The Assumption of Mary and the Assent of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

In one of history’s darkest times and places, Saint Maximilian Kolbe continued his life’s greatest quest: to know, honor, and echo the assent of Mary to the Lord.

August 14, 2024 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII solemnly defined as a dogma of faith the bodily Assumption into Heaven of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The precise words of Pope Pius are found in the Apostolic Constitution, Munificentissimus Deus, “The Most Bountiful God,” defining what much of the Church already believed, and now holds as a matter of truth:

“We pronounce, declare and define it to be a divinely revealed truth that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.”

It was not without controversy. Pius XII thus became the first pope in a century to define a new dogma of faith. Five papacies earlier, in 1869, Pope Pius IX sought, cajoled, and in the end imposed, the doctrine of papal infallibility. In his book, Making Saints, former Newsweek editor Kenneth Woodward described the doctrine of infallibility as a “sheathed sword” (Making Saints, p. 314). He described it that way because, from the time of the doctrine’s inception in 1869, a declaration of papal infallibility has only been invoked once: a century later in 1950 when Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary to be an infallible tenet of faith.

This was not just a unilateral pronouncement from on high. Before defining the dogma in 1950, Pius XII sought and received an amazing response of affirmation from the “sensus fidelium,” the assent of the faithful from throughout the world. The Our Sunday Visitor Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine describes this beautifully:

“Infallibility in belief pertains to the whole Church. ‘The whole body of the faithful … cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of the faith (the ‘sensus fidei’) of the whole people when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent to matters of faith and morals.” (Lumen Gentium)

“To understand properly how the whole people of God is infallible in its sense of the faith (sensus fidei, sensus fidelium) it must be born in mind that the body of the faithful goes beyond limits both of place and, especially, of time. The People of God always includes those of past generations as well as those in the present moment. The former are in fact the vast majority, and it is easier to ascertain what they believed. It is that belief that marks the sensus fidelium and points infallibly to the truth." (p. 334)

To help in understanding this concept of the Universal Church that includes the faith of all generations past, see my post, “The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead” (linked again at the end of
this post). It is evidence of the ongoing connectedness of the faithful departed to the life of the Church.

I found this concept to be a stunning affirmation, not only of what we believe, but of why we believe it. The idea that infallibility includes the unwavering faith of the vast majority of the People of God taken as a whole over the span of millennia is mind-boggling truth.

The faith of the entire Church, from its birth at Pentecost to the present, points to a belief in Mary as Theotokos, the Bearer of God and the New Ark of the Covenant. Pope Pius XII strongly considered this before defining as infallible the Dogma of the Assumption in 1950. From the Chair of Peter, Pius XII sought the assent of the faithful in the present through his encyclical, Deiperae Virginis Mariae, to inquire whether Mary’s bodily Assumption should be defined.

As a result, an amazing number of petitions reached Rome from every corner of the Church. The petitions included those of 8,000,000 laity, 50,000 religious women, 32,000 priests, 2,505 archbishops and bishops, 311 cardinals, and 81 patriarchs of the Eastern Church. If this demonstration of assent had been able to span the entire life of the Church the result would have been immeasurable.

From the earliest days of the Church many considered the Assumption of Mary — centuries before it was defined as a tenet of faith — to be, in the words of Pius XII, “the fulfillment of that most perfect grace granted to the Blessed Virgin and the special blessing that countered the curse of Eve” — original sin. In the Eastern Church, a “Memorial of Mary” was already being celebrated on August 15 in the Fifth Century. It spread from the East and came ot be known as the koimesis in Greek and the dormitio in Latin, both of which mean the “falling asleep.” By the Eighth Century, belief in the bodily Assumption of Mary was widely accepted in both the East and West.

In the 19th Century, John Henry Cardinal Newman wrote that both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary are implicit in her identification as the “New Eve,” a title given to Mary since the Second Century. Just as the Resurrection of Jesus was the essential element of His victory over sin and death, Mary shares that victory in her designation as the New Eve, and in the words of Jesus at the foot of the Cross as the spiritual Mother of all. Seeing His Mother at the foot of the Cross, Jesus said ot her, “Woman, behold your son.” And then to the Disciple John, “Behold your Mother.” It was an adoption arrangement (John 19:26-27).

