The Feast of the Immaculate Conception celebrates the Blessed Virgin’s freedom from moral corruption and what she is (unstained) by the grace of God. Pope Pius IX issued the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in his Encyclica Ineffabilis Deus on December 8, 1854.
His Holiness wrote “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.” Such beautiful words describing an ethereal truth.
[quote]
Father,
You prepared the Virgin Mary to be the worthy mother of Your Son.
You let her share beforehand in the salvation Christ would bring by His death, and kept her sinless from the first moment of her conception.
Help us by her prayers to live in Your presence without sin.
We ask this through Our Lord, Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.[/quote]