Today, 8th
December 2018, is the feast-day of the Immaculate Conception
“In the union of the Holy Spirit with her, not only
does love bind these two beings, but the first of them
[the Holy Spirit] is all the love of the
Most Holy Trinity, while the second [the Blessed Virgin Mary]
is all the love of creation, and thus in that union
heaven is joined to earth, the whole heaven with
the whole earth, the whole of Uncreated Love with the whole
of created love: this is the vertex of love”.
St. Maximilian Kolbe
Cheryl Dickow writes on:
Our Jewish Roots: The Immaculate Conception
…
From the time of Abraham’s response to God’s
call to leave the country of his kinsmen, God began the process of preparing
the way for the Messiah. Abraham, after all, introduced to his pagan
neighbors the objective truth of the one God: Creator of all that is, was and
ever shall be. He was being set aside for this intention. Along
with his wife, Sarah, Abraham is credited throughout Jewish teaching for
converting pagan neighbors to the monotheistic faith of Judaism. Abraham,
being set aside for that purpose, was able to remain a vessel for God’s
plan.
Not only was Abraham a vessel for God, Abraham
acted as an intercessor as well. Consider his dialogue with God, in which
God is prepared to pour out His wrath and punishment upon Sodom and
Gomorrah. Abraham beseeches God to withhold punishment if Abraham is able
to find but a small handful of citizens who have not succumbed to the moral decay
of their neighbors. God enters into this dialogue because of Abraham’s
faithfulness and the faith in which Abraham has lived his own life, following
God.
The evolution of God’s plan, which began in
earnest with Abraham’s visible commitment to monotheism, continued throughout
salvation history. People, and even items, were often set aside, to be
used in this plan for man’s deliverance. Qadosh is the Hebrew
word that means set aside, or separated, for a purpose. Throughout the
Old Testament, people and things had often been set aside for specific
purposes. When God called upon Israel to be a people like no other and to be a
kingdom of priests, those priests were “set aside” for specific duties.
Utensils, vessels, and garb that were meant for service at the altar of the
temple were “set apart” and would not be used elsewhere, lest they be
defiled. So this “setting aside” was a common understanding of the Jewish
people. Abraham was “set aside” when he was asked to leave his homeland
and the evolution of being set aside was underway.
When Mary is called the “Immaculate Conception”
she is simply reflecting two thousand years of Jewish practice in which
something meant for God’s use, for His salvific plan, is set aside. It is
not a new teaching but, rather, rests upon Jewish laws that are thousands of
years old. Objects used in worship were set aside from ordinary
use. Persons were set aside from their ordinary occupations to be devoted
to the Lord’s service. And finally Mary was set aside from the ordinary
effects of original sin in order for her human body to be the vessel for
Christ: thus the “Immaculate Conception.” Additionally, just as these
things — whether people or items — acted as intercessors between God and His
people, so Mary acts as intercessor as well. This is the culmination
of thousands of years of preparation for the Messiah that began with Abraham’s
being called from his homeland.
[End of quote]
The great Marian saint, Maximilian Kolbe, martyr of love at
Auschwitz, wrote in a most inspired fashion on the Immaculate Conception.
The Polish saint asked the question:
“Who Are
You, O Immaculate Conception?”
And that is the very title of this article by Jonathan Fleischmann:
https://saintmaximiliankolbe.com/who-are-you-o-immaculate-conception/
“Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?” asks St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe.
The Knight of the Immaculata goes on:
Not God, for God has no beginning. Not
Adam, made from the dust of the earth. Not Eve, drawn from Adam’s body. Nor is
she the Incarnate Word who already existed from all eternity and who was
conceived, but is not really a “conception.” Prior to their conception the
children of Eve do not exist, hence they can more properly be called
“conceptions”; and yet you, O Mary, differ from them too, because they are
conceptions contaminated by original sin, whereas you are the one and only
Immaculate Conception. ….
The Vertex of Love
In the return of all created things to God the Father (cf. Jn 1:1;
16:28), “the equal and contrary reaction,” says St. Maximilian Kolbe,
“proceeds inversely from that of creation.” In creation, the Saint goes on
to say, the action of God “proceeds from the Father through the Son and the
Spirit, while in the return, by means of the Spirit, the Son becomes
incarnate in [the Blessed Virgin Mary’s] womb and through Him love returns to
the Father.” …. The Saint of Auschwitz goes on:
In the union of the Holy Spirit with her,
not only does love bind these two beings, but the first of them [the Holy
Spirit] is all the love of the Most Holy Trinity, while the second [the
Blessed Virgin Mary] is all the love of creation, and thus in that union heaven
is joined to earth, the whole heaven with the whole earth, the whole of
Uncreated Love with the whole of created love: this is the vertex of love. ….
The image St. Maximilian employs here of action and equal-and-opposite
reaction is taken from Newtonian mechanics … specifically the proposition
known as Newton’s third law: “For every action force there is an
equal-and-opposite reaction force.” Thus, we may visualize the image
being employed by St. Maximilian Kolbe as two “bodies” in equilibrium,
which meet at a single point of contact at the “center” of salvation history.
