I offer you a few spiritual reflections on the Immaculate Conception, with elements of philosophy, which I worked out in the distant Jubilee Year, while I was still in the seminary. It has now come back into my hands, and I take the opportunity to place it in my “electronic archive”.
Rome, Tuesday 29/08/2000
Who are you, O Immaculate One? You are the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, and therefore you are all beautiful. You are the Mystical Rose. If we look at the beauty of a flower, it is a very limited beauty, however much it may stir in us admiration and contemplation, because it is a created beauty. As created, it is not, nor can it be, an absolute beauty. It is only a relative beauty, because creation as such is relative, insofar as its relation with the Creator is intrinsic to its being. The beauty of the flower is only a vague foretaste of the absolute beauty that is God himself, and from whom every created beauty derives. He is the author of beauty; He is the uncreated beauty from which every beauty flows forth as fragrance from the flower. The fragrance is not the flower, and the flower is much more than the fragrance it produces; and yet the fragrance allows us to become aware of its presence, leads us to the flower, introduces us to the knowledge of it, and lets us delight in the flower. Created beauty is relative to the Creator from whom it comes, and this relation is called “creation”. Creation points us back to the Creator; created beauty points us back to the uncreated beauty from which it comes. Uncreated beauty is infinite, most perfect, absolute, creative. Sublime mysteries are enclosed within these relations. In every relation, there are two correlates. Each correlate is relative to the other, is in relation with the other, and together they are “co-related”, relative to one another. Correlativity is founded upon the relation that subsists between the two correlates. Therefore “relation” implies limitation. A correlate is not absolute, because it implies the other correlate. What is absolute, instead, implies nothing else, precisely because it is “ab-solutus”, that is, “loosed from” every limit; it therefore does not have a correlate but rather is sufficient unto itself, already complete in itself. What is “absolute” has no limit. “Limit” (Lat. “limen”) implies a threshold; the “threshold” is the bridge between two correlates. Like the threshold at the entrance of a house, which brings the inside of the house into relation with the outside. Once there is a threshold, the inside of the house implies that there is an outside. If, on the other hand, there is no threshold, then there is no “limit”, and there is no relation between correlates. An entity without a threshold (without limit) is an absolute entity, loosed from relation with another entity. Every relation therefore implies that there are limits, that there are thresholds, that there is that space which brings one correlate into relation with the other correlate.
Let us consider the meaning of sacramental “absolution”. In sacramental absolution, the penitent is forgiven his sin, is loosed from his limit. Sin is a limit for man, in the negative sense of the term; sin limits freedom and makes it regress. Instead, whoever is without sin or stain of sin, whoever is “immaculate”, does not know the limit of sin, and his freedom is greater. “I have the strength for EVERYTHING through him who empowers me, through the Immaculate Conception,” Saint Maximilian Kolbe would say, quoting the Apostle. “I can do EVERYTHING.” Not something, but everything. In Latin one would say “omnia possum”, and we can derive a corresponding adjective, “omnipotens sum”. I am “almighty” in Him who gives me strength. Remaining in Him, the Almighty Lord, makes me almighty. The process of unification in Him removes every threshold that divides us from Him, removes every limit from our being in Him. The threshold, on the one hand, brings into relation; on the other hand, it divides. It ensures that one correlate is not the other correlate; it ensures that the correlates are distinct from one another. Each correlate, although relative to the other, is also foreign to the other. Instead, whoever remains in Him is neither a stranger (foreign) nor a guest, but rather a friend and member of the household of God.
What, then, is the great mystery of the relation between creation and the Creator, between created beauty and uncreated Beauty? I discern a great mystery in the fact that uncreated Beauty is creative. In creating, relation is created. If, on the one hand, creation is relative to its Creator, is it not also true that the Creator is no longer entirely absolute, but that He too is relative to His creation? Here is the mystery of creation. Creation has no logical explanation; the Absolute had no reason to make himself Relative. By creating, the Absolute makes himself Relative to creation, almost renouncing his being Absolute.
And the creature can only tremble at the thought of having as a correlate One who is Absolute. Although the thought that its correlate is the Absolute Creator brings it to fall to its knees with tears in its eyes, with infinite gratitude (or rather never sufficient gratitude, because such a relation with the Creator exalts the creature in a way inconceivable to the human intellect, since the beauty of the creature is a divine fragrance), on the other hand its wonder grows dizzyingly at the thought that the correlate of Absolute Beauty is itself, the creature. This thought inspires fear, almost the fear of being and of placing a limit on Absolute Beauty. And yet it was not the creature that chose this; it was the Creator who willed it. By entering into relation with his creature, he would seem to renounce his being Absolute, and yet he remains such… What a marvel! These are mysteries incomprehensible to the human intellect. The Absolute Creator made us understand through his Word that He is Love, and Love does not know the logic of men. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts.” And so, before the Revelation of Love, every fear dissolves into infinite gratitude and correspondence of love, insofar as this is possible, because all our love is nevertheless created and therefore limited. He alone is Absolute Love, supreme, uncreated. The reason for creation finds no answer except in uncreated Love. God is Creator because God is Love. The flower can have beauty because Absolute Beauty is Love, and almost renounces being Absolute Beauty in order to share his beauty with a creature. He bends down over the creature to give it of his Beauty, and yet he loses nothing of his own Beauty in giving it.
The Immaculate Conception is all beautiful; she is the summit of created beauty. But the sap that gives life and beauty to this Mystical Rose is the Holy Spirit. He vivifies her; he communicates his divine life to her. The human intellect bows down before such a mystery, in which the beauty of the creature is mingled with the Beauty of the Creator almost to the point that they can no longer be distinguished. The beauty of the Mystical Rose is a created beauty that is wholly filled with uncreated beauty. You are all beautiful, O Mary, and no stain of original sin is in you!
If she is the summit of created love and of created beauty, can we say that she is the sum of all created love? Can we say that she is a “most perfect” beauty? What is imperfect is “in potency,” while what is perfect is “in act.” “Perfect” means, in the thought of philosophers, what is complete and realized, whereas what is in potency has yet to be realized. What is perfect does not even know that “act of potency as such,” that is, insofar as it is still in potency, which is called “becoming.” What is perfect is “in act” and is no longer “in potency.” What is no longer “in potency,” what is perfect, could almost be called “impotent,” that is, not at all “in potency.” God is the perfect Being, and yet he is Powerful; indeed, he is the Almighty, his Power knows no limit. And yet it would seem that “potency” limits “perfection.” God seems to be Perfect, and at the same time almost “in becoming” because he is Powerful. In God opposites are reconciled. Only Love can reconcile opposites.
John R. D’Orazio