In 1519 the first European, a Spanish explorer, saw the Mississippi River, the name of which comes from the language of a Native tribe and means “Great River.”  But in 1673, another European explorer, the Jesuit priest Jacques Marquette came upon the river and named it “River of the Immaculate Conception.”

The Immaculate Conception was officially declared a dogma of the faith by Blessed Pope Pius IX in 1854 but before this, in 1846, the Bishops of the United States petitioned the Pope to approve their request that Mary, under the title “Immaculate Conception,” be named the Patroness of our nation.

It’s wonderfully amazing and providential that the greatest river in the U.S., a river that runs through the middle of the country from the northern border state of Minnesota to its mouth in Louisiana, should have once been named for the Patroness of our nation.

We believe that God, who exists in eternity, outside of time, took the merits of Jesus’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection in time, and applied them to Mary, thus keeping her free from Original Sin at the moment of her conception in the womb of her mother Anne.  This is called “prevenient grace.”  Think of it as a preventive strike against sin.  God, being both eternal and all-powerful, wanted His Son to be born from a woman who was without any stain of sin.

Every other human, except for Jesus Himself, is conceived with Original Sin inherited from our ancestral parents, Adam and Eve.  Our lives are a constant battle with God’s and our enemy, Satan and the other fallen angels.  But God, who gave Mary the grace to keep her free from sin at her conception, also gives us the grace to reject sin.

As we do so today, let’s pray part of a prayer that our Bishops used in consecrating the United States to the Immaculate Conception.  It’s from a prayer composed by John Carroll, the first U.S. Bishop and the second cousin of Charles Carroll the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence:

Most Holy Trinity, we place the United States of America into the hands of Mary Immaculate in order that she may present the country to you. Through her, we wish to thank you for the great resources of this land and for the freedom which has been its heritage. Mary, Immaculate Virgin, our Mother. Patroness of our land, we praise and honor you and give ourselves to you. Protect us from every harm. Pray for us that, acting always according to your will and the will of your Divine Son, we may live and die pleasing to God. Amen.