QUESTIONS
Context: This prayer was composed in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, our mother and model. God preserved her from all sin from the moment of her conception, preparing her to welcome and give to the world the One who is pure from all sin: Jesus, our Lord and our God.
How to recite this prayer?: This prayer is meant to be recited slowly, so as to make its words one’s own and allow them to dwell within.
Where does this prayer come from? This prayer arises from my own experience with the Virgin and from the privilege she received of being preserved from all sin from her conception. She maintained this purity until the end of her life. For this reason, she is for me a model, a mother, and an inspiration in my daily life. I have also drawn upon the commentary for this solemnity found in the Ephata missal and in the Sunday missal for feasts and solemnities.
When to recite it? This prayer may be recited freely, whenever one needs a stable, reliable and lasting point of reference for greater life and joy.
What may help the one who prays to better appreciate the process
Only a deep communion with Jesus, through our Mother the Immaculate Virgin, can guide us into this encounter and help us appreciate this prayer more fully.
What may help the one who prays to feel in communion with Mary while reciting it
By feeling perfectly safe in the arms of our Mother, the Immaculate Virgin, the one who prays can recite this prayer with full trust and surrender. To Jesus through Mary.
Queen of heaven and earth, Refuge of sinners and loving Mother, to whom God entrusted the entire work of His Mercy, here we stand before you, we, your children, poor sinners.
We beg you: receive our whole being as a gift that is yours, as your own possession. Act within us according to your will— in our soul and our body, in our life, in our death, and in our eternity. Dispose of us as you desire, so that what has been spoken about you may finally be fulfilled: the Woman shall crush the serpent’s head, and you alone shall conquer the heresies of our world.
May we become, in your pure hands so rich in mercy, true instruments of your love, capable of rekindling and fully restoring so many tepid or lost souls. Thus the Reign of the Divine Heart of Jesus shall extend without end. Truly, your mere presence draws down the graces that convert and sanctify souls, for Grace flows from the Divine Heart of Jesus upon us all, passing through your maternal hands.
Having destined you beforehand to become His Mother, the Word of God filled you with a particular grace. More than this, He lived with you even before you brought Him into the world. He was born in the time appointed for Him, and His body was formed from your own blood, you, the Immaculate. From the moment you began to exist in the barren womb of your mother, there was never an instant in which He was not united with you. It would not be reasonable to think otherwise. For if John the Baptist, of immortal memory, was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, as we have been taught, it would be unreasonable not to believe the same of you, Mary, the All-Pure.
This is what the angel Gabriel means when he says: “The Lord is with you”, and he makes it clear by distinguishing the times. When, at your request, Virgin Mary without stain, he seeks to explain the way in which you will conceive, he does not speak in the present but in the future, prophesying: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you”.
But when he greets you, he praises what you already possess. He says: “Rejoice”; he calls you Full of Grace, and proclaims you blessed among women, for your goodness surpasses that of all others. If he calls you Full of Grace, it is not because you will become so, but because you already are so, truly and fully; and he adds that you are blessed. It is as though he said: “O Virgin full of grace, the Lord is with you; because He dwells in your soul, you are blessed among all women”.
Thus, Immaculate Virgin, this concerns the present. What follows refers to future events, which clearly depend on your free consent, that precious gift you offer to God— so precious that nothing could surpass it. What, indeed, could equal the offering God needed to establish the foundation of the mystery of salvation, through which the universe was recreated and rebuilt more beautiful than before?
This is evident to us. At the moment when you freely offered yourself and prayed with your whole heart that God’s will be fulfilled, you said: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” Then, by the Father’s goodness and the Spirit’s cooperation, the Word— consubstantial and coeternal with them, without beginning— was conceived in your womb and assumed our nature, though without sin.
Your Son Jesus, our Savior, came bearing the human nature He assumed, without mixing the two natures, neither the Creator’s nor the creature’s. He appeared as one single being, one person, divinizing the humanity He assumed and, through you, saving the whole human race, like a leaven.
The feast we celebrate today recalls your conception without stain of original sin. Upon you the gaze of God rested in a singular way, for He chose you to become the Mother of His Son. This is why you were born immaculate: not by your own merit but by grace; not for yourself but for your Son. In this sense, we can say that from birth you were prepared for your encounter with Him. God made you full of grace, full of love, because you were called to bear in your womb the Word made flesh.
You responded generously to this vocation and never strayed from your Lord’s love. You were the first among believers, the first of us all, the first to answer “yes” to the word of the angel sent by God. You were troubled by his words; you held no great esteem for yourself— on the contrary, you saw yourself as a nothingness before God, a rare sentiment for us who are accustomed to thinking highly of ourselves. The angel, seeing your distress, comforted you: “Do not fear”.
You, the young girl of Nazareth, were surrounded by the power of the Most High and filled with His love. You could then answer the angel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.”
Mary, first to be loved so greatly by God, you were also the first to respond fully “yes”. You are the first of believers, the perfect icon of the disciple of all ages.
Of you it is said: “Who is she that comes forth, radiant like the dawn, beautiful as the moon, pure as the sun?” You came into the world, O Mary, like a dazzling dawn, going before the rising of the Sun of Justice with the light of your holiness. The day of your appearance in the world may rightly be called a day of salvation, a day of grace.
You are beautiful as the moon; for just as no planet resembles the sun as closely as the moon, so no creature resembles God more closely than you. The moon lights the night with the light it receives from the sun, yet you are even more beautiful, for in you there is neither stain nor shadow.
You are pure as the sun— I speak of the Sun who created the sun— He was chosen among all men, and you among all women.
O gentle, O great, O most lovable Mary. One cannot speak your name without the heart being set aflame with love; and those who love you cannot think of you without being moved to love you even more deeply.
Lord, you prepared for your Son a dwelling worthy of Him through the immaculate conception of the Virgin; since you preserved her from all sin by a grace flowing already from the death of your Son, grant us, through the intercession of this most pure Mother, to come to you likewise purified from all evil. Through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.