Among the earliest titles of Mary is Theotokos, Greek for “The Bearer of God.” For the Scriptural foundation of this belief and its implications, see my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

“What Will Become of You?”

In the Gospel account of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2), Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus at Mount Tabor. Both Moses and Elijah, according to Scripture, entered heaven in both body and soul. The appearances of Mary at Fatima, Lourdes, Tepeyac Hill in Mexico, and others all point to an understanding of Mary as existing still in that same form. I wrote of the details of one of these visits in “A Subtle Encore from Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

There is no saint of modern times with a stronger and more dedicated devotion ot Mary than Saint Maximilian Kolbe who seemed to live with a perpetual presence of the Immaculata in his field of view. Long before he was the Saint of Auschwitz and Founder of the Militia Immaculata, Saint Maximilian Kolbe was simply “Raymond,” a highly intelligent and gifted boy born into poverty in a rural farming community in Poland.

Like me, Raymond Kolbe was fascinated by the sciences of astronomy and cosmology and actually once built a working rocket as a boy. Also like me, he exasperated his mother at times. One day his frustrated mother scolded him, “Raymond! Whatever will become of you?” Filled with grief, young Kolbe went immediately to a local church and turned to the Mother of God with the same question. According to Kolbe’s own words as reported by my friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC in his wonderful book, 33 Days to Morning Glory,

“Then the virgin appeared to me holding in her hands two crowns, one white and one red. She looked at me with love and she asked me if I would like to have them. The white meant that I would remain pure, and the red meant that I would be a martyr. I answered, ‘yes, I want them.’ Then she looked at me tenderly and disappeared.”

Father Gaitley went on to describe that what was meant by “pure” in this sense was that Kolbe would never allow evil or dishonesty to take root in his heart. And it never did. On August 14, the date this is posted, the Church honors Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He also happens to be my own Patron Saint as well as that of my friend, Pornchai Maximilian Moontri, and the Patron Saint of this blog. To the best of our ability, we follow in his spiritual footsteps, but his footsteps took him to an ultimate sacrifice. The nature of that sacrifice, along with Maximilian’s Auschwitz prison number 16670, now a badge of honor, is expressed on Pornchai’s T-shirt atop this section of our post. Our friend, Father Michael Gaitley, MIC, described the footsteps of Saint Maximilian in brief but familiar prose in 33 Days to Morning Glory :

“In 1941, after decades of incredibly fruitful apostolic labors in Poland and Japan, Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Before his arrest, his brother Franciscans had pleaded with him to go into hiding. He said he was grateful for their loving hearts but couldn’t follow their advice.

“He later explained why: ‘I have a mission to fulfill.’ That mission was fulfilled on the eve of the Feast of Mary’s Assumption into Heaven when, after he volunteered to take the place of another prisoner condemned to starvation, the impatient Nazis finished Kolbe off with a lethal injection. Thus, St. Maximilian died a martyr of charity and received the red crown from his Immaculata.”

Two hours before his arrest, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe penned what Father Gaitley called “the single most important theological reflection of his life. It was nothing less than the answer to a question that eluded him for many years, the question he had pondered over and over throughout his life was: “Who are you, O Immaculate Conception?”

In the document, according to Father Gaitley, Kolbe raised a key point. In the appearances of Mary at Lourdes, Mary did not say to St. Bernadette, “I am immaculately conceived,” but rather she said, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was thus clarified for Maximilian that through a special grace from God, Mary was in fact immaculately conceived in the womb of her own mother with no stain of original sin and that grace became her very identity by the as yet unseen merits of her Son. Understanding this means stepping out of conventional time and space for a moment into the mystery of the “nunc stans” the "Eternal Now" in which God dwells and in which He envisions all time and space as one. It is a difficult concept for our linear existence to ponder, but I have pondered it for my entire life.

