Consecration to the Immaculata - Preparation Day 1
4. DAILY MEDITATION
AND SPIRITUAL READING
Meditation: Every day we examine one aspect of the consecration
prayer. The text in italics is an excerpt from
St. Maximilian’s original commentary on the consecration
text.
Day One
O Immaculata
We address her with this title, because she herself in Lourdes
chose to state her name thus: “Immaculate Conception.” God
and each of the three divine Persons are immaculate, yet God
is not conceived. The angels are immaculate, but even in them
there is not conception. Our first parents were immaculate before
their sin, yet even they were not conceived. Jesus was immaculate
and conceived, but He was not a conception, because,
being God, He existed before time, and the words that revealed
to Moses the name of God referred to Him: “I am Who am”
[Ex 3:14], that is, the One who always exists and has no beginning.
All other people are a conception; yet, a conception stained
by sin. Only she is not merely conceived, but Conception,
and, what is more, Immaculate Conception. That name contains
many other mysteries that will be revealed in time. For
23
it marks the fact that Immaculate Conception belongs in some
way to the very essence of the Immaculate. That name must be
dear to her, for it indicates the first grace she received in the
first instant of her existence, and the first gift is always the most
welcome. This name, then, was fulfilled throughout her life, because
she was always without sin. So she was also full of grace
and God was with her (cf. Lk 1:28) always and with her to the
point that she became the Mother of the Son of God.
Explanation:
From the beginning St. Maximilian wanted to direct
us to the unique mystery of the Immaculate Conception by
comparing Mary to all others: with God Himself, with Christ,
with human beings. Conception is a concept that is difficult
to define as it encompasses so much. It is the beginning of
the existence of a being, but this beginning is the reception of
its existence from God. My conception is the moment when
God the Creator gives me everything, what I am and have,
and I receive it. I receive my soul directly from God, however
I receive my body via the mediation of my parents.
Thus it is obvious that all human beings ‘are conceived’.
But ‘because the sin of Adam is passed down to all men’, the
moment of my conception is not pure, immaculate, but stained
with original sin. God on the other hand, forever holy
and ‘immaculatus’, cannot be conceived, as he always was
24
and possesses everything within Himself. He never had a beginning
and has never ‘received’ anything from anyone.
Mary stands as it were between God and men: she was
conceived like all human beings and her conception was
the beginning of the existence. But she shares her sinlessness,
her virginity, her immaculateness with God.
This is the first grace that characterises her innermost
being. When she appears in Fatima, she answers Lucia’s
question about where she came from: “I am from Heaven”.
She does not say “I come from Heaven”, but “I am from
Heaven”, as if she wanted to say: it is my essence to be from
Heaven, I am more heavenly than earthly. Immaculata
Conceptio — the masterpiece of all creation, infinitely closer
to God than all angels and saints put together. “This
name conceals many mysteries”, indeed!
Spiritual reading:
from Fr. Stehlin’s book: “The Immaculata, our Ideal”)
Chapter: The Mystery of the Immaculata, pp. 113–123
Note: If you find the proposed texts somewhat too long,
feel free to read as much as possible within your constraints
and do not be put off from praying this novena well. If the
book is not available, you can receive an online version via
email (write to director@militia-immaculatae.info).
25
**********
CHAPTER ONE
The Mystery of the Immaculata
BEFORE ANYONE ENTERS into the wondrous world of the
Mother of God, he must realize that at this juncture he is leaving
behind the usual ways of human thinking and speaking, and above all
that he is venturing into a new spiritual world, which is inexpressibly
holy, pure, translucent and delicate. And since we are all too often
burdened with filth and our thoughts are too closely bound up with
the crude forms of the flesh and the earthly senses, we must “approach
the throne of grace” with the greatest reverence (Introit of the Mass
in Honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary). We must awaken to the
subtleties of the spirit, marvel at this undeserved miracle of being
allowed to have a glimpse of the divine world:
When you get ready to read about the Immaculata, do
not forget that you are then entering into contact with a pure
living being who is without any stain whatsoever. Consider,
too, that the words that you read are incapable of expressing
who she is, for they are human words, drawn from human
concepts, which present everything only in an earthly way,
whereas the Immaculata is a being belonging entirely to God
114
and therefore is to an infinite degree higher than everything
around you. She herself will reveal herself to you through the
sentences that you read and suggest thoughts, convictions
and feelings to you, which you could not even have imagined
on your own. Finally, be careful: The clearer your conscience
is and the more often you cleanse it through the Sacrament
of Penance, the more your concepts and notions of her will
correspond to the reality.