The two contacting bodies represent heaven and earth; the uncreated and
created orders; God and his creation. The contact point is the Immaculate
Conception: the Vertex of Love. ….
It may seem very wrong to use an image of “force equilibrium” to
represent the state of affairs between heaven and earth, because how can this
state between God and his creation be in equilibrium? Isn’t God’s act of
love so much greater than the return of his creation that no “equilibrium”
would be possible? This would certainly be the case if it were not for
Emmanuel, that is, God with us.
Jesus, Who is truly man and truly God, belongs to both the created and
uncreated orders simultaneously. In His person, Jesus is both the Son of Mary,
fully human and like us in all ways except sin, and the Eternal Son of God
the Father, infinite and equal in all ways to the Triune God.
The Created Immaculate Conception
It is clear that the love of Jesus, the Word made flesh Who is God, is
by itself enough to “balance” the love of God. However, there is even more in
the equation of love’s equilibrium than the love of the Son, infinite and
sufficient in itself though it is. According to St. Maximilian, the perfect
love of the Trinity meets an adequate
response in the perfect love of the Immaculate, which is the name
St. Maximilian gives to the Blessed Virgin Mary. How is it possible that
Divine Love can find an adequate response in the love of a creature? It is
possible precisely because of the name that the Virgin Mary can claim for
herself. In 1854, the Blessed Virgin Mary proclaimed to St. Bernadette Soubirous:
“I am the Immaculate Conception.” In the words of St. Maximilian, the
Blessed Virgin is the Created
Immaculate Conception, as the Holy Spirit is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. In the words of
St. Francis of Assisi, Mary is the Spouse
of the Holy Spirit. …. St. Maximilian Kolbe, a true son of St.
Francis, explains:
What kind of union is this? It is above
all interior; it is the union of her very being with the being of the Holy
Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives in her, from the first
instant of her existence, and he will do so always, throughout eternity… This
uncreated Immaculate Conception conceives divine life immaculately in the
soul of Mary, his Immaculate Conception. The virginal womb of her body, too, is
reserved for him who conceives there in time—everything material comes
about according to time—the divine life of the God-Man. ….
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as the perfect and
infinite Love between the Father and the Son in the Eternal interior life of
the Blessed Trinity. Thus, the Holy Spirit is truly all the love of the Most Holy Trinity.
“Hence the Holy Spirit is an uncreated conception, an eternal one; he is
the prototype of every sort of human conception in the universe… [He] is a most
holy conception, infinitely holy, immaculate.” …. The Holy Spirit is also
called the Complement of the Blessed Trinity, because He is the completion of
the Trinity, not in “number” (quantitatively),
but in essence (qualitatively).
When Mary, by the design of God before the creation of angels or the
universe, and before the existence of sin or evil, was predestined in one and
the same decree with Jesus Christ … she was predestined to be the Spouse
of the Holy Spirit, and so was predestined to hold within herself all the love of creation. Thus, St.
Maximilian says that the Blessed Virgin Mary, “inserted into the love of the
Most Holy Trinity becomes, from the very first moment of her existence,
always, forever, the Complement of
the Most Holy Trinity.” …. We may paraphrase the thoughts of
St. Maximilian Kolbe on the spousal relationship between the Holy Spirit and
the Blessed Virgin Mary in the words of Fr. Peter Damian M. Fehlner:
In virtue of this spousal union formally
denoted by the title Complement, Mary is able to enter as no other into the
order of the hypostatic union, her soul being wholly divinized, because by
the grace of the Immaculate Conception it has been ‘transubstantiated’ into the
Holy Spirit. ….
Now that we have balanced the equation of love’s equilibrium twice over,
we could certainly stop. However, there is good reason to continue. The order
of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit reflects the order of God’s loving act of
creation: initiated by the zeal of the Father, designed by the wisdom of the
Son, and effected by the action of the Holy Spirit. This is the order
referred to by St. Maximilian when he says “the equal and contrary reaction
[i.e., the return of all creation to God] proceeds inversely from that of
creation.”
Thus, in the response of creation to God the Father, we first have Mary,
who is the perfect similitude (St. Bonaventure), transparent icon—or even quasi-incarnation—of
the Holy Spirit (St. Maximilian Kolbe) … but who is still a created
person, with a created human nature. We have Jesus, Who is the Word
Incarnate, the same Person as
the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, but Who is still in possession of
a created human nature. St. Maximilian stops here, but must we stop here?
I would dare to say that the analogy we have carried out so far on the
inspiration of St. Maximilian Kolbe suggests an obvious completion. We
have the completion of the earthly trinity in St. Joseph, who has been called
the perfect icon of God the Father
(St. Theresa of Avila, St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. Peter Julian Eymard). ….
The Icons of Love
In the return of all created things to God the Father, first in the
order of time we find Mary, who is like the Holy Spirit quasi-incarnate. …. The Holy
Spirit’s role in the Blessed Trinity is that of action, because all of God’s
actions are acts of Love, and the Holy Spirit is the Love of God.
