I am the Immaculate Conception
These are the words Our Lady said to Saint Bernadette Sobirous, when the young saint asked the ‘beautiful lady’ who she was, and Bernadette had no idea what they mean, in the original French patois. This was in 1858, four years after Pope Blessed Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, with the bull Ineffabilis Deus, on this day, December 8th, 1854, defining that the Mother of God was preserved from all stain (macula) of original sin, by the merits of Christ which God saw (praevisa) beforehand. In other words, she was saved before the Saviour took flesh from her, as a unique and unrepeated privilege.
In the words of the Apostolic Constitution: