The Feast of the Immaculate Conception
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which is one of the greatest feasts of the Catholic Church. That the Blessed Virgin Mary was born sinless from her mother’s (St. Anne) womb was to prepare her for the coming birth of our Lord Jesus Christ where she was “overshadowed” by the Holy Spirit of God. If our Lord Jesus Christ entered her womb and she had the stain of sin, she would have immediately died. Hence God made be born from the stain of sin. This is what Catholics believed then and we still believe it now.
Because of the Protestant Reformation where the Protestants no longer believed or declared the mother of God as blessed in 1854 Pope Pius IX promulgated the Papal Bull “Ineffabilis Deus” and Ineffable God which defined the ex cathedra the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Allow me to reprint this declaration by Pope Pius IX, which goes;
“We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.—Pope Pius IX,Ineffabilis Deus, Dec. 8, 1854.”
Yet just four short years later, a miracle happened that shook the world when a white Lady appeared before a 14-year-old uneducated peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France on Feb.9, 1858 when the white lady spoke to her in a cave in Massabielle she had a golden rosary on her hand and a blue sash around her waist. St. Bernadette asked the white lady who she was, she said to her, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” She then asked Bernadette to build a church in that site.
Today there is a small but magnificent church in Lourdes right above the cave where our Lady appeared before St. Bernadette. But underneath the ground is an even bigger church that could hold more than 10,000 pilgrims. Lourdes today is visited by some 6 million pilgrims annually. This is three times bigger than our tourism figures because Catholics from all over the world and this goes to many Protestants as well venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary, who prophesied in her Canticle, “Generations shall call me blessed.”
When I asked Msgr. Dennis Villarojo to be our special guest for today’s show on Straight from the Sky, the topic we chose was that of the recently concluded Synod at the Vatican, which was filled with controversy. But when we did this taping three weeks ago, little did I realize that when we showed it, it would fall on Dec. 8th, which is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Clearly there was a divine message for me and Msgr. Villarojo to propagate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, hence we start this show with a talk on this dogma of the Catholic Church, and then we discuss the Synod in the next segments on this show. So please watch this very interesting show on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00PM with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at9:00PM then on Wednesday and Friday at 7:00AM and 9:00PM.
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I was in Davao City from Thursday to Saturday to attend the National Transformation Council that was held at the SMX Lsnang last Friday afternoon. By now many people have come to recognized that the NTC is a group that seeks full reforms in the government because our democracy has become rotten to the core especially under the incompetent leadership of Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III.
The first NTC Assembly was held in Lipa City and hosted by Archbishop Ramon Argüelles last Aug.27th and this was followed here in Cebu on Oct.1st at the ALU Building and hosted by his eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal. This was followed last Nov.11th in Butuan City hosted by Arch. Pueblos de Dios and then last Dec.3rd it was held in Clark, Pampanga. Archbishop Emeritus Fernando Capalla hosted the NTC in Davao.
While the Lipa, Cebu and the Clark NTC’s had only an attendance of one thousand delegates, the NTC assembly in Butuan had nearly two thousand delegates and the Davao City NTC had more than three thousand delegates, which included two factions of the Moro National Liberation Front. I was on the table with Dr. Mashur Jundam a retired UP Professor on Islamic Studies who is not the National Chairman of the MNLF. He was with his Secretariat Edmund Gumbahali.
We talked about the Bangsamoro Basic Law they told me that they are against it because they were not included in the negotiating panel. Because of the stunning success of the Davao NTC one can now say that the NTC’s existence can no longer be denied…that people want to change our corrupt system of governance and move forward to a better future rather than seek hope in the next elections which never gave the Filipinos any hope.
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