continuation...

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

She is God's instrument. With full consciousness and total willingness she allows God to govern her; she consents to his will, desires only what He desires, and acts according to his will in the most perfect manner, without failing, without ever turning aside fro his will. She makes perfect use of the powers and privileges God had given her, so as to fulfill always and in everything whatever God wants of her, purely for love of God, One and Three. This love of God reaches such a peak that it bears the divine fruits proper to God's own love. Her love for God brings her to such a union with him that she becomes the Mother of God. The Father confides to her his Son; the Son descends into her womb; and the Holy Spirit fashions out of her perfectly pure body the very Body of Jesus.

Mary's Immaculate Conception constituted her the most perfect of creatures in view of her future role of advancing the Mission of the Son. Kolbe wrote of the interconnection between Immaculate Conception and Divine Motherhood: "She was Immaculate because she was to become the Mother of God; she became the Mother of God because she was immaculate. " Mary's conception of Jesus Christ is seen by Kolbe in the light of the relationship which she already had with God by reason of her Immaculate Conception-sub luce Immaculatae, if you will: "The Immaculata becomes the Mother of God. The fruit of the love of his trinitarian life and of Mary the Immaculata, is Christ the God-Man."

Her role in the Mission of the Son advances, in Kolbe's view, from motherhood to mediation. Carefully he delineates her mediation (bound up with that of the Holy Spirit) in its relationship to the unique mediation of Christ:

Just as the Son from all eternity is like a Mediator between the Father and the Holy Spirit, so , too, Jesus, the Incarnate Son becomes the direct Mediator between the Father and the Holy Siprit- as he is in a sense incarnated-in the Immaculata, the Representative and Spiritual Mother of the human race.

As is evident from these cursory glimpses into Kolbe's thought, the relationship of Mary to Christ-as mother and mediatrix-hinges on her relationship to the Holy Spirit qua Immaculata. Once again sub luce Immaculatae, Kolbe colors the traditional doctrine with a more personalist and manifestly relational hue.

From these considerations of the relationship of the Immaculate Conception to the Missions of the Second and Third Divine Persons, the third salient feature of Kolbe's mariology that I wish to treat emerges: the relationship of the Immaculate Conception to the Holy trinity. Kolbe's explicit trinitarian synthesis began taking place during the years of his life as a missionary in Japan, 1930-36--years noted by his biographers as ones of intense mystical experience.

Out of Kolbe's mystical intuitions came the gradually refined understanding of Mary Immaculate as "complement" of the Holy Trinity. He did not invent this phrase; it derives from writings of the Fathers of the Church (e.g., the Fifth Century Hesychius of Jerusalem), as Kolbe himself explained in 1935:

"The Immaculate is a person so sublime, so close to the Most Holy Trinity that one of the Fathers did not hesitate to call her "complementum Sanctissimae Trinitatis."

Kolbe sees the Immacualte as the fullest exemplification of the trinitarian life among creatures: She is steeped in love of the Holy Trinity, becomes from the first moment of Her conception and forever the "fulfillment." the "completion" of the Holy Trinity. In the union of the Holy Spirit with her Her, love unites not only two beings, but one that is the entire love of the Trinity, the other the entire love of a creature, and in this union heaven and earth are united-the height of love is achieved.