Why Catholics Went to Mass on December 8, a Thursday

This post is a day late ... but perhaps it's just fitting. We usually reflect after an event, and yesterday was busy. In the middle of a still busy work at the end of the day, I ran to attend Mass with my family, wearing my white Extraordinary Minister's uniform to help the priest distribute the Eucharist to mass goers.

Yesterday was a day of obligation for Catholics. It was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BNu0H-7jsqy/

Now what is that?

I don't know if you're Catholic or not, so let me digress a bit. A friend of mine went to the Holy Land and was impressed by how the Jewish tourist guides could quote the Bible left and right, while showing them the places where Jesus set foot.

Absolutely curious, he took the tourist guide aside and asked, "You could quote the Bible way much better than I do. Why are you still a Jew and not a Christian?" The Jewish guide said, "Tourist guides must learn the Bible. It's part of the job. We don't have to believe what it says."

There you go! Knowing is one thing. Believing is another.

So, don't worry. This post wont hurt you...at all.

By sharing the Immaculate Conception I seek no debate, nor will I entertain one (I will delete bashers in this post, be warned).

Believe whatever you want to believe. But this is what Catholics believe. We believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary very close to our hearts.

Jesus is the way, indeed, and ... let's not forget ... Mary was His tabernacle on earth. We see that today. But God has foreseen that way before any man! So, if Catholics look at Mary, that's because God Himself has been looking at Mary ... since way before she was even born. God looks at each one of us, of course, but Mary's special.

Mary carried Jesus in her womb for nine months. If we believe Jesus is the Son of God, and the Father loves Him dearly, and Jesus lived as a human without sin, who are we to even think that the Father would allow His Son to be tainted with the original sin of Adam and Eve upon conception to his last breath on the cross? The whole notion runs against the fiber of the gospel of salvation.

It is interesting to note that even Martin Luther --- the first protestant, instigator of the so-called "Reformation", upholder of the "sola fide" and "sola scriptura" (what Catholics uphold is "sola verbum dei") --- even he believe in the immaculate conception of Mary:

“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin”
– Martin Luther’s Sermon “On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” 1527 (http://j.mp/2hcegDW)

Yet, it was only almost 300 years later, on December 8, 1854, when Pope Piux IX, defined ex cathedra in the glorious Basilica of Saint Peter's before one hundred and seventy bishops and innumerable pilgrims:

 "We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior 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...." (http://bit.ly/2ghUv0E)

We witness to what's in our hearts. Let there be love there for Jesus and for everyone whom Jesus loves.