Father Gaitley asks (p. 52): “Why does Mary make the grace she received at her conception her very name?” Clearly, Mary is not a divine being. Kolbe wrestled with this divinity problem for decades, and it ultimately led to a solution.

There are two Immaculate Conceptions, one created (Mary) and the other uncreated (the Holy Spirit). Before Mary, there was the uncreated Immaculate Conception, “the One Who for all eternity springs from God the Father and God the Son as an uncreated conception of love, the prototype of all conceptions that multiply life throughout the universe. The Father begets, the Son is begotten, the Spirit is the 'conception' that springs from their love. The Holy Spirit is the “Immaculate Conception” b e c a u s e, being God, He is without sin.

Is Mary then a personification of the Holy Spirit? The truth of this union between the Holy Spirit and Mary is found in a somewhat difficult passage in Maximilian’s own writings as reported by Father Gaitley:

"What type of union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the ‘essence’ of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives in her. This was true from the first instant of her existence. It was always true; it will always be true.” ( Gaitley, p. 53)

“In what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist? He himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very Love of the Most Holy Trinity ... . In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being” (Gaitley, p. 53-54)

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, henceforth all generations shall call me
blessed.”

— From the Magnificat of Mary, Luke 1:46-48

In “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God,” I explored a similar Marian theology, and from it I think I can finally make sense of what Saint Maximilian has proposed. Mary, Theotokos , the Bearer of God, is an eternal repository of the Holy Spirit. Both my friend Pornchai Maximilian Moontri and I owe her a great debt — not for saving us from Earthly Powers of destruction, because they actually mean little, but for preserving us in faith despite them.

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“Remember that those who ask for Heaven of the Immaculata will surely achieve it because she is unable to deny us anything nor is the Lord God able to deny her anything. We shall shortly know exactly what it will be like in Heaven. Surely in a hundred years none of us will be walking on this Earth. But what are a hundred years in the face of what we have been through? Soon, therefore, provided we are well prepared under the protection of the Immaculata.”

— St. Maximilian Kolbe, 1941

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please spend some time in prayer and thanksgiving at the live feed of Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s own Adoration Chapel featured below after all our posts at Beyond These Stone Walls.

You may also like these related posts:

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Eucharistic Adoration: Face to Face in Friendship with God

Photo | EWTN Poland

A live internet feed from a Eucharistic Adoration chapel in Poland arrived on this blog at Christmas and is now revealed as a special gift from our Patron Saint.

February 22, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Books are occasionally sent to me from Catholic publishers with an invitation to write and publish a review. One of the books sent to me several years ago was, ironically, the Manual for Eucharistic Adoration created by The Poor Clare Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. I was surprised that it was sent to me because I am the only person among our readers who is unable to ever take part in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.

While perusing the Manual, I felt a sense of shame that as a younger priest when I actually had such opportunities, I never gave any thought to Eucharistic Adoration. I blithely dismissed it as akin to being invited to dinner just to stare at the food. That was a shallow and superficial dismissal of what would one day become a gift of central importance. It is human nature to want something more when you are told you can no longer have it. I wrote a post about receiving this book. It was likely the most unusual review the publisher ever got. I titled it, “Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence.”

The rest of this story has so many twists and turns that it is difficult to know exactly how to continue. So I will begin about ten days before Christmas in 2022. For reasons I do not understand, I asked our volunteer publisher to find and restore that book review post six years after I wrote it. It was one of the posts written for an older version of this blog so some revision was necessary for it to be viewed. I had it restored, but then never referred to it again — until months later.

Coming off the previous two dark years of pandemic restrictions and other chaos, I wanted to construct a 2022 Christmas post to inspire hope in a higher cause. During a phone call from prison with our publisher, we were constructing the various elements of “Lead Kindly Light: Our Christmas Card to Readers.” I asked readers who are alone at Christmas to spend some time with that post which contained inspirational music and other features.

