The Immaculate Conception.
Artist: Anonymous.
Date: 17th-Century.
Current location: Museo Carmen Thyssen, Malaga.
Source: http://www.carmenthyssenmalaga.org/
Author: Anonymous.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger, O.S.B.
Volume 1.
Advent.
This, the eighth day from that on which we kept the Feast of The Immaculate Conception, is the Octave properly so called; whereas the other days were simply called “Days Within The Octave”.
The custom of keeping up the principal Feasts for a whole week is one of those which the Christian Church adopted from the Synagogue.
God had thus spoken in the Book of Leviticus: “The first day shall be called most solemn and most holy, you shall do no servile work therein . . . The eighth day also shall be most solemn and most holy, and you shall offer holocausts to The Lord, for it is the day of assembly and congregation; you shall do no servile work therein”.
We also read in the Book of Kings, that Solomon, having called all Israel to Jerusalem for the dedication of the temple, suffered not the people to return home until the eighth day.
We learn from the Books of The New Testament that this custom was observed in Our Saviour’s time, and we find Him authorising, by His own example, this solemnity of the Octave.
Thus, we read in Saint John, that Jesus once took part in one of the Jewish festivals, about the “midst of the Feast”, and the same Evangelist, relating how Our Lord cried out to the people: “If any man thirst, let him come to Me, and drink”, observes that it was “on the last and great day of the Festivity”.
Let us once more devoutly reverence the Mystery of Mary’s Immaculate Conception: Our Emmanuel loves to see His Mother honoured. After all, is it not for Him and for His sake that this Bright Star was prepared from all eternity, and created when the happy time fixed by The Divine Decree came?
When we honour The Immaculate Conception of Mary, it is really to The Divine Mystery of The Incarnation that we are paying our just homage.
Jesus and Mary cannot be separated, for Isaias tells us that: “She is the Branch and He is the Flower”.