Recognize honestly, too, that alone, without her help, you
are incapable of knowing anything about her, and consequently
you cannot truly love her, and that she herself must
enlighten you more and more, in order to draw your heart to
herself in love. And so consider that if your spiritual reading
is to bear any fruit at all, it will depend upon prayer to her.1
One might be surprised that Maximilian Kolbe almost always
employs the same expression in speaking about the Mother of God,
an expression that formerly was not even in general use. He calls
her by the short and simple name: the Immaculata! The Immaculate
Conception is in fact the center of his whole spiritual life. Again and
again he speaks and writes about her; his whole mission is summed
up in his longing for as many souls as possible to know her, to love her,
to devote themselves to her and thus to be saved. In the final hours
before his arrest, which ended in his heroic death in Auschwitz, he
summarized his insights into the Immaculate Conception, as though
divinely inspired. Perhaps no other spoken or written words of the
saints approach the profundity of these reflections:
1 Fragment of an unfinished book about the Immaculata, January 1940, BMK,
p. 592.
115
Immaculate Conception! These words fell from the lips of
the Immaculata herself. Hence, they must tell us in the most
precise and essential manner who she really is.
Since human words in general are incapable of expressing
divine realities, it follows that the meaning of these words
[“Immaculate” and “Conception”] must be much deeper,
incomparably more profound, more beautiful and sublime
than usual: a meaning beyond that which human reason at its
most penetrating could give them.
The words of St. Paul [quoting Isaiah 64:4] can be applied
here fully: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered
into the heart of man what things God has prepared for those
who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9). Nonetheless, we can and should
reflect on the mystery of the Immaculata; we should read and
speak and write about it to the extent that our understanding
and our words are capable of doing so.
Who then art Thou, O Immaculate Conception?
Not God, because He has no conception [beginning]. Not
an angel, who was created directly out of nothing. Not Adam,
formed out of the dust of the earth, nor the Incarnate Word,
who existed before all ages, and of whom we should use the
word “conceived” rather than “conception”. The children of
Eve, however, did not exist before their conception, and so
we might call them [created] “conceptions”. But you, O Mary,
are different from all other children of Eve, too. For they are
conceptions stained by original sin, whereas you alone are the
Immaculate Conception.
Everything which exists, outside of God Himself, bears
upon and within itself some resemblance to its Creator, since
116
it is utterly and entirely from God and depends on Him in
every way; there is nothing in any creature which does not
have this resemblance, because everything is an effect of
that First Cause. It is true that the words we use to speak of
created things can express the divine perfections, but only
imperfectly, by analogy and in a limited way. Nevertheless
they are a more or less distant echo of the divine attributes, as
well as definitions of various created realities. Since there are
no exceptions to this rule, what we have just said is true also
for the word “conception”.
The Father begets the Son; the Ghost proceeds from Father
and Son. These few words sum up the mystery of the life of
the Most Holy Trinity and of all the perfections in creatures,
since the latter are nothing but a manifold echo, a hymn of
praise, a many hued depiction, of that primordial and most
wondrous of all mysteries. And so let us use the words taken
from the dictionary of creation, for we have no others. But we
must never forget that they are very imperfect words.
Who is the Father? What is His essence? It consists in
begetting, eternally: He begets the Son from the beginning,
and forever.
Who is the Son? The Begotten One, forever, from all eternity
He is begotten by the Father.
Who is the Holy Ghost? The flowering of the love of Father
and Son. The fruit of created love is a created conception (of
a new being). The fruit of Love itself, however, that prototype
of created love, is pure Conception. The Holy Ghost is,
therefore, the “uncreated, eternal Conception”, the prototype of
all conception of new life throughout the universe.
117
And so the Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Ghost
is the “conception” [that springs from Their love]; that distinguishes
these Persons from one another, whereas the same
nature unites Them, namely their divine essence.
The Ghost is, then, the most-holy, infinitely holy, undefiled
and Immaculate Conception.
Everywhere in the universe we find action and reaction.
The reaction is equal to the action but opposite: departure and
return; going away and coming back; division and reunion.
This is nothing but an image of the Most Holy Trinity in the
activity of creatures. Union means love, creative love. Divine
activity, outside the Trinity itself, follows the same pattern. First,
God creates the universe; that is something like a “separation”.
