Tuesday, 8 December
7:30 am Low Mass
7:30 pm High Mass

This feast is often misunderstood even by practising Catholics. It does not refer to Our Lady’s conceiving of Jesus by the Holy Ghost (the Annunciation) but, rather, to the sinless conception of Our Lady in the womb of her mother, Saint Anne, by Our Lady’s father, Saint Joachim. Through a singular privilege of God, <em>through the foreseen merits of Christ,</em> Our Lady was preserved from original sin from the very moment of her own conception. What makes her conception ‘immaculate’ is not that she was conceived by the Holy Ghost of a virgin, as was Christ Our Lord, but that from the very moment of her own conception, she was preserved from the original sin and filled with grace by God, Who knew, in His omniscience, that she would say ‘Yes’ to the Angel Gabriel and become the Mother of the Saviour. Exactly nine months from now, on September 8, we will celebrate Our Lady’s birthday, the birthday of the one whom Saint Gabriel called ‘full of grace’ (Saint Luke 1:28).

[The image above shows the traditional iconography of the Immaculata, as painted by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in 1660. This painting is now in the Prado Museum, Madrid.]