The Feast of the Immaculate Conception is one of the important Holy Days that punctuate the Catholic liturgical calendar. Though for most present-day Italians the celebration has lost some of its unique force and significance, it is still celebrated on the traditional grand scale in the small communities of south and central Italy.
My personal memories of La Festa dell’Immacolata Concezione are of just that: a big party for the whole town. On that day, early in the morning, my parents would load gifts, food and us sleepy children dressed in our Sunday best into the car for the long ride to the tiny village in central Sicily where my grandparents lived. Before we could see the first houses of their village – leaning against each other in a geometry that is typically Arab – we would hear the out-of-tune music of the village band along with the lower rumble of the hub-bub of the local outdoor fair. Every street and lane participated in the festival with plenty of sweets, (cotton candy, of course), various other concoctions and delicacies, games for kids and grown-ups, and bancharelle – tables or benches – piled high with merchandize from the most ordinary to the most rare. In short, like every festival since the beginning of civilization, this party of over-the-top abundance was both a gift from God and a time to give Him thanks. But the immediate concern of all the people pouring back out into the streets to talk, shop, eat, drink and meander was to have fun.
The band circulating through the streets played popular music to accompany the procession of the statue of the Madonna, adorned with a crown of flowers, through all the little passageways of the village. Of course there was the Mass attended by everyone in the old cathedral, and the preaching of the parish priest explaining once again the significance of the celebration and giving us an example we could carry back to our everyday lives. No less sacred and solemn than the Mass was the big lunch, shared in the house of my grandparents where the entire family reunited for the occasion. But most vivid in my childhood recollection is the festa, the picture of all the people of the village sharing a big party, encountering each other to enjoy life, to eat, drink and forget at least for a while all of life’s daily problems.
At four in the afternoon next December 8th His Holy Father Benedict XVI will celebrate a solemn homily of the Immaculate Conception in St. Peter’s Basilica. Afterward, he will go to the Spanish Steps to offer a homage in the form of a giant wreath of flowers to the Blessed Virgin represented by her statue standing atop a column named in her honor. Turning from my personal recollections, we can try to understand more clearly the religious meaning of this festival.
Though the Christian cult of the Virgin Mary was slow to develop, it always grew with a consistent and steady fervor. In the Church originally comprised of small communities scattered across the territory of Ancient Imperial Rome, Mary was relegated primarily to the role of the mother of Jesus Christ. Mention of her was relatively sparse in the New Testament Gospels and in the texts of the first centuries of the Christian Church. But great changes occurred in the Christian Church between the time of its origins and the year 313 AD when the Church emerged from its clandestine status to be legalized under Constantine the Great. In the years that followed, and extending over the arc of two centuries, a series of challenges and historic events galvanized the Church into a the only social structure with a strong territorial presence. In Rome, and in the interior regions of Central Europe, it became the only moral and religious authority that was at the same time political.
We know that in Central Europe, as early as the Second Millennium BC, deeply-rooted cults of the Mother Goddess and of the Earth Goddess, each venerated with an infinity of names and representations, existed throughout Europe in regions extending from Asia Minor to Ireland. Aspects of these cults reflected the basic human psychology that, having been born from the laps of our mothers, we harbor the ultimately sorrowful longing associated with leaving and then hoping to return to a mother with waiting, open arms. Freud would find this archaic sentiment to be still alive in contemporary society. We see it expressed in the modern epoch, for example, by Herman Hesse in his novel Narcissus and Goldmund. The Earth Mother and the Mother Goddess were both figures that could one day embrace us again with a transcendent love. Built on this already-existing religious instinct, the figure of Mary became more relevant across the centuries. Over time, a series of councils and dogmas formulated by the Church affirmed with precision new aspects of the doctrine of the Virgin that were not directly present in the Gospels.
From the words “Extraordinary Holiness of Mary” used by the Proto-Evangelist Giacomo, we eventually arrive at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, which claimed the Virgin to be not only the mother of Christ but the Mother of God. This concept was sanctioned by the dogma of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. According to this teaching, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, while distinct entities, participate in the same unitary existence. Therefore, if the Virgin is the Mother of Christ, she is also in a certain way the Mother of God.
In this period, when the dominance of the Pope as supreme shepherd and head of the church on earth was not yet established, bishops from important cities came together in councils to deliberate theological and doctrinal questions. Between 430 and 440AD, Pope Sixtus III had built in Rome the largest basilica mariana “ dedicated to Mary” that had ever existed: Santa Maria Maggiore. In the same period, in many religious tracts, a parallel was drawn between the first woman Eve, who was conceived without sin in the Garden of Eden, and the Virgin Mary. In the fifth century A.D., the theologian Procolo explained that theVirgin was conceived differently from the rest of humanity. From the beginning of time, ordinary humans were burdened from birth with original sin and therefore eventually inclined to evil acts, while the Virgin, created from a “pure clay,” was free of guilt, pure and immaculate from her beginnings. Following another interpretation, Saint Augustine held that the absence in Mary of original sin was not established at her birth but was the effect of divine grace.
While these interpretations evolved, the devotion of the faithful to the Virgin was becoming stronger, making more thorny the theological debates regarding this and other themes mariana. Of particular importance was the fundamental question regarding the assumption of the Virgin into heaven after her death, an assumption that was not only spiritual but also corporal. In fact, according to Christian doctrine, at the End of Time on the Day of the Last Judgement, the bodies of all humans will be resurrected. Countless frescoes and paintings over the centuries reconstruct the moment in which the tomb of the Madonna was found empty because her body had already ascended to a new life in heaven. Others, like Caravaggio’s Dormition of the Virgin, focus directly on this unfathomable mystery, depicting Mary at the moment of her death. The painting raises the question as to whether the Virgin, like Christ, through divine grace, will rise to heaven immediately after her death taking her bodily form with her. Although with two annual Feast Days – The Assumption of the Virgin on the 15th of August, and the Immaculate Conception on the 8th of December – both feasts have been celebrated since the Middle Ages, the official final words on these two doctrines were delivered only in the last two centuries.
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was sanctioned in 1854 by Pope Pius IX with the Papal Bull Ineffabilis Deus. In it, the Pope affirmed that “. . . with the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and Ourselves, we declare, pronounce and determine the doctrine which maintains that the Virgin Mary, by the singular grace and privilege of God Almighty, had received, in light of the merits of Jesus Christ savior of all mankind, a state preserved from every stain of original sin from the instant of her conception, and that this was revealed by God and is therefore a fundamental creed.” Over previous years, through an encyclical letter, the pope had sounded the opinions of the bishops and obtained a favorable response to the promulgation of the dogma. In 1856, the column of the Immaculate Conception was erected near the Piazza di Spagna with a statue of the Virgin at its summit. Every year on December 8th, the Pope carries a garland of flowers there that is placed on the arm of the Virgin in a ceremony that even includes a ladder truck from Rome’s Fire Department. As for the teaching of the Assumption of the Virgin, it was proclaimed dogma by Pope Pius XII in 1950 with the Papal Bull Munificentissimus Deus, once again, after a lengthy survey of bishops’ opinions.
With these declarations, a very long chapter in the story of Christian doctrine and the faith of everyday believers was brought to a close. In Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore, the Madonna came to be venerated under the name of Salus Populi Romani, “Salvation of the Roman People.” This role was highlighted by John Paul II in his generous and touching homage to the church in the first year of his pontificate. His visit on the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception, December 8, 1978, was the first time in his life that the Holy Father had entered the basilica.
Rosario Gorgone
T. E. Artistic Director
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