Why in Lourdes does the Most Holy Virgin Mary affirm “I am the Immaculate Conception” and not instead “I was conceived immaculate”?

Father Angelo good morning.

I take the liberty of asking you two questions that I cannot answer, considering that I am not a theologian.

1. Why in Lourdes does the Most Holy Virgin Mary affirm “I am the Immaculate Conception” and not instead “I was conceived immaculate”? Since Mary was a human being, one would have expected the second sentence and not the first, in which she herself personifies the possibility of being conceived by God’s will without original sin.

2. In the catecheses on the book Genesis, regarding the chapters on creation, all priests and scholars affirm that they are allegories (i.e. the Bible is not a scientific book) with the aim of making man understand that he is the creature of a creator, so allegorical should also be “original sin”, of which Jesus however seems to me to never speak in the Gospels, but which the Church considers the foundation of the Faith, so much so that it has instituted the sacrament of Baptism (which already existed before the incarnation of the Son, so it is not He who instituted it).

But if I consider the theory of the evolutionism of the human species, now indisputable given the findings of various human species (from Neanderthal to Sapiens), when would man’s original sin have occurred (no longer Adam and Eve, if they are allegorical)? Perhaps there is a way to reconcile Genesis and the Theory of Evolution? There must be an explanation for me too, because Our Lady of Lourdes spoke of the Immaculate Conception, with a precise reference to original sin, which then (Mary says so) actually occurred and not out of allegory, at a time in human history, but I don’t know whether on earth or in the Garden of Eden (which, if allegorical, did not exist). I feel like the dog that bites its own tail and comes to the head of nothing.

Thank you and God bless her.

Luciano

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Response from the priest

Dear Luciano,

1. We know that Bernadette asked Aquerò several times, the figure she saw, what her name was, also because Abbé Peyramale, parish priest of Lourdes, had asked her several times.

When in the apparition of March 25, 1858, she heard Mary say: I am the Immaculate Conception, she immediately ran to report it to the parish priest, repeating these words continuously for fear of not losing any.

As soon as she saw it, she said: “I am the Immaculate Conception”.

In response Abbé Peyramale said to her: “But who do you think you are?”.

And Bernadette: “Not me, but Aquerò said “I am the Immaculate Conception”.

2. The parish priest didn’t like this answer and said (…together with you!): “The Virgin is not her conception!”.

Then he thought about it and kept thinking about it until he realized that this definition was given in a figurative way, as when a human person is said: “It is beauty itself” or “it is meekness itself”, “patience itself”, “goodness itself”.

This expression indicates that the first gift received by Mary, from the first moment of her conception, was holiness, received by God in a very abundant way to prepare her to become his Mother at the moment of incarnation.

3. Your proposition: “I was conceived Immaculate” is certainly correct.

But there is no doubt that the expression used of Our Lady is much stronger, to the point of being stunning.

Which is signifying the very high degree of holiness that God has filled her with. In this expression is all the gratitude and humility of Our Lady. As if to say: “He did everything. From myself I am nothing. Great things have the almighty and holy name done for me”. 

4. For the second question you raised, the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which distinguishes between figurative language and reality, have been reported countless times on our website.

Figurative language is not simply allegory, but indicates a true event, explained with images.

Here are the words of the catechism: “The Church, authentically interpreting the symbolism of biblical language in light of the New Testament and Tradition, teaches that our progenitors Adam and Eve were constituted in a state of original holiness and justice. The grace of original holiness was a participation in divine life” (CCC 375).

“The story of the fall (Gen 3) uses a language of images, but exposes a primordial event, a fact that happened at the beginning of human history. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that all human history is marked by the original guilt freely committed by our progenitors” (CCC 390).

5. In 1948 the secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, in a very authoritative letter written to Card. Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, wrote: “The first eleven chapters of Genesis… report in simple and figurative language, adapted to the intelligences of a less advanced humanity, the fundamental truths presupposed to the economy of salvation and at the same time the popular description of the origins of the human race and of the chosen people” (16.1.1948).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church along the same lines, speaking of the creation of man, says: “The biblical account expresses this reality with symbolic language, when it says that «God shaped man with dust from the ground and breathed a breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being» (Gen 2:7)” (CCC 362).

6. Further, the Catechism of the Catholic Church specifies: “As long as he remained in divine intimacy, man should neither die nor suffer. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman (Gen 2:25), finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation constituted the condition called «original justice»” (CCC 376).

As you can see, the Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of a first couple.

The first couple (Adam and Eve) is not symbolic language.

7. Assuming the hypothesis of evolutionism, everything is reconciled by specifying that the appearance of the first pair of Homo sapiens was the creation and infusion of the spiritual soul.

On how the body was formed, whether by immediate creation or by evolution, the Church does not express itself. What matters is to say that there was God’s intervention.

It should still be remembered that according to the sacred text, the earthly paradise was not identified with the entire earth orb, but with the garden in Eden. So it was well located.

With the wish of all good, I bless you and remember you in prayer.

Father Angelo

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