The adjective immaculate derives from the Latin word immaculātus . This is how he or she is described as having no stain .
The immaculate, therefore, is clean , blameless or pure . For example: “Wearing an immaculate white dress, the model was the star of the night,” “There is no immaculate politician,” “The boxer won again and maintained his immaculate record.”
The idea of immaculate usually appears in the field of sport to refer to an athlete or a team that does not record defeats . Suppose that, in a competition, a football club achieved eleven wins in the same number of games. It can be said that the team has, so far, had an immaculate tournament .
That which does not have any defects is also called immaculate. The immaculate lawn of a garden , to cite one example, covers the ground perfectly, does not show the presence of weeds and is neatly cut. The notion is even used symbolically: a professional can have an immaculate career if there are no known missteps, errors or problems.
In the previous paragraphs we have seen that the adjective immaculate has two fundamental uses: on the one hand it allows us to highlight the good condition of a place or an object, which to the eye usually appears "perfect"; On the other hand, we can use it symbolically to talk about an impeccable track record or a reputation without anything negative to point out.
However, there is a difference between both cases that is explained through subjectivity: while an apparently immaculate room probably does not have any extremely dirty corners that we cannot notice, the career of a professional person can present itself as immaculate or blameless but hide one or more unfortunate events that only a few know about.
In the first case, our senses allow us to be right with a fairly small margin of error: if we determine that a room is in a perfect state of hygiene, it is not possible that there is a pile of waste in a state of decomposition that we have overlooked; However, we can be sharing lunch with someone whom we consider an example of morality without knowing that he is a rapist.
In the field of religion , immaculateness is associated with the absence of sin . Written with an initial capital letter and in the feminine, the term is used to name the Virgin Mary : the Immaculate .
There is even a Marian devotion in Catholicism known as the Immaculate Heart of Mary , which is based on the veneration of the heart of the mother of Jesus (the Blessed Virgin Mary ). In the General Roman Calendar , the Immaculate Heart of Mary is celebrated every August 22 .
Through the revelations of Blessed Alejandrina de Balazar and the apparitions of the Virgin of Fátima, this devotion known as the Immaculate Heart of Mary reached a position of great popularity among Catholics. Another person who made an important contribution to this concept was Saint John Eudes , a French missionary who is also credited with founding the Congregation of Jesus and Mary.
Fátima was a key place for the devotion of the Virgin Mary: she appeared there on numerous occasions, six of which took place in the Cova da Iria and were described by three Portuguese shepherds, who related what happened to Lucía de Jesús Rosa two. Santos , a nun of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites known for her visions . Lucia received a special visit from the Virgin in 1925, when she promised assistance in her last moments of life to all those who confessed, took communion and prayed a third of the Rosary every first Saturday of a period of five consecutive months.