Many Christians — and many Catholics — receive the Immaculate Conception as a pious Marian exaggeration: one more privilege, beautiful but unverifiable, added to Mary by devotion rather than by truth. The most frequent objection is not even "it is illogical" — that difficulty is treated elsewhere — but "how can we know that it is true?" The word "conception" appears nowhere in a Marian verse, the dogma was defined only in 1854, and the idea that one human being alone escaped original sin seems beyond any proof.
This article does not try to demonstrate the rational coherence of the dogma — how Mary can be sinless while still having a Savior, a question treated in pourquoi-limmaculee-conception-est-elle-logique — nor to recount the history of its proclamation, developed in dogme-immaculee-conception. It answers a distinct and more fundamental question: on what does the certainty that this truth comes from God rest? In other words, what are the motives of credibility for the Immaculate Conception? We will see that they are convergent and solid: a real biblical rooting, a continuous traditional witness, the sense of faith of the Christian people, a rigorous magisterial definition, and a supernatural confirmation rare in the history of dogmas.
What exactly are we asking when we ask "why believe"?
To believe a dogma is not to believe an opinion
The first confusion to remove concerns the nature of the assent requested. A Catholic does not believe in the Immaculate Conception as one might believe in an attractive theory or a family tradition. The dogma is presented by the Church as a truth revealed by God: the ultimate motive of faith is therefore not the ingenuity of theologians, but the authority of God who reveals. Ineffabilis Deus says this explicitly: this doctrine "is revealed by God and therefore must be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful"[1].
That changes the question. We are not looking for a verse that says word for word "Mary was conceived without sin" — just as we do not find the word "Trinity" or "transubstantiation" in Scripture. We are asking whether this truth is contained in Revelation — Scripture and Tradition — and authentically recognized by the Church to whom Christ entrusted the custody of the deposit of faith.
Three orders of motives that overlap
The motives of credibility for a Marian dogma never function in isolation. They overlap:
- Scripture, read not as a dictionary but as a whole, points toward this truth (Gen 3:15; Luke 1:28).
- Living Tradition — Fathers, liturgy, doctors, piety — carries it and matures it through the centuries.
- The Magisterium discerns its revealed content and defines it when the time has come, under the promised assistance of the Spirit.
And to this is added, for the Immaculate Conception, an exceptional supernatural sign: three years after the definition, at Lourdes, an uneducated shepherd girl hears the Apparition name herself "the Immaculate Conception" — a rare fact in the history of dogmas: only three years separate the definition (1854) from this word (1858).
"Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church." — Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, § 10[2]
First motive: the biblical foundations
The classic Protestant objection is clear: "the Immaculate Conception is not in the Bible"[3]. It must be taken seriously, and then we must show why the ecclesial reading of Scripture nevertheless finds there a real rooting. The dogma is not read literally in one verse; it is contained in seed in two major texts and in a whole typology.
Genesis 3:15: the Protoevangelium and total enmity
The first foundation is the Protoevangelium, the very first announcement of salvation, within the sentence pronounced against the serpent:
"I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; she shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise her heel." — Genesis 3:15[4]
The argument turns on the enmity. God establishes between the woman and the serpent a hostility that is total and without breach. Yet sin — and especially original sin, that native solidarity with revolt — is precisely what places man on the side of the serpent. If the woman announced had been, even for an instant, under the dominion of sin, the enmity would no longer have been entire: there would have been, at the origin of her life, a point of complicity with the enemy. Ineffabilis Deus reads the text exactly this way: the Fathers and doctors saw in it the Virgin who "crushed the poisonous head of the serpent," associated with her Son in a complete victory[5].
One may object that the Latin Vulgate (ipsa conteret, "she shall crush") forces the text, where the Hebrew has a masculine pronoun referring to the offspring[6]. The objection is fair philologically, but it does not destroy the argument: whether one reads "she" or "her offspring," the woman remains engaged in a radical enmity against the serpent, alongside her victorious Son. This victorious solidarity — not an isolated Latin word — grounds the Marian reading.
