Ask Father Mateo


Msg Base:  AREA 5  - ASK FATHER            CIN ECHO   AMDG
  Msg No: 236.  Thu  1-30-92 22:01  (NO KILL)  (MAILED)
    From: Father Mateo
      To: Jim Cox
 Subject: Immaculate Conception

+-
| Where did Christ reveal the Immaculate Conception?  Since Christ reveals
| why is Papal Defination necessary?
+-[JC=>FM]
 
Dear Jim,
 
Today you get two messages for the price of your one, because you have
asked two questions.  May I here remind everyone that I am vastly
comforted when there is only one question in each message.  I can then
do a better job for you.
 
"Where did Christ reveal the Immaculate Conception?"  The whole deposit
of Christian revelation is contained in Sacred Tradition and Sacred
Scripture.  "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down
in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.  And Tradition
transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to
the Apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit.  It transmits it
to the successors of the apostles so that enlightened by the Spirit of
Truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound, and spread it abroad by
their teaching.  Thus it comes about that the Church does not draw her
certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone.
Hence, both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with
equal feelings of devotion and reverence" (Vatican Council II. On
Divine Revelation, c. II,
In Luke 1:28, the archangel Gabriel calls Mary "kekharitomene", "favored". We often translate this "full of grace", following St. Jerome's Latin translation: "gratia plena" Mary's fulness of grace prompted generations of Catholic theologians to ask: "How full is full?" Part of the Church's answer is: "Her fullness of grace reaches as far as her utter freedom from sin, even from the first moment of her conception in her mother's womb." "Kekharitomene" is a perfect tense form of the verb "kharitoun", "to favor". In this tense, the verb means utterly, perfectly, totally favored or graced. Luke 1:28 by itself does not "prove" the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. It shows only that the doctrine is in accord with Scripture: if Mary is truly "kekharitomene", then God so filled her with His grace that never in her whole existence did he leave any room in her for the slightest sin (any sin is the ultimate "ungrace"). Catholics are not alone in proclaiming Mary's utter sinlessness. In 1522, five years after his break with Rome, Martin Luther wrote in his Personal Prayerbook: "She is full of grace, proclaimed to be entirely without sin....God's grace fills her with everything good and makes her devoid of all evil....God is with her, meaning that all she did or left undone is divine and the action of God in her. Moreover, God guarded and protected her from all that might be hurtful to her" (Luther's Works, Pelikan translation, vol. 43, p. 40). Sincerely in Christ, Father Mateo ##MMR 2.38(beta). !link JC 1-11-92 19:29