Younger than Sin: The Holy Innoncence of Mary
By Br. Maximilian Anderson, OSB
St. Maximilian Kolbe was deeply devoted to Mary under her title of Immaculate Conception. Read on to see how the sinlessness of Mary inspired his mission as a priest and his sacrifice as a martyr.
This article was originally published in our December 2024 Kansas Monks newsletter. Read the whole newsletter at www.kansasmonks.org/newsletter/december2024
St. Maximilian Kolbe is probably best known for dying in the place of a married man with children who had been chosen for the starvation chamber of Auschwitz. It is, perhaps, slightly less known that Kolbe was also extremely devoted to Our Lady. He was also a gifted intellectual, teacher, and writer. He gave considerable time and energy to praying, thinking, and teaching about Mary and the mysteries of her life. One question that dogged him up to the very day of his arrest by the Gestapo was
“who are you, O Immaculate Conception?”
Here we will explore the background of this question, Kolbe’s startling answer, and what it has to do with us.
The apparition of Our Lady at Lourdes came as a confirmation of a teaching that the Church had only recently declared dogmatically in 1854. St. Bernadette had her visions at Lourdes about four years after this declaration in 1858; she saw a Lady who said “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The timing is difficult to pass over as merely coincidental and was in no way lost on Kolbe. He pondered these words for years as a friar. As he stated in the theological reflection he wrote the day of his arrest, he noted that “[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.”
December 8 is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, commemorating the fact that Mary was immaculately conceived, i.e. preserved from any and all stain of sin by the grace of her Son’s sacrifice. If this is the case, why at Lourdes did Bernadette not hear “I was immaculately conceived?” This would have been true and less perplexing for identifying herself with the grace she received sounds tantamount to claiming divinity. How can Mary say this about herself, humble as she is? Kolbe puzzled over this a long time before arriving at a solution: there is more than one Immaculate Conception and one of them is divine. This title fits perfectly with the Holy Spirit since the Holy Spirit springs forth—is conceived, if you will—from the exchange of love between the Father and the Son. This exchange is so full and fruitful that it is itself the third person of the Trinity. This is imaged by the family where the exchange of love between husband and wife is so full and fruitful as to result in an entirely new person coming into the world. So, from all eternity, the Holy Spirit is the uncreated Immaculate Conception while Mary is the created Immaculate Conception, born at a particular point in history.
This clarifies for us that the name Immaculate Conception needn’t be off-putting for sounding too much like a claim to divinity. It is a claim to divinity that applies to the Holy Spirit. This question remains: why does Mary take this and apply it to herself? Kolbe makes a connection that indicates what sort of relationship or union Mary has with the Holy Spirit. He says “it is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the ‘essence’ of the Holy Spirit.” He notes that between humans “the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all.” This union between the Holy Spirit and Mary in her soul is more intimate still and more fruitful, for by it she was able to conceive and bring forth God Himself in the flesh while mysteriously preserving her virginity. Kolbe highlights that if in married couples the wife takes her husband’s name “because she belongs to him, is one with him, becomes equal to him and is, with him, the source of new life” how much more should Mary take the Holy Spirit’s? Her relationship with the Holy Spirit is at once closer, fuller, and more fruitful than any earthly marriage. There is no comparison.
What does all this mean for us? A quotation from Diary of a Country Priest can begin to help us understand. As one priest is encouraging another in a particularly low spot, he gives a long meditative reflection on Our Lady after asking if the other prays to her as he should.
“The eyes of Our Lady are the only real child-eyes that have ever been raised to our shame and sorrow… to pray to her as you should, you must feel those eyes of hers upon you: they are not indulgent—for there is not indulgence without something of bitter experience—they are eyes of gentle pity, wondering sadness, and with something more in them, never yet known or expressed, something which makes her younger than sin, younger than the race from which she sprang, and though a mother, by grace, Mother of all grace, our little youngest sister.”
The Holy Spirit, God himself, who dwells most intimately within Mary is Beauty, ever ancient and ever new. This could be what Bernanos alludes to here. Whatever he means, we must also pray to her as we should. She is too close to God to be incapable of conquering anything for us, however great; we are too dear to her for her to dismiss any prayer of ours, however small.
Sources:
Gaitley, Michael E., MIC, 33 Days to Morning Glory: A Do-It-Yourself Retreat In Preparation for Marian Consecration. Marian Press, 2012.
Bernanos, Georges, Diary of a Country Priest. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002.
About Br. Maximilian Mary Anderson, OSB
Br. Maximilian Mary, O.S.B. is a former FOCUS missionary (and current monk). He recently became vocations director for the Abbey.