The Glories Of Mary

Today the Church celebrates the beautiful Marian feast of the Immaculate Conception. Mary was preserved by God from the moment of her conception from original sin making her the most fitting and perfect of God's creatures to bear His Son, Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is dogma, therefore it is something we must believe as Catholics. Today is also a Holy Day of Obligation meaning attending Mass today is mandatory. Even if it were not, I can not imagine as Catholics not wanting to celebrate this feast with the holy sacrifice of the Mass. Jesus gave us His Mother from the cross, and as Fr. John Corapi has often said, "If she is good enough for Jesus, she is good enough for us!"

For your reflection and menditation today, I offer you this excerpt from St Alphonsus Liguori's The Glories of Mary.

How becoming it was that each of the Three Divine Persons should preserve Mary from Original Sin

GREAT indeed was the injury entailed on Adam and all his posterity by his accursed sin; for at the same time that he is thereby, for his own great misfortune, lost grace, he also forfeited all the other precious gifts with which he had originally been enriched, and drew down upon himself and all his descendants the hatred of God and an accumulation of evils. But from this general misfortune God was pleased to exempt that Blessed Virgin whom He had destined to be the Mother of the Second Adam-----Jesus Christ-----Who was to repair the evil done by the first. Now, let us see how becoming it was that God, and all the Three Divine Persons, should thus preserve her from it; that the Father should preserve her as His Daughter, the Son as His Mother, and the Holy Ghost as His Spouse...

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