9 — THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Presence of God. — I place myself in the presence of Mary Immaculate, my sweet Mother, listening to her invitation: “Come to me, all of you who love me, and I will tell you what God has done in my soul.”

Meditation

1 — The feast of the Immaculate harmonizes perfectly with the spirit of Advent; while the soul prepares itself for the coming of the Redeemer, it is most fitting to think of Her, “the all-pure,” who was His Mother.

* Move this meditation according to the calendar of the year.

The very promise of the Savior is joined to, indeed included in, the promise of this singular Virgin; after cursing the treacherous serpent, God proclaimed: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers; she shall crush your head” (Gen. 3, 15). And behold the Virgin foretold comes forth “white as snow, radiant as the sun, full of grace and blessed among all women” (BR.).

Precisely in view of the sublime privilege that would make her the Mother of the Incarnate Word, Mary—alone among all creatures—was preserved from original sin. In the Immaculate, however, we see not only preservation from original sin, the absolute absence of every least shadow of imperfection, but we also see the positive side of this mystery which made her, from the first moment of her existence, “full of grace.”

Theologians teach that the Most Holy Mary began her “spiritual career” with a grace far more abundant and more perfect than that which the greatest saints reach at the end of their lives. If one then considers how throughout her whole life the Blessed Virgin did nothing but correspond in the fullest and most total way to every movement of grace, to every divine invitation, one can intuit how charity and grace grew in her with an unceasing and very rapid progress, so as to make her the holiest creature, most totally united to God and transformed in Him.

2 — St. John of the Cross, describing the wonders of the state of perfect union with God, presents the Immaculate Virgin to us as prototype and model: “Thus must it be said of the most glorious Virgin Our Lady, who, having been raised from the beginning to this high state of union, never had in her soul any form of creatures that moved her to act, but always her movement was from the Holy Spirit” (Ascent, III, 2, 10).

In Mary we thus see fulfilled, in the most perfect way, the two essential conditions of the state of union. The first—preliminary and negative—requires that in the will of the soul there be nothing contrary to the divine will; nothing, that is, no attachment that inclines the creature’s will, so that it forms in some way in its affection and pushes it to act out of love for the creature itself: all this must disappear. The second condition—positive and constructive, and consequence of the first—consists in the human will’s being in every way moved only by the will of God. This was fully realized in the Immaculate’s most pure soul: in her there was never a shadow of sin, nor of attachment, not even minimal, to creatures, and therefore never any “form of creatures that moved her to act,” but, wholly taken by the divine impulse, she acted only under the impulse and the “motion of the Holy Spirit.”

Thus the Immaculate presents herself to us as the most pure spouse of the Holy Spirit, not only in relation to her divine maternity, but also in relation to her whole life in which she moved solely under His impulse.

Colloquy

O Mary, Mother of God and my Mother, how much light and comfort comes to me from your sweet figure! You, the holiest and purest among all creatures, “full of grace,” so full that you merited to carry within you the Author and source of all grace, do not disdain to present yourself to me, a poor creature who knows the weight of his miseries, as a model of purity, of love, of perfection.

If the privileges of your Immaculate Conception and your divine motherhood are inimitable, yet you clothed them with a life so simple, so humble, that I dare to draw near to you, to ask you to take me by the hand, to help me climb with you the mountain of perfection. Yes, you are Queen of heaven and earth, but you are mother more than queen, and therefore you yourself encourage me to have recourse to you and say to me: “O son, listen to me: blessed are those who walk my ways... Whoever finds me will find life and will receive salvation from the Lord” (MR.). And I answer you with the cry of the Church: “Draw me, O Immaculate Virgin, I shall run after you, to the fragrance of your perfumes” (BR.). Yes, draw me, Immaculate Mother, draw me above all by the luminous charm of your stainless purity! How impure and stained by earthly things I feel before you, most pure, so detached from all, so forgetful of yourself, that nothing moves you to act except the divine will, the motion of the Holy Spirit!

If I see you always docile and ready for every least divine invitation, even though hidden under the most human and ordinary circumstances, if I hear you always sweetly repeating your “Yes,” ecce ancilla Domini... fiat before the events of your life, great and small, joyful and most painful, it is precisely because you are the most pure. No shadow of creature, of interest or human affection touches your heart and therefore nothing can delay your most swift race toward God.

For me, so reluctant, so sluggish and stingy in giving myself to God, so immersed in earthly things, make me understand, O Immaculate Virgin, how pure my heart must be so as never to refuse anything to the Lord, so as always to be able to repeat with you my sweet and prompt fiat.

With the light that shines from your radiant purity, therefore enlighten my mind so that no attachment, no earthly affection may remain hidden in me, preventing me from a life of real and full consecration to my God.

To you I entrust, in a wholly particular way, my vow of chastity; guard it and grant that I may be pure not only in body, but also in mind and heart. With your help, my Mother, I am ready to renounce any affection, even the least, that may still bind me to creatures; I want my heart to be all for God; for Him I want to keep all its heartbeats in a spirit of total chastity.