover sacrifice.

At Lourdes, Mary appeared to Bernadette, an illiterate French girl with minimal religious education, as 'the Immaculate Conception' - the dogma had only just been announced. Some say this was a sign from heaven, to confirm the dogma.

Of course, we don't have to believe in Lourdes, and I do understand your problem with Mary; I had it also.

I ask you to put the issue to the back of your mind, in English we say 'on the back burner' (one of the little rings on the cooker) - though this may sound implausible - because really it does fall into place, however unbiblical and illogical it may seem to you. It is not unknown for Catholics to have trouble with this teaching.