On Dec. 8, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It is the joyous celebration of the conception of Mary in the womb of St. Ann. It is also the patronal feast day of the Catholic Church in the United States.

But more importantly, it recalls the beginning of the final phase of God’s plan to redeem us from our sins and from the catastrophe of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve.

As we are told in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, Adam and Eve were the parents of the human race. As such they were entrusted with the riches of God’s goodness to be passed on to us in faith.

So close was their friendship with God that we are told in the Book of Genesis that God came to walk with them in the cool of the evening. The language is descriptive. But it tells us how good God is, how much He loves the human race and how different was this world at its beginning.

It is different now because Adam and Eve rebelled against God. Under the description of the story of their eating of the fruit from the one forbidden tree, Adam and Eve chose to commit the most fundamental of all of our sins. They placed their own will before God’s. They ate the forbidden fruit so that they might try to snatch for themselves the deep knowledge of good and evil that distinguishes God from us.

Like irresponsible parents at a gambling table, they lost their riches not only for themselves but for us, their posterity.

As a result of original sin, the world was changed to become as we know it. Creation itself was contaminated by the separation from God.

But most importantly, the gifts of grace and intimacy with God were lost. For that reason, we are all born loved by God but still outside of His friendship because of our damaged human condition.

That is at the heart of the need of every person to be baptized, to be born again in the love and grace of God. It is the explanation for the lifelong weakness to temptation and sinfulness that each of us knows only too well in him or herself.

God’s love is too great for Him to turn His back on us, even after the sin of our parents. From the beginning God planned to break the chain of sin and to send His Son as our savior. Century after century, using the Jewish people God prepared the world for its redemption.

The Immaculate Conception celebrates that in Mary, God finally broke the chain of sin transmitted through the human race. At her conception, Mary was given the special gift of being like Adam and Eve before their rebellion. Untouched by any moment without grace, she is born fully in God’s friendship.

When the angel Gabriel greets Mary to ask her consent to become the Mother of God, He begins by saying to her, “Hail, full of grace.” That is not just a poetic salutation. It is, rather, a factual statement about Mary — full of grace, completely without sin.

The Church’s faith has always seen that Mary’s Immaculate Conception was not intended by God only for her or her individual salvation. Instead, it became one of the conditions for Mary to be the mother of Jesus.

He who is God, all pure and all holy, came into the world in our human way, but by means of a mother who never sinned, never placed herself first before her Son.

Mary, as immaculately conceived, was more than just the mother of Jesus. She, in her sinlessness, was the perfect believer, the perfect follower of the son she bore. For that reason, she is the hope and the model for each of us to overcome our sins, our temptations and our weaknesses.

We can be like Mary in believing and following Christ.

During this Advent Season, how good it would be to renew our thoughts, our prayers and our love for the gift of sinlessness granted to Mary even at the moment of her conception. It can serve as an inspiration to draw close to Mary during these weeks of waiting to celebrate again the birth of Jesus.

And it can remind us of our own calling to avoid sin and to live fully the great love that God showers upon each of us.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee! What a beautiful prayer for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.