Creatures, by following the God-given natural law, reach
their perfection and become like Him. Intelligent creatures
love God consciously and in this love they unite themselves
more and more closely with Him, and “return to Him”. Now
the creature that is completely filled with this love for God
is the Immaculata, the one who is without the slightest stain
of sin, who never deviated in the least from God’s will. In an
ineffable manner she is united to the Holy Ghost as His spouse,
but “spouse” in an incomparably more perfect way than can be
predicated of any other creature.
Now what does this union consist of? It is first of all an
interior union of her essence with the essence of the Holy
Ghost. The Holy Ghost dwells in her, lives in her, from the first
moment of her existence, always and for all eternity.
In what does this life of the Ghost in Mary consist? He
Himself is uncreated Love in her: the Love of the Father and of
118
the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love
of the Most Holy Trinity. He is fruitful Love, “Conception”.
Among the creatures made in God’s image, the union brought
about by [married] love is the most intimate union of all.
Sacred Scripture says that [a man and a woman] become two
in one flesh, and the Lord Jesus emphasizes: “Therefore now
they are not two, but one flesh” (Mt 19:6). In an incomparably
more intimate, more interior, more essential manner,
the Holy Ghost lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the
depths of her very being, and makes her fruitful, from the
very first moment of her conception, all during her life, and
for all eternity.
This is the Eternal “Immaculate Conception” (which is
the Holy Ghost) in the womb [or depths] of her soul — and
her Immaculate Conception conceives the divine life in an
immaculate manner. And the virginal womb of Mary’s body
is reserved for Him [the Holy Ghost] alone, and by Him she
conceives in time (just as all material things occur in time) the
divine-human life of the God-man.
The return to God, that is to say, the equal and opposite
reaction [or response], follows the path found in the act of
creation, but in the other direction. The path of creation goes
from the Father through the Son and the Holy Ghost; but here
[in the Incarnation] through the Ghost the Son becomes flesh
in her womb, and through Him love returns to the Father.
And she (the Immaculata), enmeshed in the Love of the
Most Blessed Trinity, becomes from the first moment of her
existence and forever thereafter the “complement of the Most
Holy Trinity”.
119
In the Holy Ghost’s union with Mary it is not only love of
the two beings that unites them; we could say that the one love
[of the Ghost] is all the love of the Blessed Trinity, while the
other love [of Mary] is all the love of creation. In this union,
therefore, heaven and earth are joined; all of heaven with all
the earth, the totality of eternal love with the totality of created
love, and that is the summit of love.
At Lourdes, the Immaculata no longer called herself “the
Woman who is conceived immaculately”, but rather, as St.
Bernadette tells it: “The Lady was standing then on a wild
rosebush, in the same attitude in which she is shown on the
Miraculous Medal. When I asked the third time, her face
took on a very serious expression full of deep humility. She
folded her hands as though to pray, lifted them to her bosom,
looked up to heaven, and slowly opened her hands, bent down
towards me and said with a slightly trembling voice: ‘Que soy er’
Immaculada Councepciou’: ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’”
If among [human] creatures the wife takes the name of
her husband because she belongs to him, unites herself with
him, becomes his equal and becomes, in union with him, the
instrument through which new life is created, how much more
true this is in the case of the Holy Ghost’s name. Immaculate
Conception is the name of the Woman in whom He lives in
that Love which is fruitful for the whole supernatural order.2
2 On the morning of February 17, 1941, Fr. Maximilian dictated this article to
Brother Arnold. That same morning at 11:50 a.m. he was arrested by the Gestapo
and taken to Pawiak Prison in Warsaw. From there he was transported to the
concentration camp in Auschwitz on May 28, where he died on August 14 in the
starvation bunker from an injection of poison.
120
The Immaculata, who is so intimately taken up into the life of the
Most Holy Trinity and the redemptive work of Christ, becomes the
beginning of the return of all creation to God. And precisely this is the
real foundation of the spiritual life. Anyone who does not have this
foundation is building his house upon sand, which cannot withstand
the rainstorm and the winds (cf. Mt 7:24). St. Ignatius speaks in his
Spiritual Exercises about this principle and foundation: it consists in the
fundamental attitude of dependence upon God. Man has been created
by God, exists only in God, and finds the purpose, the meaning of his
life in his return to God. This is precisely the theme of the Immaculata
Conceptio: She is entirely of God; of all creatures she lives in the most
intimate union with the Most Holy Trinity in an immaculate way from
the first moment of her existence. She is also the first and most perfect
creature, who returns to God completely with the greatest possible
degree of love. Furthermore, she is the model and the channel for all
creatures in their return to God. In her all of creation goes back home
to Him.
