St John Paul the Great called St Maximilian Kolbe ‘the apostle of a new Marian era’. What did this saint teach about Our Lady, and about her intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit? Find out in this edition of A Minute with Mary.
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Transcript
St John Paul II declared St Maximilian Kolbe to be “the Apostle of a New Marian Era”. Maximilian was a groundbreaking theologian. His insights into the Immaculate Conception anticipated the Marian theology of the Second Vatican Council and further developed the Church’s understanding of Mary as “Mediatrix” of all the graces, and as “Advocate” for God’s people.
St Maximilian Kolbe stressed the importance and the unity between the Immaculate Mary and the Holy Spirit. Kolbe took the Church’s dogma of the Immaculate Conception and described Mary as the ‘Created Immaculate Conception’ and the Holy Spirit as the ‘Uncreated Immaculate Conception’.
Kolbe said:
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.
In other words, Kolbe is stressing that the expression ‘spouse’ is ultimately too weak to express the fullness of their intimacy of that most sublime union in which the Holy Spirit indwells in Mary Immaculate. What St Maximilian Kolbe is essentially saying is that although the Holy Spirit never became incarnate, if He did, it would look like Mary. Kolbe teaches that the Holy Spirit acts solely through the Immaculata; consequently, Mary is the Mediatrix of all the graces of the Holy Spirit.