When it was all put together, I had a last minute request that suddenly came to mind. I have been locked up with few resources and no access to the internet for going on 29 years, but I had read that there are online round-the-clock live feeds of Eucharistic Adoration and I was intrigued by this. So I asked our publisher to search for some of them. The first one she found was from a chapel in Poland. I could not see it but she described it to me. There were lots of other options, but I was fixated on that one and did not want to look any further.

Most devotees of Eucharistic Adoration know that the Blessed Sacrament is displayed in a vessel called a “monstrance.” It comes from the Latin, “monstrantia.” Oddly, the word “monster” comes from that same root. It means “portent,” the appearance of something of either amazing or calamitous importance.

I can receive photographs and letters sent electronically to a very limited GTL tablet in my cell, so I asked our publisher to send me a screen shot of the monstrance used for Adoration in that chapel in Poland. The next day, I was surprised to see it. It is Mary herself bearing, as she did in life, the Body of Christ. It is the image atop this post.

Photo | EpiskopatNews

A Woman Clothed with the Sun

In a typical presentation for Adoration, the monstrance for display of the Blessed Sacrament often resembles the rays of the Sun which gives life to the human body. Being in the Presence of the Lord gives life to the soul. The monstrance now atop this post depicts the “Woman Clothed with the Sun” (Revelation l2:l):

“A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the Sun, with the Moon under her feet and on her head, a crown of twelve stars. She was with child.”

I had previously written a very popular post about Mary with an account of how and why the Church honors her as the New Ark of the Covenant with the Greek title, Theotokos, which means “Bearer of God.” Some of our Protestant cousins protest the place Mary holds in our religious traditions, but the concern is misplaced. The Body of Christ came from Mary. His Soul and Divinity came from God.

The monstrance for Adoration in that chapel in Poland perfectly illustrates the theology I described in “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God” which is now linked under the Adoration Chapel announcement at the end of each post. Having seen this monstrance, I decided on the spot to include this opportunity for Adoration at the end of our Christmas post. I still cannot see it because I cannot see this blog. But you can see it, and I hoped that some of you might visit that Chapel in my stead.

The response to this at Christmas was excellent. So as the New Year dawned, I asked our publisher to make this a permanent feature at the end of every future post at Beyond These Stone Walls. I had no idea what was driving my sudden obsession for something I cannot even see. The answer to that was coming, however, and it left me stunned and speechless.

Two weeks after I decided to retain this Adoration Chapel from Poland as an opportunity for our readers, I returned from work in the prison law library and was called to pick up an item of personal property - another book. I felt a little irritated because receiving unexpected books sometimes means that I have to surrender a book in order to receive one. On that day, however, it did not happen. But I was still irritated. The Book was a newly published title from Marian Press sent to me for a possible review. It was The Way of Mercy: Pilgrimage in Catholic Poland by Stephen J. Binz .

After receiving the book, I climbed back up the 52 stairs to my cell and tossed it onto a small pile of books in a corner where it sat for a week. Then one sleepless night later in January, I finally picked it up and perused it in the dark with my little book light. It was a tour and historical commentary on the great Catholic shrines of Poland with featured sections on St. John Paul II, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Maria Faustina, and others about whom I had written. Poland was the birthplace of the powerful Divine Mercy devotion that had swept our lives here — both Pornchai Moontri’s and my own.

I turned to the section on Saint Maximilian Kolbe and began reading, then I bumped my head on the upper bunk as I suddenly sat up in shocked surprise. Staring back at me was the Adoration Chapel that we had just featured on this blog. How could this be? My mind was racing as I retraced the seemingly random steps resulting in our selection of this very place. The book offers this description, part of a detailed history of Niepokalanow, the City of the Immaculata that St. Maximilian Kolbe established prior to his arrest and imprisonment at Auschwitz:

“A passageway on the left leads to the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, inaugurated in 2018. At the altar, a silver figure of Mary serves as a monstrance for the Blessed Sacrament under her heart.

“She was indeed the first monstrance, teaching us how to adore Jesus. The figure is surrounded by a wreath of silver lilies and golden rays. This World Center of Prayer for Peace is one of twelve international prayer centers for peace that are being established on all the continents of the world.

