Immaculate Conception.

Today (Dec 8) is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It is a Holy day of Obligation. (That is church language for "Get your ass in the pew!")

It always seems like people, even Catholics, have no idea what the Immaculate Conception is.
It is NOT the conception of Jesus. The conception of Jesus is of course immaculate and miraculous, but it is not THE Immaculate Conception. We refer to that business as the Virgin Birth.

It is also NOT an amazing catch or a Madonna anthology.

It IS the conception of Mary. What is so Immaculate about her conception though?
God, being totally awesome and smart, devised a way for His Son to be born through Mary. Mary of course had to be special, a pure portal through whom Christ would enter the World. So God used the Grace provided by the salvific action of Christ to prevent Mary from having original sin as she was conceived. That's what immaculate means, "without stain." She was saved in anticipation of her role in Salvation History.

If any of you reading this are involved in Computer Science, you are probably saying that it is an infinite loop, or simply "Does not Compute." No, it does not entirely make sense in the human frame of mind, but we must remember that God is beyond all this "space" and "time" stuff.

This is a tenet of the Catholic Faith. More details on the I.C. and also on the assumption are available here.

So yeah.. Catholics, Go to mass!
Everyone else, Become Catholic, and be obligated by this time next year!

Ok, so I am not that good of an evangelist... but I'm a decent apologist.

-Andrew