he
whom the Fathers of the Church from the earliest times have constantly
called the second Eve, she whom God chose to be the Mother of His Son,
should be less endowed? Is it a fact any more conceivable that the
virgin Mother of God should be born in original sin than that she should
be the victim of actual sin? If by the special grace of God she was kept
from sin from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it
not probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and
is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the
meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art _full of
grace_," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such _donum
supernaturale_ as the first Eve received? There is indeed no precedent
to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been
preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from
original sin. Still the fact that there was no precedent was not in
anywise fatal; the point of the situation was just that there was no
precedent for the relation to God into which Blessed Mary had been
called. It was precisely this uniqueness of vocation which was leading
theological thought to the conclusion of the uniqueness of her
privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege seemed to call for nothing
less than an exemption from sin in any and all forms. So a belief in the
Immaculate Conception grew up despite a good deal of opposition while
its implications were being thought out, but was found more and more
congenial to the mind of the Church. She whose wonderful title for
centuries had been Mother of God could never at any moment of her
existence have been separate from God. She must, so it was felt, have
been united to God from the very first moment of her existence.

But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually mean? I
think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask ourselves what it
is that happens to a child at baptism. Every human child that is born
into the world is born in original sin, that is, is born out of union
with God, without sanctifying grace. It is then brought to the font and
by baptism regenerated, born again, put in a relation to God that we
describe as union, made a partaker of the divine nature. This varying
description of the effect of baptism means that the soul of the child
has become a partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with God.
Original sin, we say, is