I wish you a very happy feast of the Immaculate Conception. You’ll find excellent patristic catenas, on every aspect of the dogma, at New Advent. (New Advent also offers catenae for the purists.) In the East, Mary is all-holy, panagia. In the West, we celebrate her as sinless. These are two complementary aspects of the same truth. (And maybe the most perfect illustration of the difference between a “half full” and “half empty” approach to theology!) God infused the world with beauty at the conception of the Blessed Virgin. Don’t let the day go by in an ordinary way! (Here’s some extraordinary reading for starters.)

Not long ago, Pope Benedict made me aware of Gregory Nazianzen’s doctrine of Mary as “pre-purified.”

Mary, who gave human nature to Christ, is truly the Mother of God (”Theotókos”: cf. Epistle 101, 16: SC 208,42), and with a view to her lofty mission was “prepurified” (Oratio 38,13: SC 358,132, presenting a type of distant prelude to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception). He proposes Mary as a model for Christians, above all for virgins, and as an aid that should be invoked in need (cf. Oratio 24, 11: SC 282,60-64).