IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AND THE YEAR OF MERCY
Dear Knights of the Immaculata!
Each year, when the feast of the Immaculate Conception approaches, Saint Maximilian Kolbe would be filled with an overwhelming spiritual joy which he would communicate to his brothers. He often explained to them, that this great dogma concerned not only Herself, but had eminent practical consequences for us. Let us try to enter into this mystery with him and meditate on it as we approach the 8th of December, a day when all knights should definitely renew their consecration to the Immaculata.
This year the Holy Father announced a 'year of divine mercy' which will solemnly begin on the 8th of December. It has been widely explained that unfortunately both the very understanding of God's mercy and its consequences for our life underwent a complete abuse which leads to a complete disaster in many souls : instead of converting them to receive the merciful graces of conversion and sanctification, this pseudo-mercy confirms them in their sins, tolerates and justifies even abominations “crying for vengeance to heaven”, and gives a totally wrong understanding of the very essence of God, “who is light and no darkness can be in him”.
Nevertheless we have to distinguish between the intentions or personal visions of the pope and the acts of highest authority, that by establishing a 'holy year' opens floods of graces from heaven, if we also open ourselves to these graces. Let us remember the words of the high priest after the events of Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, when he said that “it is better that one dies for the people”. The intentions of Caiphas were certainly wicked, but his words spoken in his office as high priest were prophetic and just. Similarly we can conclude, that inspite of the intentions of the “high priest of this year”, the Sovereign High Priest Jesus Christ respects the objectively legally right decision of HIS vicar, and therefore HE wants to pour out HIS infinite mercy on the poor human mankind in the worst crisis ever seen in the world and church. God alone can turn evil into a higher good, and therefore HE is able to use even the wrong ideas of mercy in the heart of many hierarchs to show during this year his TRUE MERCY.
The task of each priest on earth, however, is to show the faithful the TRUE MERCY of God as revealed and taught by the magisterium, the fathers, doctors and authentic Saints of the Church. Then the year of mercy will become a source of immense graces for all those who approach this FOUNTAIN OF GOD'S LOVE with good dispositions.
Nothing happens “by chance”: therefore we should find the ways of Divine Providence everywhere and always. It is not “by chance” that Our Lord inspired the pope to begin the year of mercy on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In fact, there is no greater manifestation of the mystery of God's mercy, than the very beginning of Mary's existence, her conception which alone amongst all creatures was immaculate, free of original sin. In the Immaculate Conception God shows the world Who He is primarily with respect to His creature, and how He wants this fundamental relationship with Him to be: INFINITE MERCY.
The MERCY OF GOD is His entirely merciful condescension to mere nothingness. God grants His love gratuitously, without receiving anything at all in return. Furthermore this grant is God’s very first act in our regard, which precedes any possible response on our part. He commits His omnipotence and wisdom in order to grant, without reservation and superabundantly, His love, His light, His happiness, His interior joy. God wills that we exist on the basis of this eternally overflowing gift; He wills to fill us abundantly with His life.
Yet He can do this only if we are willing to be receptive, if we are entirely open to His gift. Through sin we have blocked this flow of divine love, and instead of allowing Him to grant us His mercy, we imagine that we can take it by ourselves, as though we had a right to these gifts. This is the attitude of pride, which denies both God’s inmost nature, as well as our inmost nature , but reverses them instead. God is considered as a servant of mankind; man wants to be like God.
But God was able even to use our wickedness and sinfulness to show yet more of his mercy. He sends his only son, the ‘good samaritan’ to us, half-dead mankind, and offers us pardon and purification. The good shepherd mercifully seeks the lost sheep and brings it back to the Father's home. Jesus hanging on the cross and dying for us is the greatest manifestation of God's Mercy. “Right up to the end”, he has given us all what he has, up to the very last drop of his blood.
However, the greatest tragedy of man is in NOT accepting this supreme merciful love of God, to close himself more or less up in his pride and self-sufficiency. Even those who open themselves to God's grace, did not allow God to show his full mercy because of their “negligence, indifference and forgetfulness towards the immense love of MY HEART”.
Now is there a human being who has accepted God’s mercy in its full extent, who did not put any obstacle to his overflowing grace? Now is there any possibility that we can rediscover man as he was actually predestined, as God designed him to be?
Yes, the Immaculata! Every fiber of her Being is a reflection of God’s mercy. She receives everything from Him and accepts it, so much so that this divine attribute is, in a sense, incarnate in her. She alone received all gifts of the eternal father. She was totally open to God's condescending goodness. Love wants to give all it has: God wants to give all, what a mere creature is able to receive. And only ONE creature really received ALL GRACES of God, because she never put any obstacle to His love: always, everywhere and totally she said YES to his will. She answered to His love with absolute fidelity: no hesitation, no questioning, no doubt! God could not find a better instrument and sanctuary for his own coming on earth. Therefore the providence of the very best Father did not allow His immaculate daughter to be tainted by the slightest evil, did not allow the Evil One to have access to her soul. And that is her Immaculate Conception.
In the Immaculate Conception we discover the true extent of God's mercy: it is simply incredible, it is amazing to discover how much God wants to give to the created nothings, how much God's HEART turns towards our misery, as the latin word for mercy indicates: Misericordia!
“Look, my beloved children, ‘nothingness’ created by me, sinners redeemed by me!
I want to show my boundless magnanimity in giving you my mercy. Do you see the Immaculata? How pure she is, how beautiful, how incredibly full of all virtues, with a heart burning with my Love? Highest wisdom, penetrating intelligence, full with My eternal life, Spouse of the Holy Ghost, mother of My son, my daughter participating in my infinite power? Have you ever seen a creature like this? THIS IS MY MERCY!”
But more: because she received the totality of God's mercy, God wanted her in turn to be a source of mercy towards all her children. When Jesus on the cross said to her “behold your son”, she became our spiritual mother, which means that she became for us the motherly source of all graces, the Mediatrix of all graces, the Mother of Mercy – mater misericordiae! For this reason we understand that, wherever people implore her help, they instinctively know, as a child knows about his loving mother, that she is “merciful”, always merciful, full of motherly mercy.
God wants so much our salvation and our everlasting happiness, that not only did he create the human Heart of His son to become the visible sign of God's mercy on earth, but he also gave us a 'Mother of Mercy” with her so merciful immaculate heart, which loves us so so much!
The year of mercy is in its profundity the call of God towards his creatures: “Allow me to be merciful! Allow me to give you my gifts, my light, my treasures, my love!” The only thing we need to do is to really turn ourselves towards him, to imitate the IMMACULATA, opening widely the doors of our heart. To the extent we enter into her attitude of total receptivity, we allow God to be merciful to us again, to grant us superabundant gifts, beginning with the overwhelming gesture of the cleansing of our sins, because He never tires of forgiving us again and again, not looking upon our perversity and infidelity, but using even the smallest sign of repentance to immerse us again in His boundless gift of love.
And what is the “Knight of the Immaculata” ? Her instrument in pouring God's mercy into the souls of man: all our prayers, sacrifices and apostolic works have just one goal: to let the Immaculate Mother of Mercy approach her beloved children sitting in the merciless darkness of sin and error, touch and move their hearts towards the infinite mercy of God, to allow HIM to save them and make them saints.
Negombo, the 3rd December 2015, Feast of Saint Francis Xavier
Fr. Karl Stehlin