“The figure of Mary in the Adoration Chapel and the image of the Immaculata on the main altar contain elements of the Miraculous Medal of Mary Immaculate which was so beloved of St. Maximilian. The saint called the Miraculous Medal the spiritual “bullet” of his Militia in its war on all the powers that prevent a soul from embracing God wholeheartedly.”

Many readers already know the story of how Divine Mercy penetrated these prison walls to reach into my imprisonment and that of our friend, Pornchai Moontri. I wrote awhile back of how two great saints of the 20th Century — both from Catholic Poland — became personal role models for Divine Mercy and transformed our spiritual lives. You should not miss “A Tale of Two Priests : Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II.” Here is an important excerpt:

“Perceived as a clear threat to the Nazi mindset, Maximilian was arrested and jailed for months in 1939 while his publishing ability was destroyed. Upon his release, he instituted the practice of round-the-clock Eucharistic Adoration for his community decades before it became common practice in parishes.”

After release from his first imprisonment, Father Maximilian continued to defy the Nazi regime by writing and publishing, and by aiding in the rescue of Jews. He was imprisoned again in 1941, but that time he was released only through his martyrdom. I wrote of how he faced death in “Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance.”

Photo | EpiskopatNews

Face to Face with Divine Mercy

In the January 2023 issue of the monthly publication, Adoremus Bulletin, Father Justin Kizewski has an article entitled, “Face to Face and Eye to Eye: A Reflection on Eucharistic Adoration.” Father Kisewski traces the “Bread of the Presence” back in history some 4,000 years to Melchizedek, King of Salem which would become Jerusalem. Father Kizewski wrote of him:

“Melchizedek is that mysterious priest-king of Salem [who] feeds God’s pilgrim people in the person of Abraham and his companions with a sacrificial offering of bread and wine [Genesis 14:18]. This sacrificial offering of bread and wine was repeated in the Temple liturgy on a weekly basis. The priests would bake bread with incense mixed into it and pass it through the Holy of Holies before leaving it on a table in the sanctuary next to the tabernacle for the next week. The old bread that was replaced would be consumed by the priests.”

The Bread of the Temple sacrifice also came to be known in Jerusalem as the “Bread of the Presence” or the “Bread of the Face of God.” It symbolized an Old Testament anticipation of what was to become for us a far greater gift in the Eucharist. It is because of these ancient traditions that Jesus chose bread and wine as the elements for the first Eucharistic Feast known to us as “The Last Supper.” I wrote of these same events, and of the ancient priest-king Melchizedek in “The Feast of Corpus Christi and the Order of Melchizedek.”

For our Jewish spiritual ancestors, the Bread of the Presence was a sign of God’s saving work among His people. It recalled the Covenants of Abraham and Moses, the Exodus, the Passover, and most especially it recalled God’s love for us. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is dynamic. As Father Justin Kizewski describes:

“When we look at the Eucharist, we see the Flesh of the One whose Mother carried him in her womb and bore him into the world. Analogously, when we adore the Eucharist ... we are meant to receive Him and ‘give birth’ to him in our daily life.”

Father Kizewski equates being present to the Lord in Adoration as like basking in sunlight. Early in this post I wrote that the monstrance for Adoration often has the appearance of rays from the Sun. We are changed in our essence during Adoration, like Moses was changed and his face became radiant in the Presence of Christ at the Transfiguration.

A few winters ago, I discovered that I have occasional bouts of psoriatic arthritis. The psoriasis appears on my face and scalp and it has at times been awful. I have just had to live with it. Then I read in a copy of The Epoch Times that limited time in sunlight is a potent treatment for psoriasis. Each day now, whenever the Sun is shining even in winter, I leave my work in the prison Law Library for a half hour to sit outside in the sunlight. It has helped immensely. The half hour speeds by as I sit alone to let the Sun penetrate what ails me.

Adoration is similar to that. We come face to face with the Lord in mutual love and fidelity. We let meeting his gaze change us and penetrates what ails our soul. Adoration brings Divine perspective to receiving Christ in the Eucharist, the True Bread from Heaven given for the Life of the World (John 6).

