The Immaculate One—she who was immaculately conceived—thus we call Mary, the Mother of God. Many erroneous perceptions depend on the mystery of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. The location of this mystery is sought in Nazareth, at the unforgettable hour when the angel came to her and announced to her the mystery of her becoming the Mother of God. But not in Nazareth, not in the womb of the Mother of God, was this mystery fulfilled. Whoever truly wishes to understand this mystery must go to the peaceful home of Mary’s parents, where Joachim and Anna lived in a holy, happy marriage. Here the wondrous mystery of the Immaculate Conception was fulfilled, at the hour when Mary’s life began from the love of both married people. The place where this mystery was fulfilled was thus the womb of the holy mother Anna.
But neither is the mystery found in Mary owing thanks for a miraculous divine act regarding her body. Not as if her parents were old and had been blessed with a child in their old age through a special miracle. Indeed, God’s love could also perform a miracle here within the natural law of life, yet the mystery of the Immaculate Conception does not lie in this.
The mystery of the Immaculate Conception is not a mystery of the body, but of the soul; it is not a mystery of natural life, but of supernatural grace. This means that at the moment Mary’s soul came forth from God and was united with her body in the womb of holy mother Anna, it was kept free by God’s special grace from every stain of original sin and every inherited guilt. Since all other human children, who descend from Adam, carry within themselves the stain of original sin at the moment their soul is united with their body, God’s love, through a special miracle, preserved Mary’s soul from all original sin. Therefore, of all the children of Adam, we alone call her immaculately conceived — in Latin: Immaculata.
The belief in Mary’s Immaculate Conception is an ancient Christian heritage. This mystery was already known to the ancient Church Fathers. Saint Ephrem calls Mary “immaculate, free from every stain, a truly pure virgin”. Already Origen states that Mary “was not touched by the serpent’s poisonous breath”. The Holy Fathers wish to know Mary as separate when it comes to sin. Emphasizing, Saint Maximus teaches that at Mary’s conception, grace, but in our own, sin has reigned. And Saint Paschasius Robertus, a monk of Corbie, explicitly states that “Mary was free from original sin”.
However, the belief in Mary’s Immaculate Conception did not only exist in the Western Church. This belief was also common in the Eastern Church. Although in the East, the feast of “Mary’s Conception” was known more as “miraculous” than “immaculate”, this in no way means that the Eastern Church did not know or believe in the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. The Eastern Church also emphatically calls Mary “immaculate”. On the eighth of September, the Eastern Church sings: “We sing of the birth of the entirely immaculate advocate.”
And on the ninth of September, it is said of Joachim and Anne that they “have begotten the pure and immaculate Theotokos… that from them was born the entirely immaculate virgin.” September 15: “To You we cry out ceaselessly, who are the only pure and immaculate one”. These words cannot be understood otherwise than in the sense in which the Catholic Church has understood them. Even in the 16th-18th centuries, a similar doctrine was recognized in the Eastern Church. Professors of the Kyiv Orthodox Academy even took an oath to defend it, and students founded a society in honor of the Immaculate Conception.
It is possible to list several other testimonies concerning the belief in the Immaculate Conception within the Catholic Church. When later, by order of Patriarch Joachim of Moscow, passages proclaiming this doctrine were erased from some books, this did not stem from faithfulness to old tradition, but from an aversion to the Catholic Church.
Even Luther, ten years after his defection, expressed: “As other people are conceived in sin, in body and soul — so Mary was conceived, though without grace in body, yet full of grace in soul. This is what the words spoken to her by the angel Gabriel say: “blessed art thou among women” — for it could not have been said to her: “blessed art thou,” if she had ever been under a curse. It was also right that the person from whom Christ was to take flesh was conceived without sin… for truly blessed is that which is granted by God’s grace, that is, that which is without sin.” (Luther’s Works, published by Walch, Halle, 1745. XI., 2616.)
Thus, the Catholic Church, not by proclaiming some new doctrine, but only the truth of the ancient faith, declared the dogma: “… That Mary, at the moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of Almighty God, was preserved free from all stain of original sin!”
Church Life : Voice of Estonian Catholics ; December 1933, pp. 90-91