St. Maximillian Kolbe had a burning love for the Immaculate
Virgin Mary, and he composed a novena in her honor, which I prayed this
year. On the final day, Fr. Kolbe composed
a beautiful passage titled the Immaculata’s fullness of love,
“The Immaculata never knew the slightest stain; in other
words, her love was always full, without flaw. She loved God with all her
being, and from the first instant of her existence her love united her with God
so perfectly that on the day of the Annunciation the angel could say to her,
"Full of grace! the Lord is with you!"
He wrote these words just six months before his death at the
Auschwitz concentration camp, when took the place of a Jewish man with a family
who had been sentenced to execution.
“Hail, full of grace.” How many people over the centuries
have greeted the Immaculate One with those words, spoken by the angel
Gabriel. The Greek word St. Matthew uses
for the phrase “full of grace” is kacharitomene, which is the perfect passive
participle, and can be translated, the one who has been made full of grace and
continues to be made full of grace.
From the very moment of
her conception, God made Mary full of his grace, and preserving her from the
least stain of sin. She was made
Immaculate. And as St. Maximillian Kolbe
reminds us, her love for God, was also without flaw.
In the epistle, St. Paul reminds us that we too have been
chosen from the foundations of the world to be holy and without blemish. God chose each of us to be holy.
We must let our Immaculate Mother teach us how to radically
surrender to God, how to be free from selfishness and self-centeredness in God’s
service.
May she help us respond to God with wholehearted surrender,
obedience, and trust, and prepare well for all God has in store for us, for His
Glory and the salvation of souls.
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