According to St. Maximilian, the dual role of Mary is that of instrument, or Ancilla (handmaid). In every action
of God in the order of Grace, Mary acts as an active instrument in her role as
Mediatrix. She is also active in our Redemption—both the objective
and subjective Redemption—in her role as Coredemptrix with Christ, again
as an instrument of God.
The word that Mary speaks to God is Fiat: let
it be done to me according to thy Will.
Second in the order of time in creation’s return to God, we find Jesus,
born of the Virgin Mary. Jesus is the Sun of Justice, as we know from the
Liturgy. He took on human nature, suffered, and died on the cross so that God’s
justice could be satisfied. Thus, Jesus Christ has the dual role of God’s
justice and man’s satisfaction
of God’s justice.
He is God’s justice as the Eternal Word, the Son of God the Father in
eternity. He is the satisfaction of God’s justice as the Son of man, the
Son of Mary and Joseph, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
In the words of Father Joachin Ferrer Arellano:
Although Sacred Scripture does not make use of the term satisfaction
adopted by St. Anselm … to refer to the death of
Christ, it employs equivalent concepts or those that imply and aptly express
this classic and venerable theological category taken up by the
Magisterium, not without sapiential inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus, e.g.,
for Jesus to die on behalf of the impious and sinners, means that it is in
the death of Christ where the reconciliation of sinners with God is effected,
in such a manner that, for this reason, the Death of Christ becomes the
ransom, the propitiation and expiation for our sins. The Son of man has not
come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many (Mt
20:28). ….
Last in the order of time in creation’s return to God, we find St.
Joseph, who is the icon of the Father. God the Father is the initiator of all
things, both in the uncreated and the created order. As initiator, his
role in the Blessed Trinity is especially that of holy zeal. The response of
St. Joseph to the zeal of God the Father is obedience. Holy obedience is the only fitting return
that a creature can make to God’s zeal. Moreover, far from being merely
“passive,” it is only in this perfect,
holy obedience that a true reflection of God’s zeal can be found in
a creature. We know this, because we know that St. Joseph is the perfect
icon of God the Father; and the Gospel tells us that every one of St. Joseph’s
actions were the fruit of his perfect, holy obedience. In the words of St.
Peter Julian Eymard:
When God sends an angel to charge him with
the care of Mary in spite of the mystery which surrounds her maternity and
troubles his humility, he obeys; when he is told to flee into Egypt under
painful circumstances well calculated to fill him with worry and anxiety, he
obeys without the slightest word of objection. On his return he has no
idea where to go; naturally he heads for Bethlehem since the Child had been
born there and God had not revealed otherwise. Not until he has reached
the very gates of Judea does God advise him in a dream to return to Nazareth.
Surely God could have warned him in advance, but it pleases Him to see
these sacrifices accepted out of obedience. In every situation Joseph’s
obedience is as simple as his faith, as humble as his heart, as prompt as his
love; it neglects nothing; it is universal. ….
The Strategy
In the return of all created things to God the Father, it is under the
leadership of St. Joseph, our Patriarch, and in imitation of him, that
the individual members of the Church must, by the merits gained for us
through the Redemptive Sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, be
transubstantiated into Mary … who
is the Virgo Ecclesia Facta
(the Virgin-Made-Church). ….
It is only in this way, being transubstantiated into Mary, the Created Immaculate Conception, that we can be united to God as she is uniquely united to God, being transubstantiated with her into the Uncreated Immaculate Conception, who is the Holy Spirit. In virtue of this transubstantiation, we are possessed by the Immaculate, and we are thereby formed into a single community or Church sharing her personality. In the unsurpassable words of St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, Martyr of Charity:
It is only in this way, being transubstantiated into Mary, the Created Immaculate Conception, that we can be united to God as she is uniquely united to God, being transubstantiated with her into the Uncreated Immaculate Conception, who is the Holy Spirit. In virtue of this transubstantiation, we are possessed by the Immaculate, and we are thereby formed into a single community or Church sharing her personality. In the unsurpassable words of St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, Martyr of Charity:
She is God’s. She belongs to God in a
perfect way to the extent that she is as if a part of the most Holy Trinity,
although she is a finite creature. Moreover she is not only a “handmaid,”
a “daughter,” a “property,” a “possession,” etc., but also the Mother of God!
Here one is seized with giddiness… she is almost above God, as a mother is
above her sons who must respect her. The Immaculate is a Spouse of the Holy
Spirit in an unspeakable way… She has the same Son as the heavenly Father
has. What an ineffable family! We belong to her, to the Immaculate. We are hers
without limits, most perfectly hers; we are, as it were, her. Through
our mediation she loves the good God. With our poor heart she loves her divine
Son. We become the mediators through whom the Immaculate loves Jesus. And
Jesus, considering us her property and, as it were, a part of his beloved
Mother, loves her in us and through us. What a lovely mystery!
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