Let us venture to shed some light on this great mystery. The Church
Fathers often compare Mary to a high mountain, Mount Zion, upon
which God comes down. God created the universe, the invisible world
of the angels and the visible cosmos; let us compare all creatures with
a heap of pebbles. God also created Mary in her purity and chose
her above all women to be the Mother of God; she is the mountain,
at the foot of which the pebbles lie. God created this mountain to be
completely pure, immaculate, and He came down upon the peak of
this mountain, and in the womb of this mountain God becomes man.
At the foot of the mountain, however, is the lost world of countless
sinners, soiled grains of sand. The God-man wants to save us, but our
faces are turned away from him. He wants to join us in our dereliction
121
and cleanse us in His Blood, but our doors are barred. Given this
situation, how is the creature supposed to return to God and build
his life on the true foundation? But look, the holy mountain bends
down to us, poor miserable souls, and lifts us up as a mother picks up
her child who has fallen. Tenderly she turns our faces, which we had
so stubbornly turned away, so that our eyes look upon him and his
eyes upon us. Quietly and gently she moves aside the rubbish with
which we had barred the doors to our souls and opens them. She is
permitted to do this, because God wills it so, because God has created
her that way. The Immaculate Conception is the atmosphere in which
man can breathe again after being suffocated by the polluted air of
the world. And now the God-man can go to work, whereas we are
allowed — always and exclusively in her — to rebuild our lives on the
foundation of truth. In truth we are now united with her like the child
with its mother, like the pebble with the great mountain — creatures
of God, in God and for God.
And this miracle occurs not only at the beginning of our Christian
life. Her Immaculate Conception is always the beginning of our
“spotlessness”.
In Lourdes the Immaculate Virgin replied to St. Bernadette:
“I am the Immaculate Conception.” With these words
she clearly stated the fact that she is not only immaculately
conceived, but is the Immaculate Conception. Similarly
a white thing is something different from being-white itself;
a perfect thing is something different from perfection itself.
When God spoke about himself, He said to Moses, “I am who
I am,” that is: it belongs to my essence that I always have my
being in and of myself, without beginning. In contrast, the
122
Immaculate Virgin has her beginning in God; she is a creature,
is a conception. And yet she is the Immaculate Conception.3
In other words, the Mother of God is not only immaculate herself,
but she also imparts her “spotlessness” to us. To the extent that she
permeates our existence and we belong to her, she transforms us, so
that we come to resemble her more and more. In this regard St. Louis-
-Marie de Montfort uses the image of an apple:
It is as if a poor peasant, wishing to win the friendship and
favour of the king, were to go to the queen and give her an
apple — his only possession — for her to offer it to the king.
The queen, accepting the peasant’s humble gift, puts it on
a beautiful golden dish and presents it to the king on behalf
of the peasant. The apple in itself would not be a gift worthy
of a king, but presented by the queen in person on a dish of
gold, it becomes fit for any king.4
One might take this comparison still further and imagine that the
peasant brought a rotten apple as his gift. The Immaculata now places
this apple on the golden dish along with her own splendid fruits.
And since she has the grace of being the Immaculate Conception,
she imparts her spotlessness to the rotten fruit, and behold, through
coming into contact with her, transformed by her, the apple becomes
fresh, pure and sound.
3 “Miles Immaculatæ” 1 (1938), pp. 8–9.
4 St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion…, paragraph 147.
123
All of our pitiful acts of love ultimately are directed to the
Eternal Father as their final goal, but in the Immaculata they
receive an immaculate purity, and in the Son an infinite value,
worthy of the Most-Holy Majesty of the Father! When the
soul ponders this, how much more readily will it be kindled
with love for Jesus and Mary. The soul, then, commends its
acts of love to the Immaculata, but not in the way that one
hands over an object to an ordinary middleman, but rather
as her property, as her unconditional possession. Thus the
Immaculata gives these acts to Jesus as her own, immaculate,
without stain, and He gives them to the Father. And so the
soul becomes more and more united with the Immaculata,
just as the Immaculata is completely united with Jesus, and
Jesus is one with the Father.5
5 Fragment of an unfinished book about the Immaculata, January 1940, BMK,
p. 592.
