This week I went down into the basement and saw a print of one of my favorite paintings of the Immaculate Conception near the youth and RE office!   The original is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.  Since she is our patroness, I am inspired to share it with you here, and a few thoughts as well.
Often times folks confuse paintings of the Immaculate Conception with the Assumption.  If you type “assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary” into Yahoo or Google and check the images that come up, some of those which are labeled incorrectly.  How can we tell the difference?

The classic painting of the Assumption will have a few factors: Mary will appear a little older, the Apostles will often be gathered below looking up as angels escort her to heaven (or crown her queen of the universe), and Mary will most often be wearing a red garment with a blue cloak (the red represents her humanity and the blue represents heaven with which he is clothed).   
On the other hand, images of the Immaculate Conception will have Mary with a very young face, a white garment (for purity), a blue cloak (again for heaven), and held aloft by a number of cherubs (again with young faces to suggest youth and innocence).  Obviously it would be impossible to paint an image that is what the IC looked like, so artists have tried to represent this through symbols.

Some artists will combine all of these symbols because they may just want to paint the Blessed Virgin Mary, and with elements from the various Marian dogmas.  Hopefully this will help you be able to identify symbolic elements in Catholic art.

And finally, it is time to start extending invitations to folks who are considering becoming Catholic.  RCIA will be starting up in September, so pray this week about whom you might invite to consider becoming Catholic.  This weekend we are offering you cards that you can hand out to anyone you would like to invite to consider our Catholic Faith!  Personal invitations truly matter.  Who can you invite to become Catholic?
 
Pax,
Fr. Mosimann