Day 5: I Am the Immaculate Conception

The fifth day of the Immaculate Conception Novena, the midpoint, turns to the Marian apparitions at Lourdes in 1858, in which the Blessed Virgin Mary identified herself to Saint Bernadette Soubirous with the words "I am the Immaculate Conception." The apparitions came four years after Pope Pius IX's dogmatic definition of 1854, and the Catholic tradition has read them as Mary's own confirmation of the Catholic dogma.

Today's invocation

O Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus and our Mother... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

The Lourdes apparitions to Saint Bernadette Soubirous occurred at the grotto of Massabielle near the town of Lourdes in southwestern France between 11 February and 16 July 1858. Eighteen apparitions in total were recorded. The decisive identification came on 25 March 1858 (the Solemnity of the Annunciation), when Bernadette, on her sixteenth visit to the grotto, asked the figure her name. The lady, who had appeared to Bernadette as a young woman in white with a blue sash, joined her hands and lifted her eyes to heaven and said in the Bigourdan dialect of southwestern French: Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou (I am the Immaculate Conception).

The phrase had decisive theological weight. Bernadette, fourteen years old, illiterate, and uneducated in Catholic theology, could not have invented it. The dogmatic definition of 1854, four years earlier, had used the precise term Immaculata Conceptio in Latin; the Bigourdan dialectal rendering preserved by Bernadette is a precise vernacular translation. The Catholic Church investigated the apparitions formally for four years and confirmed their supernatural character in the Bishop of Tarbes' pastoral letter of 18 January 1862.

The phrase also has theological significance beyond confirmation of the dogma. The Mother of God did not say "I am the Immaculate Conceived" (which would have been a description of her state) but "I am the Immaculate Conception" (which is, grammatically, a description of her identity). The dogmatic privilege is so essential to her person that she identifies herself with it. The Mother of God, in heaven, is not separate from the Immaculate Conception; she is the Immaculate Conception, in the sense that the privilege has become her identity.¹

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, place the matter under the protection of the Immaculate Conception as the Mother of God herself revealed it at Lourdes. Immaculate Conception, identified by your own words at the grotto of Massabielle, hear my prayer. Through the intercession of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, your visionary, obtain for me the graces I need.

If at all possible, make a Catholic pilgrimage to Lourdes during your lifetime. The shrine at Lourdes, treated more fully in the Saint Bernadette Soubirous entry, is one of the principal Catholic Marian pilgrimage sites of the world and the primary place of devotion to Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception.

Reflection

The Catholic theology of the Marian apparitions has long held that approved Marian apparitions (Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, the Miraculous Medal apparitions) are not new revelations adding to the Catholic deposit of faith but Marian confirmations of doctrines already taught by the Catholic Church. The Lourdes apparitions are the paradigmatic example: the Mother of God did not reveal a new doctrine; she confirmed, by her own appearance and identification, the dogma the Pope had defined four years earlier. The Catholic faithful are not required to believe in any particular Marian apparition (private revelations are never imposed on Catholic faith), but the Catholic tradition has consistently received the Lourdes apparitions as a particular Marian gift to the modern Catholic Church.

Closing prayers

Pray three Hail Marys in honor of the Immaculate Conception.

O Mary, who at Lourdes said I am the Immaculate Conception, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Footnotes

1. René Laurentin, Bernadette Speaks: A Life of Saint Bernadette Soubirous in Her Own Words (2000). The Lourdes documentary archive at the Sanctuary of Lourdes preserves the testimonies and the canonical records. ↩