AND SPIRITUAL READING
Meditation: Every day we examine one aspect of the consecration
prayer. The text in italics is an excerpt from
St. Maximilian’s original commentary on the consecration
text.
Day One
O Immaculata
We address her with this title, because she herself in Lourdes
chose to state her name thus: “Immaculate Conception.” God
and each of the three divine Persons are immaculate, yet God
is not conceived. The angels are immaculate, but even in them
there is not conception. Our first parents were immaculate before
their sin, yet even they were not conceived. Jesus was immaculate
and conceived, but He was not a conception, because,
being God, He existed before time, and the words that revealed
to Moses the name of God referred to Him: “I am Who am”
[Ex 3:14], that is, the One who always exists and has no beginning.
All other people are a conception; yet, a conception stained
by sin. Only she is not merely conceived, but Conception,
and, what is more, Immaculate Conception. That name contains
many other mysteries that will be revealed in time. For
23
it marks the fact that Immaculate Conception belongs in some
way to the very essence of the Immaculate. That name must be
dear to her, for it indicates the first grace she received in the
first instant of her existence, and the first gift is always the most
welcome. This name, then, was fulfilled throughout her life, because
she was always without sin. So she was also full of grace
and God was with her (cf. Lk 1:28) always and with her to the
point that she became the Mother of the Son of God.
Explanation:
From the beginning St. Maximilian wanted to direct
us to the unique mystery of the Immaculate Conception by
comparing Mary to all others: with God Himself, with Christ,
with human beings. Conception is a concept that is difficult
to define as it encompasses so much. It is the beginning of
the existence of a being, but this beginning is the reception of
its existence from God. My conception is the moment when
God the Creator gives me everything, what I am and have,
and I receive it. I receive my soul directly from God, however
I receive my body via the mediation of my parents.
Thus it is obvious that all human beings ‘are conceived’.
But ‘because the sin of Adam is passed down to all men’, the
moment of my conception is not pure, immaculate, but stained
with original sin. God on the other hand, forever holy
and ‘immaculatus’, cannot be conceived, as he always was
24
and possesses everything within Himself. He never had a beginning
and has never ‘received’ anything from anyone.
Mary stands as it were between God and men: she was
conceived like all human beings and her conception was
the beginning of the existence. But she shares her sinlessness,
her virginity, her immaculateness with God.
This is the first grace that characterises her innermost
being. When she appears in Fatima, she answers Lucia’s
question about where she came from: “I am from Heaven”.
She does not say “I come from Heaven”, but “I am from
Heaven”, as if she wanted to say: it is my essence to be from
Heaven, I am more heavenly than earthly. Immaculata
Conceptio — the masterpiece of all creation, infinitely closer
to God than all angels and saints put together. “This
name conceals many mysteries”, indeed!
Spiritual reading:
from Fr. Stehlin’s book: “The Immaculata, our Ideal”)
Chapter: The Mystery of the Immaculata, pp. 113–123
Note: If you find the proposed texts somewhat too long,
feel free to read as much as possible within your constraints
and do not be put off from praying this novena well. If the
book is not available, you can receive an online version via
email (write to director@militia-immaculatae.info).
25
**********
CHAPTER ONE
The Mystery of the Immaculata
BEFORE ANYONE ENTERS into the wondrous world of the
Mother of God, he must realize that at this juncture he is leaving
behind the usual ways of human thinking and speaking, and above all
that he is venturing into a new spiritual world, which is inexpressibly
holy, pure, translucent and delicate. And since we are all too often
burdened with filth and our thoughts are too closely bound up with
the crude forms of the flesh and the earthly senses, we must “approach
the throne of grace” with the greatest reverence (Introit of the Mass
in Honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary). We must awaken to the
subtleties of the spirit, marvel at this undeserved miracle of being
allowed to have a glimpse of the divine world:
When you get ready to read about the Immaculata, do
not forget that you are then entering into contact with a pure
living being who is without any stain whatsoever. Consider,
too, that the words that you read are incapable of expressing
who she is, for they are human words, drawn from human
concepts, which present everything only in an earthly way,
whereas the Immaculata is a being belonging entirely to God
114
and therefore is to an infinite degree higher than everything
around you. She herself will reveal herself to you through the
sentences that you read and suggest thoughts, convictions
and feelings to you, which you could not even have imagined
on your own. Finally, be careful: The clearer your conscience
is and the more often you cleanse it through the Sacrament
of Penance, the more your concepts and notions of her will
correspond to the reality.