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: The Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent is from Matthew 4:1-11. It is the account of the temptation of Christ in the desert and it has momentous implications for us during Lent and throughout our lives. I wrote of the story within this Gospel passage in “To Azazel: The Fate of a Church that Wanders in the Desert.”

Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Priesthood in the Real Presence and the Present Absence

A Tale of Two Priests : Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II

Saint Maximilian Kolbe and the Gift of Noble Defiance

Fr. Seraphim Michalenko on a Mission of Divine Mercy

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From the Basilica of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Immaculate at Niepokalanow, Saint Maximilian Kolbe offering the world to Mary Our Mother | Photo | EpiscopatNews

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

To Christ the King Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe are both set during Advent. They are harbingers of the greatest story ever told.

December 8, 2021

For most of my life as a priest, I treated the visions at Lourdes, Fatima and other elements of our collective beliefs about Mary and the saints with entrenched skepticism. I considered myself to be a sort of scientist-priest. All knowledge had to be sifted by the scientific method using concepts such as objective scientific study with experiments that can be replicated in a laboratory.

Armed with studies of cosmology and astrophysics, and degrees in behavioral science, my inner world was both predictable and provable. I scoffed inwardly at the pious notion that the Mother of God has appeared in visions to some of the poorest people in some of the most unlikely places on this planet. I also, to my shame today, dismissed openly the notion that the wounds borne by Padre Pio were anything but psychosomatic evidence of an intense psychological focus on Christology.

Then came my Great Comeuppance. It was 1992 and I was living in New Mexico where I was Director of Admissions at a facility for spiritually and psychologically troubled priests. During those years I made regular pilgrimages to the Very Large Array, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the high desert of Socorro.

In 1992, I was visited by two priest friends, one from Maine and one from New York. I wanted to bring them to the desert observatory but they wanted to visit a Catholic shrine in the opposite direction north of Santa Fe where some sort of Marian miracle had once supposedly taken place there. I was not the one driving which really irked me all by itself — so their votes prevailed.

Sitting in the back seat of the car as we approached the shrine, I scoffed in silence and arrogantly dismissed their interest as spiritually immature fluff. What happened next I have never really been able to articulate with any clarity. I was stricken with a momentary inward vision of how small I am next to the immense power of grace that God has bestowed upon Mary.

It lasted only a moment. I could not see her with my eyes, but she became a momentary presence in the deep recesses of my mind. I could not have withstood more than a moment. And like an intense light, it left me with an echo of itself that has never left me. It cast me then into a state of inexplicable interior collapse. It was not fear, but rather overwhelming awe. It lingers nearly three decades later.

There was nothing about that experience that gave me any sense that I am anyone special, for I am not. Instead, it forced me to reinventory the tools necessary to see and encounter life as it is, and not as I would have it. I was wrong to think that the required tools of life are all intellectual, and I was wrong to think that I had them. Up until that day, I was missing the most essential of receivers and didn’t even know it.

Radio waves fill the atmosphere, but without a receiver, they remain silent. A spiritual life is our receiver. We ignore it, or just go through the motions, to our spiritual peril.

There have been other instances when I felt that I had been spoken to. I described two of those instances in two special posts that left me feeling that it just makes more sense to believe than not. Newer readers may not have seen those posts. They were: “A Shower of Roses” and “A Corner of the Veil.”

Inmates Pornchai Moontri (left) and Fr. Gordon MacRae (right) make their consecration to Jesus through Mary on Nov. 24, 2013, the Solemnity of Christ the King, in New Hampshire State Prison for Men. They pray to become instruments in Mary’s “immaculate and merciful hands for bringing the greatest possible glory to God.”

An Encounter with Christ the King

In a post some months ago, “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner,” I wrote of the years I spent in empty exile in prison before anything like a spiritual life began to manifest itself. For twelve years, from 1994 to 2006, I did little more than survive here with no sense of a purpose for the heavy cross I carried. As that post linked above reveals, my friend, Pornchai Moontri, spent those same twelve years in prison in the torment of solitary confinement in the neighboring state of Maine. In 2006, our lives converged.

