Night of Candles in honor of the Immaculate Virgin Mary

The evangelization and transmission of the faith in the Americas have always been united to a singular love for the Virgin Mary. There is not a single corner of our geography that is not crowned by an advocation to our Blessed Mother. Pope St. John Paul II made mention of this at the beginning of his pontificate: “Your Marian love has been a ferment of catholicity in your history.”

At the sixth provincial council of Baltimore in 1846, the bishops of the United States asked that the ever-blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, be named patroness of the Catholic Church in the United States. The decree was confirmed by Pope Pius IX the following year (1847). This decision was confirmed when the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was solemnly proclaimed for the Universal Church.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, proclaimed on Dec. 8, 1854, by Pope Pius IX, through the Bull Ineffabilis Deus declares: “we proclaim and define the doctrine which holds that the Most Blessed Virgin Mary at the first moment of her conception was, by singular grace and privilege of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the Human race, preserved from all stains of original sin.”

As we commemorate the 168th anniversary of that solemn proclamation, God grants us the opportunity to reflect upon the sense of this dogma in our life of faith and our Christian existence. To profess that Mary is “All Holy” implies embracing — with all of its consequences — the reminder of St. John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter Novo Millenio Ineunte: “All the Christian faithful, of whatever state and rank, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.”

In Mary, we contemplate the beauty of a life without the stain of sin, a life given to the Lord. In her shines forth the holiness of the Church that God desires for all His children. In her, we recover our strength when the ugliness of sin induces us to the sadness of a life that projects itself outside of God. In her, the child finds the maternal protection that accompanies and guides him as he grows “in wisdom, in stature and in grace before God and men” (Lk 2:52).

In Mary, we find the youthful model of purity that opens one up to true love. In her, spouses find refuge and the model to make their union a community of life and love. In her, the virgins and consecrated religious find the certain sign of a hundredfold recompense for those who hand over their undivided hearts to the Lord.

At the beginning of the liturgical year, in the season of Advent, the celebration of the Immaculate Conception allows us to enter with Mary into the celebration of the Mysteries of the Life of Christ, thus reminding us of the importance of the intercession of our Blessed Mother to receive, from the Spirit, the capacity to engender Christ in our own life.

As a diocesan family, we have culminated the Year of the Eucharist, proclaimed by Bishop Kevin Sweeney. Let us, therefore, reflect upon Mary as a Eucharistic woman in the entirety of her life, and let us continue to cultivate that love for the Eucharist, which makes it the source and summit of our Christian life.

We are convinced that the new challenges that stand before us as Christians in a world that is ever more in need of the light of the Gospel cannot be confronted without experiencing the close protection of our Immaculate Mother.

As we commemorate the 168th anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Concep­tion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Diocesan Office for Hispanic Ministry invites you to celebrate our traditional “Night of Candles” with the prayer of the Holy Rosary on Saturday, Dec. 10 at 5 p.m. at Holy Face Monastery (1697 NJ-3, Clifton). For more details, please visit our website. We hope to see you there!