Sacred Calendar

Fourth Lesson - Preserving Redemption and the Council of Trent

It is known to all men, with what care this doctrine of the sinlessness of the conception of the Mother of God hath been handed down, set forth, and defended by the most distinguished Religious Orders, Theologians, Universities, and Doctors skilled in the things of God. All men know likewise how carefully Christian Bishops, even in their public teaching, have professed the doctrine that through the merits of Christ our Lord and Saviour, foreknown by God, the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God, was delivered from ever being the victim of original sin, but, on the contrary, had the fruits of redemption applied to her at the very moment of her Conception, and was therefore redeemed in a nobler way than others. But the weightiest fact of all is that the most holy Council of Trent, when, in accordance with the Holy Scriptures, as interpreted by the holy Fathers and the approved Councils, it decreed that all men are conceived in sin, expressly added that it did not mean thereby to say that the blessed and stainless Mary, Mother of God, did not form an exception to the rule. From this declaration of the Fathers of Trent it can clearly be drawn that there is nothing in the Bible, nothing in tradition, and nothing in the Fathers which can rightly be adduced against this prerogative of the most Blessed Virgin; nay, as far as circumstances demanded, they as much as declared her free from the original stain.

Fifth Lesson - The Church's Earnest and Universal Witness

In truth, this doctrine upon the Conception of the most Blessed Virgin is day by day more earnestly set forth by the graver thought of the Church, by her teaching, by her care, by her learning, and by her wisdom. It is explained, taught, confirmed, and wonderfully spread among all peoples and nations of the Catholic world. The Church hath received it from the Fathers, as a part of the original faith, attested strongly by the most ancient and venerable monuments of both the Eastern and Western Churches. Indeed, the Fathers and Ecclesiastical writers, learned in Holy Scripture, are marked by no more earnest feature than that in all their books and Scriptural Commentaries, written for the confirmation of doctrine, and the edification of the faithful, they do all in divers ways preach and teach the excelling holiness of this Virgin, her dignity, her freedom from any stain of sin, and the glory of her victory over the dark enemy of our race.

Sixth Lesson - The Enmity and Victory Promised in Genesis

All Commentators on the Book of Genesis remark that passage where God at the very time of the Fall speaketh of the Atonement, to the confusion of the lying serpent, and the comfortable hope of man, and saith: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed," and all the ancients teach that by this passage is meant the most merciful Saviour of mankind, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of God and His most blessed Mother the Virgin Mary, as if the enmity which both He and she felt against the devil was, in a sense, of a kind common to them Both. Christ took our nature upon Him, and is become the Mediator between God and man, blotting out the handwriting that was against us, nailing it to His Cross, and the most Holy Virgin, by that subtle, close, and abiding tie which bindeth her mother to Child, feeleth along with Him His truceless enmity to the serpent, and He, through His merits, hath granted to her that moment of victory wherein her stainless foot bruised the serpent's head.