From there, looking back with hindsight, it seems as though our parallel lives were meant to cross. Today, I am certain of that. As our lives converged, we were set — apparently by “accident” on a path that led Pornchai to a Divine Mercy conversion and led both of us to a relationship with a persistent Patron Saint. St. Maximilian Kolbe entered our lives in prison in mysterious ways, and then led us on a path to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

I would have scoffed at and dismissed such a story thirty years ago, but now I cannot because it has captured me in far greater ways than any unjust prison sentence. Over the course of our long walk along the path of Divine Mercy, other events began to unfold in our lives leading me to believe that everything that happened to me — though evil in and of itself — was somehow hijacked by Divine Mercy to bring about a great and wondrous good.

About sixty miles from this prison, Fr. Michael Gaitley, MIC, had been working on a book called “33 Days to Morning Glory.” It’s a self-directed retreat program that Father Gaitley used to develop a superb DVD presentation for a course in Divine Mercy which culminates in consecration of the self to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The very language of this would likely have turned me away as a younger priest. My theology was far beyond such pious nonsense. That was all before my Comeuppance, however.

I did not know Father Gaitley then. Had never even heard of him. But because I had been writing about our story and Pornchai’s conversion, someone at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts took notice. As Father Gaitley’s 33 Days to Morning G1ory began to sweep the country with profound popularity, someone at the Shrine suggested that this retreat should be offered in a prison. Then they chose this prison, and invited me and Pornchai Moontri.

You likely know elements of this story from past posts about it, but there is a point that I must stress. Pornchai and I had, at the time, been through a series of grave disappointments and discouragement. It seemed at the time that prison was winning the battle for our souls and we felt powerless to interrupt it. We declined the invitation. In the days to follow, St. Maximilian Kolbe intervened, and we reluctantly agreed, but with my usual skepticism. There was, however, a nagging inner sense that we were being led to something of great importance.

It was the fall of 2013. The “33 Days” retreat ended with Mass in the prison chapel on the Solemnity of Christ the King on November 24 that year. It ended with our consecration to Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a consecration I have renewed ever since on the Solemnity of Christ the King. Here is Fr. Michael Gaitley’s Consecration Prayer that we used:

“I,_____, a repentant sinner, renew and ratify today in your hands, O Immaculate Mother, the vows of my Baptism. I renounce Satan and resolve to follow Jesus Christ even more closely than before. Mary, I give you my heart. Please set it on fire with love for Jesus. Make it always attentive to His burning thirst for love and for souls. Keep my heart in your most pure Heart that I may love Jesus and the members of His body with your own perfect love. Mary, I entrust myself to you: my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions. Please make of me, of all that I am and have, whatever most pleases you. Let me be a fit instrument in your immaculate and merciful hands for bringing the greatest possible glory to God. If I fall, please lead me back to Jesus. Wash me in the blood and water that flow from His pierced side, and help me never to lose my trust in this fountain of love and mercy. With you, O Immaculate Mother, you who always do the will of God, I unite myself to the perfect consecration of Jesus as he offers Himself in the Spirit to the Father for the life of the world. Amen.”

The Immaculate Conception

Why should anyone enter into such a personal consecration of the self? I have renewed this consecration on the Solemnity of Christ the King every year since 2013. Each time, I was carried back to that strange day at a New Mexico shrine in 1992 when Mary Herself knocked on the door of my soul. I have no other way to put it. Like Mary, I have since pondered these things in my heart (Luke 2:13), and they took over my heart.

The answer to why we should make such a consecration rests in the very identity of the Immaculate Conception. It is not a mere coincidence that at Mass for the Immaculate Conception, the Church chooses as the proclamation of the Gospel St. Luke’s account of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38). I wrote of the same passage in “St. Gabriel the Archangel: When the Dawn from On High Broke Upon Us.”

