Immaculate - Full of Grace
By scientist and priest Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Emmanuel M. Carreira, S.J.

Original Sin is pure privation. The preternatural and supernatural gifts for mankind, mentioned in the poetic narrative of Genesis, were meant as a treasure that followed from the family atmosphere of closeness to the creating Father, and were to be had as an undeserved inheritance by every new human being. They were comparable to a title of nobility, received by being born of an aristocratic lineage, but possibly lost for the children if at a given point the parents act improperly and are deprived of it.

The nobility of being "children of God" was bestowed upon our first parents, lovingly formed by the Omnipotent God, who did not call them into being by a distant "Let there be", but by the caressing touch of his own hands. They would exist in an ideal level of the highest order, shown by their perfect self-control, their immortality, their honored closeness to the Father.

If by nature Man should be part of the animal kingdom, and thus under the power of instincts, suffering and death, each individual would have such intellectual clarity and such strength of will that instincts would be no obstacle for the highest level of spiritual activity. And as lord of his own nature he would also act as lord of the lower levels of nature surrounding him, acting as representative and helper of the Creator to develop his work, in a kind of harmonious activity that would imply his own growth as a person while finishing the work of the Creator.

The original state is poetically described imagining that even physical pain -needed in living things as a warning against dangers- would be absent from human experience, thanks to a deep understanding of material reality that would allow avoiding everything harmful or unpleasant. Even death - a natural consequence of material decay and an obvious part of life on Earth at all levels- would not occur in human life, always under a special providence that would make the step into eternity a happy "entering into the Father's house".

Mental sufferings -the pains and disappointments that darken our present life, both at the private and social level- would not be found in a human environment where every act would follow the perfect path of seeking Truth, Beauty and Goodness without selfishness or petty rivalries. In this Paradise without anything evil, human life would develop as a reflection at every moment of the generous and happy Love of the Father from whom all goodness constantly flows.

The supreme privilege -and source of every other one- was the gift to our first parents of a sharing in the divine Nature, a graft of divinity that would confer eternal value to all human activity, in an atmosphere of intimate closeness with the Creator that would prefigure the eternity where He would be seen as He is, face to face, with an "intuitive" vision surpassing all created power, even of an angel. This is the meaning of "sanctifying grace", impossible to dream of even as a hypothesis by any creature, a pure gift from God who wants to share with his "children" the very way of existing in the Trinity.

Nobody could really hope for that state of happiness here on Earth, where human beings would obviously suffer the changes of the environment and the need to master instincts with decisions that -to some degree- would imply a painful choice. Still less would we dream of that new kind of life in Heaven. But God, Creator and Father, wanted to go beyond all logic regarding Man as just a "rational Animal", and thus we have the description of privileges that imply a very special love and dignity of a creature who is "the living Image and Likeness" of the only One who is essentially Life itself, a reflection of His perfect Harmony and Goodness. This inheritance of nobility and happiness was meant to be shared by all the descendants of Adam and Eve, who from birth would be embraced in the Father's bosom, as children of both human and eternal Love.

The sin of disobedience, born of pride and envy, destroyed that privileged nobility. Adam and Eve wanted to be independent from God, to be "like God", denying any kind of subordinate role with respect to the One from whom they had received everything. Their personal sin broke every affective tie -for themselves and their children- with the God they had rejected. Left in their level of "rational animals", even the use of their intelligence and free will suffered the influence of instincts and rebellious tendencies, and suffering and death again became the normal and unavoidable consequences of their material nature.

Moral disorder, the pains and frustrations of their spiritual limitations, the painful effort to find Truth, the ugly presence of all kinds of disorder, rendered unsatisfactory even the moments of the most legitimate joy. Paradise became a "valley of tears" with an uncertain and dark horizon of death in a "beyond" where "the Father's house" seemed to be an unattainable dream. Enclosed in his limited and insignificant smallness, Man lost even the certainty of an eternal end that would make his life meaningful.

The most drastic loss, the most limiting and devastating, was the absence of that graft of divinity that we call "sanctifying grace". Deprived of it, Man remains just in his limited and finite "I" from which it is impossible to escape, in a kind of "black hole" without a horizon open towards God. Death itself is less traumatic than this "sheol" of existing without light and love, such that to be annihilated would appear as a desirable release. It is the state of total defeat, that no force of nature can overcome and that only through the infinite mercy of God can be open to a new hope with the mysterious announcement of a Redeemer, foreseen in the future descendants of the Woman.

Divine generosity totally surpasses human logic, and this is obvious when we speak of the Redemptive Incarnation, that -even after knowing of it through revelation- remains beyond comprehension in human terms. God's uniqueness is realized in three Persons, in a supreme level of family life that consists of the total sharing of the One divine essence. The second Person is totally and necessarily Son of the one and only eternal Father, but He can be -and wants to be- also Son of a human Mother, in order to die for us. His death and resurrection will give us anew, in a more marvelous way, the power to attain eternal life and to partake of God's own life, in the most intimate union.

Nothing like this could have been dreamed by any poet. But this is the Christian message, unchanged during twenty centuries, clearly proclaimed against every skeptical rationalism or simply masochistic nihilism. The Church dares to say of original sin:"Happy Fall!", when we celebrate the happiness and the glory of including God in the census of human beings through history.

