We call her Mother, but an earthly mother is not free from weakness. For that reason the constitutions of men make mention of the laws of children towards parents. Whereas this is a mother without stain, immaculate, and therefore any reservation on the part of the child would cause her unspeakable displeasure and wrong, for it would contain the supposition that even a shadow of stain is not impossible in her. Quite the contrary, the child dedicated to her desires that she use him and wear him out; he desires to be consumed for her.
We name her Lady, but this title places us at a distance from her maternal heart. We call her Queen, but here we must add that she is the Queen of hearts, the Queen of love. Her law is love, and her power is motherly love. These and similar explanations, although they are brought forward without end, will not even tell a part of what the soul feels when it is consumed by love of her. It experiences in itself that the Immaculata belongs to it more and more under every aspect, and yet realizes that these are but the beginnings of knowing and loving her. You will draw more knowledge about her and will be more inflamed with her love directly from her heart than from all human words put together.
Human words do not have the power to relate who she is- the real Mother of God. In reality, she is only a creature, but she is such a sublime being made by God that one would have to grasp what God is, in order to understand who the Mother of God is. She is the real Mother of God. That is a dogma of faith. She is not a mother in name only. A mother is not the parent of only a part of her child, neither is the father the parent of a part, but both the father and the mother are the parents of the whole child. And so the Blessed Mother is rightly the Mother of the whole Jesus, the God-man, and therefore the Mother of God. Although the dignity of her maternity constitutes the principle reason for all her privileges, the first grace she received from God was her Immaculate Conception: freedom from every stain, even of original sin from the first moment of her existence.
Where then is her place, and at the same time ours- we who are her property, her possession, hers? She penetrates our soul and sovereignly directs its faculties. We are truly hers. Therefore always, everywhere we are with her. But what are we to think of ourselves! Let us disappear in her. Let her alone remain and we in her, a part of her. Is it permitted to miserable creatures like us to talk such nonsense? And yet it is the truth, an actuality. When will every soul on the face of the whole earth, even until the end of the world, belong in such a manner to her? MI. MI. MI.
This truth that the Mother of God did not contract any stain of original sin from the first moment of her existence, was generally believed by all the faithful from the beginning of the Church and expressed in the sentiment that the Blessed Virgin was most pure, purer than the angels, without the least sin, and so on.
From the Father through the Son and Spirit descends each act of the love of God, creating, sustaining in existence, giving life and its development both in the order of nature as well as in the order of grace. In such a manner does God bestow his love on countless finite images. And by no other way does the return of the reaction of the creature's love ascend to the Father except through the Spirit and the Son. This does not always happen consciously, but always really. No one else but the same God is the author of the act of love in creatures. But the act does not take place without the creature's free will and consent. The height of a creature's love returning to God is the Immaculata- a being without stain of sin, wholly beautiful, wholly belonging to God. Not even for a moment did her will bend away from the will of God.
The Immaculata is someone so sublime, so close to the most Holy Trinity that one of the Holy Fathers did not hesitate to call her complementum Sanctissimae Trinitatis, i.e., complement of the most Holy Trinity. No wonder, then, the human, finite mind loses itself when it attempts to fathom her mystery, and the presumptuous head grows more stupid. Let everyone at Marytown know about these things.
The most important work entrusted to humanity, that is, the bearing and upbringing of Jesus, God entrusted to the most Blessed Mother. Therefore, can there be any comparison of the most Blessed Mother with other saints? There is none. From the divine motherhood flow all the graces bestowed upon the Holy Virgin Mary. The first of these is the Immaculate Conception. This privilege must be very dear to her since she said at Lourdes, 'I am the Immaculate Conception.' By this name so dear to her heart we wish to call her.
In order to understand more accurately who the Immaculata is, it is absolutely necessary to admit one's total nothingness, to bring oneself to humble prayer in order to gain the grace of knowing her, and to endeavor personally to experience her goodness and power."
We have just begun to break the surface of St. Maximilian Kolbe's writings, and look forward to next Monday. Until then, take some extra time each day to pray that we might all understand the workings of the Immaculata in our lives; that she would teach us to be pure, and help us unite our will to that of Our Blessed Lord. Our Lady of Fatima, Ora Pro Nobis!
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