Mary’s Plenitude of Grace and the Immaculate Conception

By Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

Article I: The Different Plenitudes of Grace

Grace, in strict theological terms, represents “a free gift of God surpassing the natural powers” of any created being. Habitual or sanctifying grace enables souls to participate in God’s divine nature and become adopted children of God. This grace flows into the faculties as infused virtues and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, creating a supernatural organism allowing meritorious acts.

The Blessed Trinity dwells within those possessing sanctifying grace. Grace was equally gratuitous for Angels as for humanity — God “conferred grace on them” at creation, though their nature possessed no claim to it.

There are three degrees of grace’s fullness:

Absolute Fulness belongs uniquely to Jesus Christ, “the Saviour of mankind” and the “eminent and inexhaustible source” of all grace distributed since humanity’s fall.

Fulness of Superabundance represents Mary’s distinctive privilege, described as “a spiritual river which has poured of its abundance upon the souls of men” across nearly two millennia.

Fulness of Sufficiency characterizes all the just, enabling “meritorious acts” leading toward eternal life.

These three degrees may be compared to “an inexhaustible spring, to the stream or river which flows from it, and to the different canals fed by the river.”

Christ’s absolute fulness never increased because the “lumen gloriae and the Beatific Vision were communicated to Jesus’s soul” from conception itself. However, Mary’s fulness of superabundance increased continuously until her death. Theologians distinguish her initial fullness, her fullness at Christ’s conception, and her final fullness upon entering glory.

Article II: The Privilege of the Immaculate Conception

The Dogmatic Definition

Pope Pius IX’s 1854 definition states that “the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege” from “all stain of Original Sin.”

The definition establishes three crucial points:

First, Mary was preserved from Original Sin’s stain “from the first instant of her conception.” Original Sin’s effects include “Divine hatred or malediction, a stain on the soul, a state of non-justice or spiritual death, servitude under the empire of Satan” and subjection to concupiscence, suffering, and bodily death. Mary received sanctifying grace from conception’s first instant, placing her “in that state of justice and holiness which is the effect of the Divine friendship.”

Second, the definition affirms that “through the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race,” Mary received this preservation. This redemption was preservative rather than liberative — preventing the contraction of Original Sin rather than removing an already-contracted stain. The liturgy captures this: “Thou hast preserved her from all stain through the foreseen death of this same Son.”

Third, the definition proposes the Immaculate Conception as revealed doctrine, “contained at least implicitly in the deposit of Revelation — in Scripture and Tradition.”

The Testimony of the Scriptures

Genesis 3:15 reveals this privilege implicitly. God declares to Satan: “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head.” The promise envisions complete victory over Satan, and complete victory would not exist if Mary had not been preserved from Original Sin by her Son’s merits. “The Immaculate Conception is contained therefore in the promise of Genesis as the oak is contained in the acorn.”

Luke 1:28 presents the Angel’s salutation: “Hail, full of grace… blessed art thou among women.” Understood through the tradition of the Fathers, these words extend to Mary’s entire existence: “The Blessed Virgin would not have received complete fulness of grace had her soul been even for an instant in the condition of spiritual death” resulting from Original Sin.

St. Proclus declared she was “formed from stainless clay.” St. Theodore of Ancyra stated the Son came “forth from the Most High.” St. John Damascene described Mary as the “holy daughter” who “has escaped the burning darts of the evil one,” a “new paradise to which the serpent has no stealthy access.”

The Testimony of Tradition

St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, and Tertullian contrasted Eve as “cause of death” with Mary as “cause of life and salvation.” This antithesis appears throughout the Fathers’ writings and in solemn Church documents, “presented as perfect and without restriction.” The Fathers characterised Mary as “stainless,” “always blessed by God,” employing Latin terms including intemerata, intacta, impolluta, intaminata, illibata — all signifying absolute freedom from spot.

St. Ephrem (+373): “Both were at first simple and innocent, but thereafter Eve became cause of death and Mary cause of life… You Lord and Your Mother are the only two who are perfectly beautiful under every respect. In You there is no fault, and in Your Mother there is no stain.”

St. Ambrose declared Mary free from every sin stain per gratiam ab omni integra labe peccati.

St. Augustine’s renowned pronouncement states: “The honour of the Lord does not permit that the question of sin be raised in connection with the Blessed Virgin Mary.”

The Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s Feast has been celebrated, particularly in the Greek Church, since the seventh and eighth centuries, appearing in Ireland by the tenth century and nearly everywhere in Europe by the twelfth.

Theological Reasons for the Immaculate Conception

Duns Scotus is credited with demonstrating “the supreme becomingness of this privilege.” He addressed the difficulty that Christ is “the universal Redeemer of all men without exception” — if Mary did not contract Original Sin, was she redeemed? Scotus answered by invoking “a redemption which is preservative, not liberative.” A perfect Redeemer should employ “a sovereign mode of redemption” concerning His Mother — not liberating from contracted stains but “preserving from all stain,” just as preventing a blow saves more completely than healing an inflicted wound.

Therefore, “the perfect Redeemer should, by His merits, preserve His Mother from Original Sin and all actual sin.”

Additional arguments: honour and dishonour alike affect parents’ children, making it unbecoming for the perfect Redeemer to have a mother conceived in sin. As the Word proceeds eternally from a “most holy Father,” it was becoming that He be born of a mother “to whom the splendour of sanctity had never been lacking.”

If objected that Christ alone is immaculate, the response is: “Christ alone is immaculate of Himself” through Hypostatic Union and virginal conception; “Mary is immaculate through the merits of her Son.”

Consequences of the Immaculate Conception

Mary was preserved from Original Sin’s “two baneful fruits, concupiscence and darkness of understanding.” Catholics must hold that concupiscence was not merely restrained in Mary but that “she was never in any sense its subject.” Her sensible nature underwent “no disordered movement,” with her sensibility “always fully subject to her rational powers, and thereby to God’s Will, as obtained in the state of original innocence.”

Mary was never subject to error or illusion. Her judgment remained “always enlightened and correct.” The Litanies call her the “Seat of Wisdom, the Queen of Doctors, the Virgin most prudent, the Mother of good counsel.”

A significant question arises: if the Immaculate Conception freed Mary from Original Sin’s consequences, why did she experience pain and death? For Christ and Mary, suffering and death resulted from human nature itself — which is naturally “subject to pain and death of the body.” Only through special privilege was Adam exempt in innocence’s state. Christ accepted suffering and death voluntarily “for love of us” in redemptive work. Mary likewise accepted them “voluntarily in imitation of Him and to unite herself to Him.” The Immaculate Conception and grace’s fullness did not withdraw Mary from pain but “made her all the more sensitive to suffer from contact with sin, the greatest of evils.”

Her purity and God’s love consumed her heart intensely. She suffered not from wounded self-love or pride but “from sin, and that in the measure of her love of God Whom sin offends, and her love of Her Son Whom sin crucifies.” Thus the Immaculate Conception “increased Mary’s sufferings and disposed her to bear them heroically. Not one of them did she squander. All passed through her hands in union with those of her Son, thus to be offered up for our salvation.”