The Virgin Mary

Mary is the perfect example of faith and obedience to God. From the deliverance of the angel Gabriel’s message, to witnessing her own son’s death by crucifixion, she fully believed “with God nothing will be impossible”. Her faith never ceased. With the exemplary life of Mary, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk 1:37-38), obedient throughout life, "the Church venerates in Mary the purest realization of faith". (CCC #149)

# 487 What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.

Mary was predestined to be the mother of Jesus. # 488 "God sent forth his Son", but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free co-operation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, "a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary". (Gal 4:4; Heb 10:5; Lk 1:26–27)
The angel Gabriel acknowledged Mary’s pre-destiny in Luke 1:28 by calling her “full of grace”. Gabriel used this expression because in order for her to accept the journey of being the mother of Jesus the Savior, she had to be “wholly borne by God’s grace”. (CCC#490)

# 491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:
The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

# 492 The "splendour of an entirely unique holiness" by which Mary is "enriched from the first instant of her conception" comes wholly from Christ: she is "redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son". The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person "in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" and chose her "in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love".

# 493 The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God "the All-Holy" (Panagia), and celebrate her as "free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature". By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long. "Let it be done to me according to your word. . ."

I hope this has enlightened someone.
To be continued…