Luke 1:28: "full of grace" (kecharitomene)
The second foundation, more direct, is the angel's greeting at the Annunciation:
"Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." — Luke 1:28[7]
The Greek word is decisive. Gabriel does not call Mary by her name: he names her κεχαριτωμένη (kecharitomene)[8]. It is a perfect passive participle of the verb charitoo, "to fill with grace." Three linguistic traits carry the argument:
- The Greek perfect expresses a state already accomplished and enduring: Mary is "the one who has been and remains graced," not someone who begins to receive grace at that instant.
- The form works almost as a proper name — a title: the angel substitutes for "Mary" a quality that defines her entirely.
- The verb charitoo means not merely "to show favor" from the outside, but to transform by grace, to make inwardly gracious.
The conclusion of Tradition is not arbitrary deduction: a being entirely and durably transformed by grace, to the point that this is her name before God, leaves no room for sin. The Catechism explicitly links this verse to the dogma:
"Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, 'full of grace' through God (Luke 1:28), was redeemed from the moment of her conception." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 491[9]
The figures of the Old Testament
To these two texts is added a whole typology explored by the Fathers:
- The new Eve. Eve was created without sin, but failed; Mary, the true "woman" of Gen 3:15 and John 2:4, succeeds where Eve fell. The first Eve began her existence in innocence: it was fitting that the second, mother of the Living One, should not begin hers in slavery.
- The Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, which carried the Law and the presence of God, was made of incorruptible wood and covered with pure gold (Ex 25:10-11); no profane hand could touch it without death. Mary, who carried not the tablets but the Word made flesh, is the true Ark: her original purity is the fulfilled version of that incorruptibility required of the sanctuary.
- The sanctuary and the closed gate. The dwelling where God lives must be holy: "Holiness befits your house, O Lord" (Ps 93:5). The constant biblical principle — God prepares the place before he comes to it — culminates in the one who was to become the living Temple.
What Scripture proves and does not prove
We must be honest about the reach of these texts, as Catholic rigor requires. None of these passages, taken in isolation, is a demonstration in the mathematical sense. Scripture does not say "in so many words" that Mary was conceived without original sin. But it orients: it provides the data from which the faith of the Church, under the guidance of the Spirit, discerned a truth contained in Revelation. This is the normal regime of every dogma — including those accepted by Protestants, such as the Trinity or the divinity of the Holy Spirit, also absent "word for word" from Scripture. To demand from the Immaculate Conception a literal proof demanded of no other dogma is not rigor: it is a double standard.
Second motive: the witness of Tradition
If Scripture orients, living Tradition carries and matures the truth. Here the objection changes: people sometimes concede the verses but claim that "the Fathers did not teach this dogma." The reality is more nuanced — and more favorable — than is often assumed.
The Fathers: "the all-holy" and the new Eve
From the second century, Saint Justin (around 155) and Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (around 180) developed the Eve / Mary parallel: through a disobedient virgin came death; through an obedient virgin comes life. Irenaeus speaks of Mary as "the advocate of Eve," the one who unties by faith the knot tied by Eve's disobedience[10]. This intuition — the second Eve redeems the first — already contains the seed of an original purity.
The Christian East goes further in vocabulary. It commonly calls Mary Panagia, "the All-Holy," and achrantos, "the Immaculate," "the Stainless." The ancient tradition likewise contemplates in Mary a spotless purity[11].
The liturgy relays this conviction through the antiphon Tota pulchra es, Maria — "You are all beautiful, Mary, and the original stain is not in you" — composed from the Song of Songs (4:7) and taken up in the Latin liturgy of the feast of Mary's Conception[12].
Saint Augustine and the Marian exception
A significant witness — within its proper limits — is paradoxically the great doctor of original sin himself. In his treatise De natura et gratia (415), in the middle of the controversy against the Pelagians, Saint Augustine affirms that all human beings are sinners — then stops short to make one single exception:
"Except, therefore, the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom, for the honor of the Lord, I wish absolutely no question to be raised when sins are under discussion — for how do we know what abundance of grace was given her to conquer sin in every way, she who merited to conceive and bear him who certainly had no sin?" — Saint Augustine, De natura et gratia, 36, 42[13]
The weight of this text is real, within its proper limits. This is not an enthusiastic Mariologist: it is the man who most insisted on the universality of sin who, spontaneously, "for the honor of the Lord," removes Mary from the common law. Let us specify the framework, however: here Augustine is debating actual sins — can man live without sinning? — not original sin; he therefore does not affirm preservation from conception, and the medievals themselves read him this way. But he sets a milestone: with Mary, out of honor for the Lord, one does not speak of sin. With Irenaeus's new Eve, the Eastern Panagia and the feast of the Conception, this text forms a converging body of evidence rather than a single proof.
The East and the feast of the Conception
Another massive traditional indication is liturgical. Liturgy is a major place of Tradition: lex orandi, lex credendi — the rule of prayer is the rule of faith. From the seventh-eighth century, the East celebrates the Conception of Saint Anne, that is, the conception of Mary. The feast reaches the West (England, Naples) in the ninth-eleventh centuries[14]. A Christian people does not celebrate a conception if it considers it ordinary: one does not celebrate the coming into existence of a sinner as sinner. The feast already presupposes faith in a holy conception.
The medieval knot and its resolution
It would be dishonest to hide the medieval difficulty. In the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, very great doctors — Saint Bernard, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Bonaventure — hesitated or objected: how could Mary be exempt from original sin without escaping the universal Redemption of Christ? This objection is real, and it is the objection of logic — treated in detail in pourquoi-limmaculee-conception-est-elle-logique.
The solution came from Blessed John Duns Scotus († 1308) with the notion of preservative redemption (praeredemptio): Christ saves Mary in an even more perfect manner, not by raising her after the fall, but by preserving her from falling, in anticipation of his merits. Far from removing Mary from Redemption, the Immaculate Conception becomes its masterpiece. This key allowed theology to receive in full light what piety already held. The essential point for our question is that the medieval hesitation was not a rejection of the fact, but a search for the how — a search that reached its answer.
Third motive: the sense of faith and the Magisterium
The Christian people believed before the definition
A decisive feature of this dogma is that it was not imposed from above against popular piety: it ratified it. Long before 1854, the immense majority of the Christian people, religious orders (the Franciscans first of all), universities and dioceses professed, celebrated and defended the Immaculate Conception. This is what theology calls the sensus fidei — the supernatural sense of faith of the People of God, which "cannot err in matters of belief" when it gives universal consent in faith[15].
Before defining, Pius IX in fact consulted the episcopate of the whole world through the encyclical Ubi primum (1849): the response was almost unanimous assent. The definition of 1854 was thus the official recognition of a faith already universally lived, not the invention of a novelty.
Ineffabilis Deus (1854): what Pius IX actually did
On December 8, 1854, by the bull Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX solemnly defined:
"The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin." — Pius IX, bull Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854 (DS 2803)[16]
Every part of the sentence is weighed: "from the first instant of her conception" (not later); "in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Savior" (therefore by Redemption, not against it); "preserved" (not healed). The detailed history of this proclamation, its preparation and juridical scope are set out in dogme-immaculee-conception. For our purpose, we should retain that the Magisterium did not create a truth: it exercised the charism received from Christ to discern and guarantee what belongs to the revealed deposit.
Is a "late" dogma an invention?
This is the most common objection: "if this was defined only in 1854, it means it was not there before." It rests on a misunderstanding of what development of dogma is. A truth can be contained in Revelation from the beginning, held implicitly by faith, and only formulated solemnly much later — when a controversy, a need or a maturation requires it. This was the case with the divinity of Christ (defined at Nicaea in 325), the Trinity, the canon of Scripture, the Real Presence: none of these dogmas was invented on the day of its definition.
Cardinal John Henry Newman, in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845), showed that living doctrine grows like an organism: it remains identical while unfolding, as an acorn becomes an oak without ceasing to be the same living reality[17]. The date 1854 does not date the truth; it dates its definition. To confuse the two is to think that America did not exist before 1492.
