Readings for the Solemnity from USCCB
Like the Assumption, our celebration of Mary’s Immaculate Conception tells us something very important about humanity—humanity as we were meant to be. Our belief that Mary was conceived in the womb of her mother, St. Anne, without original sin, tells us as Catholics that Mary is exactly the type of human being God meant each of us to be: in the words of St. Paul, “God chose us in him[,] before the world began, to be holy and blameless in his sight, to be full of love.”
This is what our belief in Mary’s Immaculate Conception says about her: that she was full of love. We do not believe that Mary is a goddess, or even super-human. The Blessed Virgin Mary is simply human, what each of us who is human is called to be: “holy and blameless in God’s sight, full of love.” That’s how St. Gabriel salutes Mary in the Gospel: “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you!”
God the Father wanted the best possible mother for His Son, and so granted the grace to Mary which would make her, for Jesus, a mother who would physically and spiritually give nothing to her Son but the “fullness of love” which God means all of us humans to have. And because Mary is the Mother of Jesus, she is our mother as well. She is the Immaculate Conception, through whom Jesus entered the world, through whom each of us is healed, if we accept in faith the gift of healing God wants to give us. In this season of Advent, as we come before this altar, we meditate on the fact that this God’s gift of the Immaculate Conception has made Mary, for each of us, not only the Mother of the Church, but the model for each of us of what it means to accept Christ into our lives
from catholidioceseofwichita.org
THE CONCHO PADRE POST 
Commentary
Here is an insightful piece by Dr. Jeff Mirus of catholicculture.org
EVANGELIZING: ONE WORD AT A TIME
Tagged catholicculture.org, commentary, dr jeff mirus, new evangelization |