there is something about Mary

Bouguereau, Adolphe-William Art Reproductions
Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist, 1882
Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, USA

yesterday was, for all Catholics, a holy day of Obligation and the reasoning behind it was it was the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. external links are provided for all who wish to explore these concepts a bit further.

while i recognize that the Catholics' fascination with Mary is a difficult thing to wrap one's mind around, as a former Protestant, i am still within your ranks to a very small degree. for some reason, however, the concept of her Immaculate conception was never an issue with me: God cannot be in the presence of sin...Jesus is God...He had to be conceived in a sinless woman or He would never have been made manifest based on the "God cannot be in the presence of sin" truth spoken in the sentence before.

call it child-like faith, if you will :)

this is all but a segue to a site i found during my insomnia surfing this morning, "me monk, me meandering." pretty great teaching on the subject in its entirety and worth a read.

6 comments:

owenswain said...

Actually it's not a holy day of obligation for all Catholics, though I'd be OK with it if it were. Here in Canada we have only two HDoO, Christmas Day, {duh} and Jan 1, the solemnity of Mary. Countries are allowed to set their own days. The UK, for example, has more than we do and less than you {Americans} do, I believe.

Anyway, maybe Canada's deal is the overflow of our extremely liberal mindset finding its mark in the Church. Don't know.

And yes, Me Monk, Me Meandering does good job. I was there myself and left a question and an answer to my own question. I'll pop over now and see how Fr. S answered. :)

Amy Giglio said...

I think that the feast of the Immaculate conception is a holyday of obligation in the USA is b/c Mary under that title is our patroness.

Pen, glad to see you're feeling better. I have been meaning to call you all week. Be assured of my prayers and my acute bummed-outed-ness over us now not being able to hang with La Bambina until you get all better.

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jhony james said...

Mary always seems to captivate our attention, doesn't she? Yet, as much as I'd love to ponder over her mysterious allure, duty calls – time to take my online class.