#catholic #sspx #ourlady The Immaculate Conception of Our Lady was a unique privilege given to her alone by God. Of all of the people born into this world after the sin of Adam and Eve, only one was prevented from contracting Original Sin by the intervention of God. This is implied by Pope Pius IX when he defined the dogma in 1854: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God” (Ineffabilis Deus) At the beginning of the same document, the Pope says, “Above all creatures did God so love her that truly in her was the Father well pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity”. Our Lady saw fit to make it clear that the Immaculate Conception is her unique privilege in an extraordinary way just four years later, in her apparitions to St. Bernadette in 1858. St. Bernadette was given the mission by the parish priest to ask the lady who was appearing to her to say what her name was. It was uncertain that Our Lady was appearing. The Lady asked St. Bernadette to come for fifteen days in a row. St. Bernadette kept asking her name but the Lady never gave it, and the fifteen days ended on March 3. But St. Bernadette would sometimes get a strong urge to go to the grotto and this urge came to her on March 25. When Our Lady appeared to her, Bernadette was still quite focused on her mission. She asked the lady three times if she would not mind saying who she was and what was her name. Each time, the lady just smiled. She asked a fourth time and finally the lady became serious, lifted her eyes to heaven, and said those incredible words, “Lourdes: I AM the Immaculate Conception.” Bernadette was a simple girl who could not read and hardly knew her catechism, even though she was fourteen years old. She had no idea whatsoever what was meant by “Immaculate Conception”. Plus, her memory was bad so she just kept repeating the phrase to herself so she could faithfully tell it to the priest. If Our Lady chose to speak of herself in such an extraordinary way, it was to communicate to us an important fact about her immaculate conception: God gave the privilege only to her.