"In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." — Cardinal John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine[18]
Fourth motive: the confirmation of Lourdes (1858)
"Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou"
The Immaculate Conception thus has a sign rare in the history of dogmas. Three years after the definition, on March 25, 1858 — the feast of the Annunciation — at the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes, young Bernadette Soubirous, fourteen years old, uneducated, ignorant of learned catechism and speaking only the Occitan patois of Bigorre, asked the "Lady" three times for her name. Joining her hands and raising her eyes to heaven, the Lady answered:
"Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou." — "I am the Immaculate Conception"[19]
Bernadette did not understand the phrase: she repeated it all the way back, afraid of forgetting it, in order to report it to Father Peyramale. The expression is theologically singular: the Lady does not say "I was immaculately conceived," but "I am the Immaculate Conception," identifying herself with this privilege as with her very being.
Why this sign matters
As a motive of credibility, the episode has particular force:
- The statement corresponds exactly to the technical vocabulary of the dogma defined three years earlier in Rome, in a theological language to which an uneducated shepherd girl of the Pyrenees had no access.
- It does not come from erudition: Bernadette could neither understand nor invent this formula, which makes a human fabrication implausible.
- It belongs to a set of controlled facts: the spring that appeared, the healings submitted to the Medical Bureau of Lourdes, and the canonical recognition by the bishop of Tarbes in 1862.
A dogma does not need a miracle in order to be true — its truth rests on Revelation. But when Heaven seems to countersign a definition of the Church so soon afterward, through a mouth incapable of inventing it, the believer legitimately sees in it a confirmation. On the discernment of apparitions in general, see comment-discerner-une-apparition-mariale.
The most frequent objections
An article on "why believe" must face objections directly. Here are the most common ones, with a brief answer; the more technical issues point to dedicated articles.
| Objection | Brief answer | Dedicated article |
|---|---|---|
| "It is not in the Bible" | No dogma is there "word for word" (neither Trinity nor canon); Gen 3:15 and Luke 1:28 point toward it | — |
| "Romans 3:23: all have sinned" | General, not exhaustive, formula (it would also include children and Christ); Mary is preserved by Christ | pourquoi-limmaculee-conception-est-elle-logique |
| "If she is sinless, she has no Savior" | Mary is most perfectly redeemed: preserved, not healed (praeredemptio) | pourquoi-limmaculee-conception-est-elle-logique |
| "This makes Mary a goddess" | Her purity is received, not native: she is a graced creature, never adored | les-catholiques-adorent-ils-marie |
| "The Fathers did not teach it" | Augustine excepts her from sin; the East calls her Panagia; the feast is ancient | — |
| "Defined in 1854: late invention" | Development of dogma: the date of definition is not the date of the truth | dogme-immaculee-conception |
"It is not in the Bible"
Let us repeat it, because this is the heart of the matter: sola Scriptura is not itself in the Bible. The Catholic principle is that Revelation is transmitted by Scripture and Tradition together, in the Church. To demand a proof-text for the Immaculate Conception while accepting the Trinity, the New Testament canon or Christian Sunday — all founded on this same Tradition — is incoherent. On this point, see pourquoi-les-catholiques-ne-suivent-ils-pas-la-sola-scriptura and faut-il-prier-les-saints.
"Romans 3:23: all have sinned"
"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23) is a general statement, not a mathematical clause of exhaustiveness. It concerns humanity as a mass in solidarity with sin; no one concludes from it that infants who die without personal fault are actual sinners, or that Christ — true man — sinned. Scripture knows other exceptions by grace. Mary does not escape the law of Redemption: she benefits from it in the highest manner.
"This makes Mary a goddess"
This frequent objection is actually inverted: the dogma says the exact opposite. Mary is "preserved in view of the merits of Jesus Christ." All her purity is received grace, 100% dependent on Christ. A goddess would be pure by nature; Mary is pure by gift. Far from divinizing her, the Immaculate Conception makes her the first and most perfect of the redeemed — the masterpiece of grace, not a rival to God.
Why this dogma changes something for us
To believe is not merely to admit a fact: it is to receive its light. The Immaculate Conception is not a Marian ornament detached from the rest; it illuminates the whole of Christianity.