Recognize honestly, too, that alone, without her help, you
are incapable of knowing anything about her, and consequently
you cannot truly love her, and that she herself must
enlighten you more and more, in order to draw your heart to
herself in love. And so consider that if your spiritual reading
is to bear any fruit at all, it will depend upon prayer to her.1
One might be surprised that Maximilian Kolbe almost always
employs the same expression in speaking about the Mother of God,
an expression that formerly was not even in general use. He calls
her by the short and simple name: the Immaculata! The Immaculate
Conception is in fact the center of his whole spiritual life. Again and
again he speaks and writes about her; his whole mission is summed
up in his longing for as many souls as possible to know her, to love her,
to devote themselves to her and thus to be saved. In the final hours
before his arrest, which ended in his heroic death in Auschwitz, he
summarized his insights into the Immaculate Conception, as though
divinely inspired. Perhaps no other spoken or written words of the
saints approach the profundity of these reflections:
1 Fragment of an unfinished book about the Immaculata, January 1940, BMK,
p. 592.
115
Immaculate Conception! These words fell from the lips of
the Immaculata herself. Hence, they must tell us in the most
precise and essential manner who she really is.
Since human words in general are incapable of expressing
divine realities, it follows that the meaning of these words
[“Immaculate” and “Conception”] must be much deeper,
incomparably more profound, more beautiful and sublime
than usual: a meaning beyond that which human reason at its
most penetrating could give them.
The words of St. Paul [quoting Isaiah 64:4] can be applied
here fully: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered
into the heart of man what things God has prepared for those
who love Him” (1 Cor. 2:9). Nonetheless, we can and should
reflect on the mystery of the Immaculata; we should read and
speak and write about it to the extent that our understanding
and our words are capable of doing so.
Who then art Thou, O Immaculate Conception?
Not God, because He has no conception [beginning]. Not
an angel, who was created directly out of nothing. Not Adam,
formed out of the dust of the earth, nor the Incarnate Word,
who existed before all ages, and of whom we should use the
word “conceived” rather than “conception”. The children of
Eve, however, did not exist before their conception, and so
we might call them [created] “conceptions”. But you, O Mary,
are different from all other children of Eve, too. For they are
conceptions stained by original sin, whereas you alone are the
Immaculate Conception.
Everything which exists, outside of God Himself, bears
upon and within itself some resemblance to its Creator, since
116
it is utterly and entirely from God and depends on Him in
every way; there is nothing in any creature which does not
have this resemblance, because everything is an effect of
that First Cause. It is true that the words we use to speak of
created things can express the divine perfections, but only
imperfectly, by analogy and in a limited way. Nevertheless
they are a more or less distant echo of the divine attributes, as
well as definitions of various created realities. Since there are
no exceptions to this rule, what we have just said is true also
for the word “conception”.
The Father begets the Son; the Ghost proceeds from Father
and Son. These few words sum up the mystery of the life of
the Most Holy Trinity and of all the perfections in creatures,
since the latter are nothing but a manifold echo, a hymn of
praise, a many hued depiction, of that primordial and most
wondrous of all mysteries. And so let us use the words taken
from the dictionary of creation, for we have no others. But we
must never forget that they are very imperfect words.
Who is the Father? What is His essence? It consists in
begetting, eternally: He begets the Son from the beginning,
and forever.
Who is the Son? The Begotten One, forever, from all eternity
He is begotten by the Father.
Who is the Holy Ghost? The flowering of the love of Father
and Son. The fruit of created love is a created conception (of
a new being). The fruit of Love itself, however, that prototype
of created love, is pure Conception. The Holy Ghost is,
therefore, the “uncreated, eternal Conception”, the prototype of
all conception of new life throughout the universe.
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And so the Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Ghost
is the “conception” [that springs from Their love]; that distinguishes
these Persons from one another, whereas the same
nature unites Them, namely their divine essence.
The Ghost is, then, the most-holy, infinitely holy, undefiled
and Immaculate Conception.
Everywhere in the universe we find action and reaction.
The reaction is equal to the action but opposite: departure and
return; going away and coming back; division and reunion.
This is nothing but an image of the Most Holy Trinity in the
activity of creatures. Union means love, creative love. Divine
activity, outside the Trinity itself, follows the same pattern. First,
God creates the universe; that is something like a “separation”.
