December 8: Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception
Prayer to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception
Mary our Mother, today the People of God celebrate you and venerate you as Immaculate, preserved forever from the stain of sin.
Knowing that you, who are our Mother, are totally free from sin, is of great comfort to us.
Knowing that evil has no power over you, fills us with hope and strength in the daily struggle we have to face against the threats of the evil one.
But we are not alone in this struggle, we are not orphans because Jesus, before dying on the Cross, gave you to us as our Mother.
Even though we are sinners, we are still your children, children of the Immaculate, called to that holiness that shines in you by the grace of God since the beginning.
Inspired by this hope, today we invoke your maternal protection for us, our families, this city and the whole world.
Through your intercession, may the power of God’s love that preserved you from original sin, free humanity from every form of spiritual and material slavery and make God’s plan of salvation be victorious in both hearts and in history.
May grace prevail over pride in us too, your children.
May we become merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful.
During this time leading to the celebration of Jesus’ birth, teach us to go against the flow: to strip ourselves, to be humble and giving, to listen and be silent, to go out of ourselves, giving space to the beauty of God, source of true joy.
Pray for us, our Immaculate Mother!
Today we celebrate the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary—the day on which Mary, the future Mother of God, was conceived in spotless purity of soul, free from Original Sin at her first moment of animation.
Our Blessed Mother, in preparation for her role as Mother of Jesus, was granted this singular grace by God, upon the merits of Jesus. Intrinsically linked and inseparable with the purity and divinity of Our Savior, Mary, the Blessed Virgin, persisted in grace and purity, becoming the vessel of the Incarnation, the Mother of the Word of God.
On this, the feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, we offer a prayer to Our Blessed Mother, in thanksgiving for the many graces she mediates, and for those intentions we keep in the quiet of our hearts.