It says the full success of Redemption
In Mary, the grace of Christ produced its total effect, without remainder. She shows what Redemption can do when nothing resists it: a human being entirely pure, entirely free, entirely offered. Mary is the living proof that Christ's salvation is not a theory: it has already fully succeeded, once, in a creature like us.
She is the icon of the Church and of our destiny
Lumen gentium presents Mary as the type, the finished figure of the Church:
"In the meantime the Mother of Jesus, just as in heaven she is already glorified in body and soul, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth [...] as a sign of sure hope and solace to the People of God during its sojourn on earth." — Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, § 68[20]
What Mary already is, the Church and every baptized person are called to become: spotless, in glory. The Immaculate One is not an exception that distances us; she is a beginning that precedes and draws us.
An invitation to trust
Finally, this dogma nourishes trust. If God prepared for his Son a dwelling wholly pure, it means that he always prepares what he loves, that he goes to the end of his grace. Mary's purity is not a reproach addressed to our miseries: it is a promise. On the way grace acts in us, see quest-ce-que-la-grace-sanctifiante and quest-ce-que-la-sanctification.
"You are all beautiful, O Mary, and the original stain is not in you." — Antiphon Tota pulchra es, Maria, liturgy of the Immaculate Conception[21]
Further reading
- pourquoi-limmaculee-conception-est-elle-logique — the rational coherence of the dogma: how Mary can be sinless while still having a Savior.
- dogme-immaculee-conception — the history of the 1854 definition, the bull Ineffabilis Deus and its scope.
- pourquoi-marie-est-elle-appelee-mere-de-dieu — the Christological foundation of all Mariology.
- pourquoi-lassomption-est-elle-un-dogme — the other great Marian privilege and its completion.
- comment-discerner-une-apparition-mariale — criteria for discernment, applied to Lourdes.
- pourquoi-les-catholiques-ne-suivent-ils-pas-la-sola-scriptura — why a dogma can be true without a literal proof-text.
- quest-ce-que-la-grace-sanctifiante — the grace that filled Mary and is offered to us.
Notes and References
Pius IX, bull Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854. Closing formula: the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception "is revealed by God and therefore must be firmly and constantly believed by all the faithful" ("esse a Deo revelatam, atque idcirco ab omnibus fidelibus firmiter constanterque credendam"). Reference Latin text, Denzinger-Schonmetzer (DS) 2803.
1Second Vatican Council, dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation (November 18, 1965), § 10: "Sacra Traditio et Sacra Scriptura unum verbi Dei sacrum depositum constituunt Ecclesiae commissum." Full text on vatican.va.
2Representative evangelical Protestant objection, e.g. B. Eggen, "L'Immaculee Conception de Marie n'est pas biblique", toutpoursagloire.com. The article summarizes the classic argument: absence of an explicit verse and appeal to Rom 3:23. Cited here as a fair formulation of the objection, not as an authority.
3Genesis 3:15, liturgical French translation (AELF, aelf.org) in the source article. This verse is traditionally called the Protoevangelium, the first announcement of victory over the serpent. Marian reading taken up by Ineffabilis Deus and Lumen gentium 55.
4Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, section on the interpretation of Gen 3:15: the Fathers and doctors teach that this text clearly announces the Redeemer and very clearly designates his Mother, associated with him in enmity and total victory against the serpent, whose poisonous head she crushed.
5On the variant ipsa conteret ("she shall crush") of the Vulgate against the Hebrew Masoretic text (masculine pronoun hu, referring to the offspring) and the Septuagint (autos, masculine): the reading "she" reflects a Latin tradition, but the Marian argument rests on the enmity of the woman, independently of the pronoun retained. Cf. the critical apparatus of Vulgate editions.
6Luke 1:28, the greeting of the angel Gabriel. Liturgical translation: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you."
7Greek κεχαριτωμένη (kecharitomene), perfect passive participle of the verb charitoo ("to fill / transform by grace"), in the feminine vocative. The Greek perfect denotes an accomplished and permanent state; the form functions as a proper name in the angel's address. Cf. New Testament Greek lexicons (Bailly, BDAG, s.v. χαριτόω).
8Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 491. Official text on vatican.va. The same paragraph cites the 1854 definition (DS 2803).
9Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, III, 22, 4 and V, 19, 1: the Eve / Mary parallel, "the knot of Eve's disobedience untied by Mary's obedience"; Mary becomes Eve's "advocate" (advocata). Around 180. Cf. Sources chretiennes, Cerf edition.
10A formula affirming that in Mary there is no blemish is often cited in the theological literature under the name of Saint Ephrem (Carmina Nisibena 27, stanza 8, numbering of the G. Bickell edition, S. Ephraemi Syri Carmina Nisibena, Brockhaus, 1866). Having been unable to locate it at its exact place in the critical reference edition (E. Beck, Carmina Nisibena, CSCO 218-219, Louvain, 1961) — or in the Hymns of Ephrem preserved in French translation (Chefs-d'œuvre des Pères, 1838) — Ephrem's name is withdrawn here, in keeping with the rule of attributing to an author only what can be exactly located: the conviction remains carried, without nominative attribution, by the Eastern vocabulary (Panagia, achrantos) and by the liturgy.
11Antiphon Tota pulchra es, Maria (composed from Song 4:7 — "Tota pulchra es, amica mea, et macula non est in te" — and Judith 15:9-10), sung in the Latin liturgy of the feast of Mary's Conception. Latin: "Tota pulchra es, Maria, et macula originalis non est in te." The Cantus Index (international database of Gregorian chant) catalogues two forms for this feast: one without "originalis" (no. 005161.1) and one with it (no. a02875): the clause with "originalis", in scholastic vocabulary, is therefore a later addition, and the ancient dating sometimes put forward (fourth century) is established by no verified source.
12Saint Augustine, De natura et gratia contra Pelagium, ch. 36, § 42 (415). Latin: "Excepta itaque sancta virgine Maria, de qua propter honorem Domini nullam prorsus, cum de peccatis agitur, haberi volo quaestionem: unde enim scimus quid ei plus gratiae collatum fuerit ad vincendum omni ex parte peccatum, quae concipere ac parere meruit, quem constat nullum habuisse peccatum?" (PL 44, 267). Text on Latin Wikisource.
13F. Holweck, "Immaculate Conception," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7, New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1910 (online: newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm): in the East, the feast of Saint Anne's Conception does not appear "before the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century" (oldest authentic document: the canon for the feast composed by Saint Andrew of Crete, monk of Saint-Sabas in the second half of the seventh century, † about 720); it appears in the calendar of Basil II (976-1025). In the West, it is attested at Naples and in southern Italy from the ninth century (marble calendar of S. Giorgio Maggiore in Naples) and in Anglo-Saxon monasteries in the eleventh century.
14Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, § 12: "The entire body of the faithful [...] cannot err in matters of belief" ("in credendo falli nequit"), when it manifests universal consent in matters of faith and morals. Foundation of the sensus fidei.
15Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, December 8, 1854, dogmatic definition. Latin: "[...] beatissimam Virginem Mariam in primo instanti suae conceptionis fuisse singulari Omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio, intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis, ab omni originalis culpae labe praeservatam immunem [...]." DS 2803. Standard French translation in the source article.
16John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845). Newman sets out the "seven notes" by which one distinguishes an authentic development from a corruption of doctrine. Central work for understanding why a late definition implies no novelty of content.
17John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, ch. 1: "In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often."
18Word of the Apparition to Bernadette Soubirous, grotto of Massabielle, Lourdes, March 25, 1858 (feast of the Annunciation), in the Occitan of Bigorre: "Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou" — "I am the Immaculate Conception." Canonical recognition of the apparitions by Bishop Laurence of Tarbes, January 18, 1862. Cf. Sanctuary of Lourdes (lourdes-france.org).
19Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, § 68. Mary as "image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come" and "sign of sure hope and solace" for the pilgrim People of God.
20Antiphon Tota pulchra es, Maria, second citation, liturgy of the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception (December 8). See note tota-pulchra above for the source.
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