Creatures, by following the God-given natural law, reach
their perfection and become like Him. Intelligent creatures
love God consciously and in this love they unite themselves
more and more closely with Him, and “return to Him”. Now
the creature that is completely filled with this love for God
is the Immaculata, the one who is without the slightest stain
of sin, who never deviated in the least from God’s will. In an
ineffable manner she is united to the Holy Ghost as His spouse,
but “spouse” in an incomparably more perfect way than can be
predicated of any other creature.
Now what does this union consist of? It is first of all an
interior union of her essence with the essence of the Holy
Ghost. The Holy Ghost dwells in her, lives in her, from the first
moment of her existence, always and for all eternity.
In what does this life of the Ghost in Mary consist? He
Himself is uncreated Love in her: the Love of the Father and of
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the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love
of the Most Holy Trinity. He is fruitful Love, “Conception”.
Among the creatures made in God’s image, the union brought
about by [married] love is the most intimate union of all.
Sacred Scripture says that [a man and a woman] become two
in one flesh, and the Lord Jesus emphasizes: “Therefore now
they are not two, but one flesh” (Mt 19:6). In an incomparably
more intimate, more interior, more essential manner,
the Holy Ghost lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the
depths of her very being, and makes her fruitful, from the
very first moment of her conception, all during her life, and
for all eternity.
This is the Eternal “Immaculate Conception” (which is
the Holy Ghost) in the womb [or depths] of her soul — and
her Immaculate Conception conceives the divine life in an
immaculate manner. And the virginal womb of Mary’s body
is reserved for Him [the Holy Ghost] alone, and by Him she
conceives in time (just as all material things occur in time) the
divine-human life of the God-man.
The return to God, that is to say, the equal and opposite
reaction [or response], follows the path found in the act of
creation, but in the other direction. The path of creation goes
from the Father through the Son and the Holy Ghost; but here
[in the Incarnation] through the Ghost the Son becomes flesh
in her womb, and through Him love returns to the Father.
And she (the Immaculata), enmeshed in the Love of the
Most Blessed Trinity, becomes from the first moment of her
existence and forever thereafter the “complement of the Most
Holy Trinity”.
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In the Holy Ghost’s union with Mary it is not only love of
the two beings that unites them; we could say that the one love
[of the Ghost] is all the love of the Blessed Trinity, while the
other love [of Mary] is all the love of creation. In this union,
therefore, heaven and earth are joined; all of heaven with all
the earth, the totality of eternal love with the totality of created
love, and that is the summit of love.
At Lourdes, the Immaculata no longer called herself “the
Woman who is conceived immaculately”, but rather, as St.
Bernadette tells it: “The Lady was standing then on a wild
rosebush, in the same attitude in which she is shown on the
Miraculous Medal. When I asked the third time, her face
took on a very serious expression full of deep humility. She
folded her hands as though to pray, lifted them to her bosom,
looked up to heaven, and slowly opened her hands, bent down
towards me and said with a slightly trembling voice: ‘Que soy er’
Immaculada Councepciou’: ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’”
If among [human] creatures the wife takes the name of
her husband because she belongs to him, unites herself with
him, becomes his equal and becomes, in union with him, the
instrument through which new life is created, how much more
true this is in the case of the Holy Ghost’s name. Immaculate
Conception is the name of the Woman in whom He lives in
that Love which is fruitful for the whole supernatural order.2
2 On the morning of February 17, 1941, Fr. Maximilian dictated this article to
Brother Arnold. That same morning at 11:50 a.m. he was arrested by the Gestapo
and taken to Pawiak Prison in Warsaw. From there he was transported to the
concentration camp in Auschwitz on May 28, where he died on August 14 in the
starvation bunker from an injection of poison.
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The Immaculata, who is so intimately taken up into the life of the
Most Holy Trinity and the redemptive work of Christ, becomes the
beginning of the return of all creation to God. And precisely this is the
real foundation of the spiritual life. Anyone who does not have this
foundation is building his house upon sand, which cannot withstand
the rainstorm and the winds (cf. Mt 7:24). St. Ignatius speaks in his
Spiritual Exercises about this principle and foundation: it consists in the
fundamental attitude of dependence upon God. Man has been created
by God, exists only in God, and finds the purpose, the meaning of his
life in his return to God. This is precisely the theme of the Immaculata
Conceptio: She is entirely of God; of all creatures she lives in the most
intimate union with the Most Holy Trinity in an immaculate way from
the first moment of her existence. She is also the first and most perfect
creature, who returns to God completely with the greatest possible
degree of love. Furthermore, she is the model and the channel for all
creatures in their return to God. In her all of creation goes back home
to Him.
