In the symphony of Scripture, one powerful theme keeps breaking through: the theme of God's loving choices. It reaches an incredible crescendo in the mystery of Mary, the one woman conceived without sin.

The scriptural sources for the dogma of Mary's Immaculate Conception are the three passages which the Church proposes to us today.

God's loving choices were made in the depths of the divine harmony of the Blessed Trinity. From all eternity, the Three Persons of the Trinity have drawn us all out of nothing to their divine heart and the eternal joy and peace it affords us. It is there that we discover the doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception.

In fulfillment of the promise in Gen. 3:15, God chose Mary "before the foundation of the world"(Eph. 1:4), and created her as the angel would one day describe her: "filled (by God) with grace"(Lk. 1:28). It could have been otherwise, but it wasn't. In unassailable humility we have to learn to seek our own freedom from all sin, all prejudice against God, in the mystery of God's love, the mystery of love which is preferential but never prejudicial nor prejudiced.