Today (December 8th) we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Later this week we will also commemorate the apparition of Mary to Juan Diego almost 500 years ago with the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12th (to learn about this apparition, click here). Furthermore, we are soon approaching Christmas, in which we give particular attention to Mary in her role of bringing the Savior, Jesus Christ, into the world. Then, we have the great Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on New Year's Day. Thus, this time of year draws special attention to Mary for us as Catholics. This is not to say we should neglect our Blessed Mother throughout the rest of the year, but it is a good time to give her some special attention. It is also a good time to be reminded of what we believe about her and why. There are four major dogmas (definitive teachings of the Church based on God's revelation to us) about the Blessed Virgin Mary in our faith. What follows is a brief overview of those four important teachings.

1.) Mary is a Perpetual Virgin
The Church refers to Mary as "Ever-Virgin." This means her virginity remained intact before the birth of Christ, during the birth of Christ, and after the birth of Christ, for the rest of her life. On this the Catechism states:

499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever–virgin.”
500 Against this doctrine the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, “brothers of Jesus,” are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls “the other Mary.” They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.
501 Jesus is Mary’s only son, but her spiritual motherhood extends to all men whom indeed he came to save: “The Son whom she brought forth is he whom God placed as the first–born among many brethren, that is, the faithful in whose generation and formulation she cooperates with a mother’s love.”

Thus, the oft-cited objection to Mary's perpetual virginity of the "brethren of the Lord" is explained away in that those "brethren" were, in fact, cousins or close relatives of Jesus, not other children of Mary's.

2.) Mary is the Mother of God
In A.D. 431, at the Council of Ephesus, the Church had to defend, and then dogmatically define, the teaching of Mary's divine motherhood against those attacking it. The affirmation of the title "Mother of God" for Mary was, in fact, a defense of the Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is fully divine. The logic goes: Jesus is God, Mary is the mother of Jesus, therefore, Mary may rightfully be called the Mother of God. In saying this, however, there is no claim being made that Mary preceded God or somehow brought God into being. God has always existed. Mary is a creation of God. The title merely refers to her important role as the Mary of the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ. The Catechism explains this teaching in the following:

495 Called in the Gospels “the mother of Jesus,” Mary is acclaimed by Elizabeth, at the prompting of the Spirit and even before the birth of her son, as “the mother of my Lord.” In fact, the One whom she conceived as man by the Holy Spirit, who truly became her Son according to the flesh, was none other than the Father’s eternal Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Hence the Church confesses that Mary is truly “Mother of God” (Theotokos).

3.) Mary was Immaculately Conceived
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is often confused as referring to the conception of Jesus. Rather, it refers to Mary's conception in the womb of her mother, Anne. The teaching was dogmatically defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854. But it dates much further back than that. In fact, Pope Pius' definition was an assertion that the Church has believed this from the start (although our understanding of it has certainly developed over time). In essence, the teaching means that Mary was spared from original sin, which we inherit from Adam and Eve. This sparing occured at the moment of her conception (when we contract original sin from our biological parents) by a particular grace given to her. In essence, she was redeemed and spared from sin from the very beginning of her life. The Catechism describes it this way:

490 To become the mother of the Savior, Mary “was enriched by God with gifts appropriate to such a role.” The angel Gabriel at the moment of the annunciation salutes her as “full of grace.” In fact, in order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly borne by God’s grace.
491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, “full of grace” through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.
492 The “splendor of an entirely unique holiness” by which Mary is “enriched from the first instant of her conception” comes wholly from Christ: she is “redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son.” The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” and chose her “in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love.”
493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God “the All–Holy” (Panagia) and celebrate her as “free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.” By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long.

To learn more about the Immaculate Conception, click here or here.

4.) Mary was Assumed Bodily into Heaven
The last of the four Marian dogmas was defined very recently in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. Still, this teaching also goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. The dogma, in essence, states that at the end of Mary's earthly life she was assumed into heaven, body and soul. In other words, her soul and her body were not separted, leaving her body here to face decay. Rather, her body was taken up into heaven with her soul, allowing her to experience what we all will experience at the end of time: bodily resurrection. This was the natural result of her Immaculate Conception, since the separation of our bodies from our souls and the resulting bodily decay is one of the effects of sin. The Catechism explains:

966 “Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death.” The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians:
In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death.

To learn more about these Marian teachings, you're invited to pick up the CD entitled "Meet Your Mother" by Dr. Mark Miravalle on the Lighthouse kiosk in the vestibule of the church.