I Am The Immaculate Conception - the dilemma that St. Maximilian Kolbe Had

The Holy Spirit is the Immaculate Conception.

Mary says, "I am the Immaculate Conception."

Mary doesn't lie.

What is going on here? Is there a contradiction?

Can they both be the Immaculate Conception?

An excerpt from: 

St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Immaculate Conception

In 1858, four years after Bl. Pius IX defined the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to little fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous a total of eighteen times at Lourdes, France. For St. Maximilian, the words Our Lady spoke to St. Bernadette, "Que soy era immaculada councepciou" ("I am the Immaculate Conception"), contain an unfathomable mystery that haunted him[St. Maximilan Kolbe], as it were, for his entire adult life. Writing in 1933, he said:

Who and what is the Immaculata? Who can understand her perfectly? . . . We all understand what "mother" means; but "mother of God" is something that our reason and our limited intellect cannot really grasp. So too, only God really understands what "immaculate" means. "Conceived without sin" we can fathom up to a point; but "Immaculate Conception" is an expression that abounds in the most consoling of mysteries.⁹

In his writings on the "Immaculata" (the name he used for Mary under the title, Immaculate Conception), he would often ask, "Who are you?" For Our Lady did not say "I was immaculately conceived," but rather identified herself, her very being ("I am") with the "Immaculate Conception." Kolbe says these words of Mary "point up not only the fact that she was conceived without sin, but also the manner in which this privilege belongs to her. It is not something accidental; it is something that belongs to her very nature. For she is Immaculate Conception in person."¹⁰

The above words are taken from the Polish Martyr's last writing, a few hours before his final arrest by the Nazis on February 17, 1941, when he would be taken to Auschwitz and eventually be killed by lethal injection after offering his life in place of a fellow prisoner. In this same "Final Sketch" Kolbe arrived at a profound insight, an "answer" it seems (at least in part) to his persistent question, "Who are you, Immaculata?": he calls Mary the created Immaculate Conception, created sinless and from conception uniquely filled with an abundance of grace, in order to be made superabundantly fruitful when she would become the Mother of God through the work of the Holy Spirit. As Kolbe says: "He [the Holy Spirit] makes her fruitful, from the very first instant of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity."¹¹ Additionally, he calls the Holy Spirit the Uncreated, Eternal Immaculate Conception, who is "conceived" from the love that flows eternally between the Father and the Son; a love so perfect that it is personified. Kolbe explains:

Everything that exists, outside of God himself, since it is from God and depends upon him in every way, bears within itself some semblance to its Creator . . . because every created thing is an effect of the Primal Cause. 

It is true that the words we use to speak of created realities express the divine perfections only in a halting, limited and analogical manner. They are only a more or less distant echo — as are created realities that they signify — of the properties of God himself.

Would not "conception" be an exception to this rule? No, there is never any exception . . .

And who is the Holy Spirit? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. If the fruit of created love is a created conception, then the fruit of divine Love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a divine "conception." The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the "uncreated, eternal conception," the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.¹²

In other writings the Polish friar attempts to describe Mary's deep, intimate union with the Third Person of the Trinity from her conception, by calling Mary the "quasi-incarnation" of the Holy Spirit.¹³ He is careful to stress that this union "is not of the same order as the hypostatic union linking the human and divine natures in Christ";¹⁴ for he repeated often that the Holy Spirit does not dwell in Mary in the same way in which the Eternal Word is present in the sacred humanity of Jesus.¹⁵ The notion of the Holy Spirit becoming "in some manner" (quasi) incarnate in Mary may at first seem to be an extreme idea. However, it is somewhat analogous to the statement by St. Louis de Montfort, that "God the Son wishes to form himself, and in a manner of speaking, become incarnate every day in his members through his dear Mother."¹⁶ Along the same lines, St. Paul says: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).

With the term "quasi-incarnation" Kolbe means that Mary is so much like (quasi) the Holy Spirit, in that she reflects the Third Person of the Trinity especially in two qualities or attributes: receptivity and fruitfulness. The Holy Spirit is the Fruit of the Father and the Son. He was "eternally conceived," if you will, as the Fruit of the all-pure love which has forever flowed between the Father and the Son. He receives the mutual love of the Father and the Son and eternally fructifies it within the inner life of the Trinity.¹⁷ Mary's sinlessness from conception is the fruit of God's love. At Mary's conception the Holy Spirit conformed her to himself. The Blessed Virgin, by reason of the singular grace of her Immaculate Conception, is totally receptive to the love of God. At the Annunciation she receives God's love and in cooperation with the Holy Spirit makes that love fruitful — infinitely so — in conceiving the Incarnate Word.¹⁸

Mary's receptivity and fruitfulness did not end with the Conception and Birth of Christ. Now in Heaven, Mary remains the living, human conduit for the graces that the Holy Spirit distributes to us. As Kolbe says:

[T]he Holy Spirit manifests his share in the word of Redemption through the Immaculate Virgin who, although she is a person entirely distinct from him, is so intimately associated with him that our minds cannot understand it. So, while their union is not of the same order as the hypostatic union linking the human and divine natures in Christ, it remains true to say that Mary's action is the very action of the Holy Spirit.¹⁹

St. Maximilian sees Mary's ineffable union with the Holy Spirit from the very first instant of her conception as giving her a privileged place in God's saving plan. In keeping with what God has revealed in Scripture and Tradition regarding Mary's intercessory role in the order of grace, he says:

When we reflect on these two truths: that all graces come from the Father by the Son and the Holy Spirit; and that our Holy Mother Mary is, so to speak, one with the Holy Spirit, we are driven to the conclusion that this Most Holy Mother is indeed the intermediary by whom all graces come to us.²⁰

All of God's grace comes to us through Mary's intercession. This is the "descending" order of grace. For Kolbe, there is a corresponding "ascending" order, for Mary is our means for going to God: "Have no doubt that her will is entirely united to God's will. It is a matter, then, of uniting our will to hers, and thus we will be united to God through her."²¹ The Polish Saint sees uniting oneself to Mary as the means of conquering the world for Christ.