In that exchange between the Angel of the Annunciation and Mary, Gabriel, one of the Angels who stands in the Presence of God, refers to Mary with a term never before used in all of Sacred Scripture. Never before had an angel referred to a human being with a title and not a name: “Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). When translating the New Testament Greek into Latin, St. Jerome interpreted the Greek title used by Gabriel as “gratia plena” which, in English is rendered “full of grace.” No English words can fully capture the meaning of the original Greek.

The term in St. Luke’s original Greek is “kecharitōmenē,” a title unique in Sacred Scripture. It refers to a vessel that is, and always has been, filled with divine life. St. Maximilian Kolbe developed a fascinating identification of the Holy Spirit as the “Uncreated Immaculate Conception” and of Mary as the “Created Immaculate Conception,” living in an interior union, from the first moment of her existence, a “union of essence” with the Holy Spirit.

Some Catholics (I was once one of them) and some fundamentalist Protestant Christians rebel against such an interpretation as assigning a state of divinity to Mary. That is not the case. Another Greek phrase used of Mary by the Church Fathers is “Theotokos,” the “bearer of God,” a term that identifies Mary as the New Ark of the Covenant. It makes complete sense that God, from the moment of Mary’s bodily existence, created within her a union with the Holy Spirit. The same Protestant Christians also stress vehemently the inerrancy of Sacred Scripture. There is simply no other way to interpret what the Archangel Gabriel says to Mary — and says to us about Mary — in Luke Chapter One: “Kecharitōmenē” — one who lives in a union of essence with the Holy Spirit. Among all human beings, Mary lives a unique existence in the Presence of God.

At the beatification Mass for Maximilian Kolbe on October 17, 1971, Saint Pope Paul VI addressed this: “A mysterious communion unites Mary to Christ, a communion that is documented convincingly in the New Testament ... The Church is faithful to honor Mary, her most exceptional daughter and her spiritual Mother.”

Our Patron and friend on this path, St. Maximilian Kolbe, gave Mary another name: The Immaculata. He honored her with his life, and he handed over that life in the horror of Auschwitz to free another prisoner. While writing this post, I spoke by telephone with Pornchai Moontri in Thailand who also has been pondering.

He told me that he knows he would not be free today — in every sense of that word — if not for me. And it troubles him greatly, he said, that I remain unjustly in prison. He is wrong about this. If Pornchai is free, so am I. I know without a doubt today that the powerful grace instilled in my heart was for this singular purpose. I know this for two reasons. On the Solemnity of Christ the King in 2013, when Pornchai and I first entered into Marian consecration, Marian Helper magazine editor Felix Carroll wrote of it in “Mary Is at Work Here”:

“The Marians believe that Mary chose this particular group of inmates to be the first. That reason eventually was revealed. It turns out that one of the participating inmates was Pornchai Moontri who was featured in last year’s Marian Press Title, Loved, Lost, Found: 17 Divine Mercy Conversions.”

However, the strongest hint came as I pondered all of this in my heart. It came as somewhat of a bombshell. I did a deep dive into the events I describe here and realized with astonishment that the inexplicable event I experienced at a New Mexico shrine in 1992 is what set this story in motion. It was during Holy Week in 1992. Just days before, some 2,000 miles away in Bangor, Maine, a desperate teenager fleeing a horror inflicted on him committed the act of despair that would send him to prison. Fourteen years later, our paths merged, and set us upon a road to Divine Mercy.

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A Note to readers from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please share this post, and please visit our “Special Events” page to assist with an important Advent project and mission of Divine Mercy. This was the subject of my important Advent post, “A Struggling Parish Builds an Advent Bridge to Thailand.”

Marian Helper Editor, Felix Carroll invited me to write for the Jubilee Year of Mercy in 2016. That article, “The Doors That Have Unlocked,” is the featured post this week at “Voices from Beyond.”

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“O Come, Thou Key of David, come,

And open wide our heavenly home,

Make safe the path that sets us free,

And leads us on the road to liberty.

Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel

To Thee shall come Emmanuel”

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Photo by Dennis Jarvis