continuation...

The Mariology of St. Maximilian M. Kolbe
by Fr. James McCurry, O.F.M. Conv.

I have quoted this passage at great length to indicate the careful, step-by-step reasoning of Kolbe as he attempts to describe two realities in more "personal" language than ever before: A) the second procession within the Trinity (ad intra); B) the Mission of the Spirit outside the Trinity (ad extra). Kolbe attempts to recast the traditional terminology in a more "personal" light by calling the second procession a "conception," and by characterizing the first instance of the Holy Spirit's Mission ad extra as the intimate interpersonal union of the two "conceptions," one divine (the Holy Spirit), and one human (Mary), both Immacualte.

In earlier conferences on the nature of the bond between Mary and the Holy Spirit, Kolbe lamented the fact that even the phrase "Spouse of the Holy Spirit" seemed inadequate to express the depth of their interpersonal bond:

The third Person of the Blessed Trinity never took flesh; still our human word "spouse" is far too weak to express the reality of the relationship between the Immaculata and the Holy Spirit. We can affirm that she is , in a certain sense, the "incarnation" of the Holy Spirit.

It is important to note immediately that Kolbe qualifies his attribution of the word "incarnation" here by the phrase "in a certain sense." Elsewhere he speaks fo the Holy Spirit as "quasi-in-carnatus" in the Immaculate, again using the all-essential qualifier "quasi" as he boldly stretches human language to its limits in attemption to describe an ineffable reality as "personally" as possible. Constantly maintaining that only the Son, not the Holy Spirit, was truly made man in Mary, Kolbe attempts nonetheless to specify the unique personal way in which the Holy Spirit indwells in Mary Immaculate as in a sanctuary or temple which becomes much more than an impersonal shell.

Lest anyone confuse or misinterpret his meaning, Kobe carefully asserts that Mary's intimate union with the Holy Spirit is a union of two persons with two natures; it is not of the same ilk as the Hypostatic Union in which the Second Person of the Trinity assumed a human nature.

In this regard Kolbe wrote: The Holy Spirit is in the Immaculate as the Second Pweson of the Most Holy Trinity is in Jesus, but with this difference: There are in Jesus two natures, the divine and the human, and one sole person, the divine. The nature and person of the Immaculate are distinct from the nature and person of the Holy Spirit

Why would Kobe get into such linguistic gymnastics? Not simply, I suspect, to accentuate the personal intimacy between Mary and the Spirit, though that is certainly part of the picture, as we have just seen. More significantly, Kolbe's overriding Franciscan objective--the divinization of the world in and through the Immaculate would be illumined by these new insights. Kolbe came to realize that in the Divine Economy the Mission of the Holy Spirit and the commission given by God to the Immaculate were inseparable. The Immaculate would be the tangible terminus which the Divine Person of the Holy Spirit would make his base of operations. As the immediate term of the Mission of the Spirit, Mary Immaculate would become the focus for the Spirit's sanctifying/divinizing operation among creatures-akin to the way in which Jesus's humanity had served as term of the Mission of the Son and consequently locus of the Son's saving work. It is in this light that Kolbe states: "The Holy Spirit acts solely through the Immaculate; consequently she is the Mediatrix of all the graces of the Holy Spirit.

From the foregoing glimpse at Kolbe's reflections of the relationship of the Immaculate Conception to the Mission of the Spirit, access is facilitated to the second salient feature of Kolbean mariology which I wish to note: the relationship of the Immaculate Conception to the Mission of the Son. The Scotistic underpinnings of Kolbe's thought are evident here and color his perspective on her Divine Motherhood and on her Mediation.

One of his many texts on the subject should suffice as illustrative of his view:

Of herself, Mary is nothing, even as all other creatures are; but by God's gift she is the most perfect of creatures, the most perfect image of God's divine being in a purely human creature...