that Mary was conceived without original sin is therefore nothing more or less than to negate a negation. It is simply that "she never came under the original curse" which consisted in the loss of grace.81 Mary Immaculate is, as Newman memorably expresses himself, "a daughter of Eve unfallen."82 That which, due to the sin of Adam and Eve, has been denied to every one of their descendants since the fall, was, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God, freely granted to Mary from the very first moment of her existence, through the merits of her divine Son, which God foresaw.83

Thus, the grace of Mary's Immaculate Conception, far from distancing her from us, instead draws her all the more intimately close to us. For, although that fullness of grace was granted to her as a unique privilege for her own benefit, she also received it for us-not only in the sense that she was to become the mother of the Savior of the world, but also in the sense that, in the divine plan of human salvation, her transfiguration by redeeming grace was to be the icon, the archetype, and the first-fruits of our own transfiguration by grace. And this is most certainly good news for every Christian believer. For, however unlikely it may be that any given disciple will ever receive that special divine assistance which protects the pope from officially teaching error, it is most certainly true that every disciple is called and destined by God to receive a share-each in his or her own measure-of that same sanctifying grace which filled Our Lady's soul in such an overflowing fullness, thus coming to resemble her who so perfectly resembled her divine Son. I will leave the last word to Scheeben:

By grace we are in a wonderful manner rendered similar to the mother of God. ... By the reception of grace we imitate in ourselves the maternity of Mary. The same Holy Spirit that descended into the womb of Mary to endow her with a holy fertility, also descends into our souls to beget in a spiritual manner the Son of God. As the Blessed Virgin, by lending a willing ear to the word of the angel and by fulfilling the will of the heavenly Father, was made the mother of the Son of God in the flesh and in spirit, so must our souls give birth spiritually to the Son of God by faithfully receiving the Word

Perspectives of St. Thomas," in The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception: History and Significance, ed. Edward Dennis O'Connor (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1958), 331. 81 Newman, Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, 48. 82 Newman, Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, 47. 83 See Pope Pius IX, Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus (1854), in Papal Teachings: Our Lady, 61-82, at 80.

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Seat of Wisdom: Matthias Scheeben on the Theological Analogy Between the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility

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