Let us venture to shed some light on this great mystery. The Church
Fathers often compare Mary to a high mountain, Mount Zion, upon
which God comes down. God created the universe, the invisible world
of the angels and the visible cosmos; let us compare all creatures with
a heap of pebbles. God also created Mary in her purity and chose
her above all women to be the Mother of God; she is the mountain,
at the foot of which the pebbles lie. God created this mountain to be
completely pure, immaculate, and He came down upon the peak of
this mountain, and in the womb of this mountain God becomes man.
At the foot of the mountain, however, is the lost world of countless
sinners, soiled grains of sand. The God-man wants to save us, but our
faces are turned away from him. He wants to join us in our dereliction
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and cleanse us in His Blood, but our doors are barred. Given this
situation, how is the creature supposed to return to God and build
his life on the true foundation? But look, the holy mountain bends
down to us, poor miserable souls, and lifts us up as a mother picks up
her child who has fallen. Tenderly she turns our faces, which we had
so stubbornly turned away, so that our eyes look upon him and his
eyes upon us. Quietly and gently she moves aside the rubbish with
which we had barred the doors to our souls and opens them. She is
permitted to do this, because God wills it so, because God has created
her that way. The Immaculate Conception is the atmosphere in which
man can breathe again after being suffocated by the polluted air of
the world. And now the God-man can go to work, whereas we are
allowed — always and exclusively in her — to rebuild our lives on the
foundation of truth. In truth we are now united with her like the child
with its mother, like the pebble with the great mountain — creatures
of God, in God and for God.
And this miracle occurs not only at the beginning of our Christian
life. Her Immaculate Conception is always the beginning of our
“spotlessness”.
In Lourdes the Immaculate Virgin replied to St. Bernadette:
“I am the Immaculate Conception.” With these words
she clearly stated the fact that she is not only immaculately
conceived, but is the Immaculate Conception. Similarly
a white thing is something different from being-white itself;
a perfect thing is something different from perfection itself.
When God spoke about himself, He said to Moses, “I am who
I am,” that is: it belongs to my essence that I always have my
being in and of myself, without beginning. In contrast, the
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Immaculate Virgin has her beginning in God; she is a creature,
is a conception. And yet she is the Immaculate Conception.3
In other words, the Mother of God is not only immaculate herself,
but she also imparts her “spotlessness” to us. To the extent that she
permeates our existence and we belong to her, she transforms us, so
that we come to resemble her more and more. In this regard St. Louis-
-Marie de Montfort uses the image of an apple:
It is as if a poor peasant, wishing to win the friendship and
favour of the king, were to go to the queen and give her an
apple — his only possession — for her to offer it to the king.
The queen, accepting the peasant’s humble gift, puts it on
a beautiful golden dish and presents it to the king on behalf
of the peasant. The apple in itself would not be a gift worthy
of a king, but presented by the queen in person on a dish of
gold, it becomes fit for any king.4
One might take this comparison still further and imagine that the
peasant brought a rotten apple as his gift. The Immaculata now places
this apple on the golden dish along with her own splendid fruits.
And since she has the grace of being the Immaculate Conception,
she imparts her spotlessness to the rotten fruit, and behold, through
coming into contact with her, transformed by her, the apple becomes
fresh, pure and sound.
3 “Miles Immaculatæ” 1 (1938), pp. 8–9.
4 St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion…, paragraph 147.
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All of our pitiful acts of love ultimately are directed to the
Eternal Father as their final goal, but in the Immaculata they
receive an immaculate purity, and in the Son an infinite value,
worthy of the Most-Holy Majesty of the Father! When the
soul ponders this, how much more readily will it be kindled
with love for Jesus and Mary. The soul, then, commends its
acts of love to the Immaculata, but not in the way that one
hands over an object to an ordinary middleman, but rather
as her property, as her unconditional possession. Thus the
Immaculata gives these acts to Jesus as her own, immaculate,
without stain, and He gives them to the Father. And so the
soul becomes more and more united with the Immaculata,
just as the Immaculata is completely united with Jesus, and
Jesus is one with the Father.5
5 Fragment of an unfinished book about the Immaculata, January 1940, BMK,
p. 592.