It is in this context where the "dawn" of Mary announces the Sun who is Christ. Just as the daily dawn receives its soft light from the brightness of the still hidden star, she also reflects God's holiness from the first moment of her existence. There never was in her that emptiness, that absence of God that original sin caused in the night of ancient times: she is created shining with grace, "full of grace", brimming with the divine life that Christ will bring to those who are open to his love.

She is not exempt from suffering or death, but she has the perfect humanity without derailed passions, with total control of her instincts, where grace finds always the fertile ground for its activity and where human love is a love to God-Son in the most pure and happy tenderness that will continue without interruption or stumbling into the eternity of union with the Trinity.

The use of the term "Immaculate", theologically based upon traditional teaching and then found in the dogmatic definition, might somehow be less than accurate if it seems to imply that original sin (like personal sin) is a "stain" (MACULA in Latin), an actual distortion of the human person that affects it in a direct way and that establishes a kind of tie of submission to the devil, who would take the place of God in the human soul at the moment of conception. This is not correct, since there is no personal rebellion or acceptance of an evil; what we mean is an absence of God in the supernatural order.

Nobody is damned except as a punishment for a personal sin, but we are born without the "right" to be eternally in union with God. This is the way that Theology presents the problem of the salvation of unbaptized infants, even if we cannot clearly state how the universal salvific will of God applies to them.

In every instance, it is only the redeeming value of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross that fills the vacuum of a human being born without sanctifying grace. This same redemptive act, foreseen in the eternal "now" of God, gives Mary the fullness of grace when she begins her life in her mother's womb. Since she will be born to be the Mother of the Redeemer, and this is in the divine plan the reason for her existence, she is from the first moment in a state of intimate union with God, who sees her as uniquely his, never away from Him and never opposed to Him.

It isn't necessary -as sometimes expressed in a somewhat poetic language- for God to keep the devil from getting hold of her: we can say, in a human way, that the loving presence of God fills her whole being with a divine heartbeat so that the seed of grace will grow in her constantly according to her human development. Thus she deserves the angel's greeting at the Incarnation. She is always "full of grace", full of God at every moment of her life.

By the same reasoning, her being "Immaculate" excludes any personal sin during her life. She belongs to God totally, to her Son, always under the fertile influence of the Spirit who inspired her perfect virginity, who gave her the divine Motherhood in the Incarnation, who led her at every step of her life and gave her strength and faith during the anguished experience of the Passion and Death of her Son.

At Pentecost she is the attractive center that the Spirit seeks to give birth to the Church, bringing also light and strength to the Apostles. As "full of grace" -Immaculate- she is the perfect meeting point of God with the followers of her Son, and she continues her role as Mother of Christ until his Mystical Body reaches full perfection in all its members.

Like Eve, Mary was created in the state of grace. Like Eve, she is "Mother of the living". But by her perfect holiness, without shadows, she who was especially designed for her divine motherhood is Mother of the God who lives forever, Mother of all redeemed humanity, of the full Christ, Head and members.

Even if she experienced suffering -just as her Son did- death did not have power over her, and with her risen Son she is with body and soul on the throne of the "Mother of the King", above any other creature. Her Assumption must be the logical outcome of her Immaculate beauty, that made her body the crucible where God joined our human nature.

In the Prologue of St. John's Gospel a beautiful statement appears: the Son "is always in the Father's bosom", and through such an intimate relationship, He knows the Father perfectly and He is the only one who can make Him known to us. To a certain extent, we can apply that to Mary: her Son will never be found far from her, and He is the only one who can truly appreciate and enjoy her holiness and beauty.

In union with Christ and with the light of the Spirit, the Church through the centuries has also proclaimed her "entirely beautiful", and especially in our modern times it has underlined the traditional Faith -of both Oriental and Western Christianity- proclaiming her dogmas.

Just as Mary announced in her "Magnificat", all generations have acclaimed her as blessed, happy, the object of divine predilection, the perfect image of her Son, FULL OF GRACE.

NOTE

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 374 and 375, we read that "The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator" and "our first parents, Adam and Eve, were constituted in an original 'state of holiness and justice'. This GRACE of original holiness was 'to share in …divine life' ". Then in no.379: "This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen in God's plan, will be LOST by the sin of our first parents".

After stating that the transmission of that state to all humans is a mystery, no. 404 adds: "Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all human nature"…their sin "affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state…by the transmission of a human nature DEPRIVED of original holiness and justice"

In no.405: "…original sin does not have the character of a personal fault…it is a DEPRIVATION of original holiness and justice". Finally, no.407: "By our first parents' sin, de devil has acquired A CERTAIN DOMINATION over man, even though man remains free".

We can see that the most meaningful words (in capitals here) refer to a "privation" that in this essay is also referred to as "emptiness". It is not something added or super-imposed, as a STAIN would be ("MACULA") and man is not set in a state of enmity towards God and of total subjection to the devil, as if obliged to fall into his power in eternal hell: it is a dogma that nobody is damned unless as a result of a free personal act of rejecting God.

It is useful also to remember that in the Old Testament there was no sacrament to "wash away" a stain of original sin. It has been suggested that circumcision was the remedy before Baptism, but this is clearly wrong, since it would apply only to male children. Rather, the clear supposition was that anybody who honestly tried in good conscience to follow God's will would be in a friendly relationship with the Creator.