Kolbe’s Full Resolution (BONUS: Mary, Spirit, Mass, and the Church)- KBGF 12

 

In the 12th meeting over Fr. Peter Damian Fehlner's book on St. Maximilian Kolbe "Kolbe: The Theologian of Auschwitz" with Dr. J. Isaac Goff, we speak of Kolbe as both fully resolving his theology to the Trinity and fully resolving his theology into his life and his death. We also speak of Mary and the Holy Spirit, Mary and the Eucharist, and the Marian Profile of the Church.

00:00:00 Mary and Holy Spirit
00:16:45 Mary and Eucharist
00:21:55 Mary's Assent in the Paschal Mystery
00:30:00 Mary's Mediation and the Epiklesis
00:41:30 Start of lesson proper
00:42:10 From Partial to Full Resolution
01:01:33 Full Resolution as Transitus: Kolbe as Martyr
01:05:50 Mediating because Immaculate: Cornerstone of Kolbean Theological Development
01:11:27 Knight of the Immaculate: Standard Bearer of the Marian Franciscan Theological Tradition
01:13:33 Theology under the Militia Immaculatae needed to understand its nature
01:22:55 Structure of Franciscan Theology
01:32:30 Incorporation of the Immaculate Conception into the life of the Church
01:38:00 Marian Profile of the Church as prior to Petrine
01:45:00 Correlation of Christic and Marian-Pneumatological causality
01:58:00 Feminine images of Church and Mary: Mother and Disciple
02:09:00 Mary in the Book of Revelation

We start with a discussion about Mary and the Holy Spirit in the typology of the Virgin Earth and the New Eve. The first looks to Mary and the action of the Holy Spirit as preceding Christ by actively receiving the invitation of God in the name of all of Creation as the unfallen Immaculate, and then the New Eve as coming from Christ as the first of the Redeemed. We speak of various typologies of the Temple, the Mountain, the Daughter of Zion, and the Ark of the Covenant.

This moves into Mary and the Eucharist. We remember that the Last Supper was a sacrifice and the Cross was a religious rite. As Mary consented to bring forth Christ by the Holy Spirit, her "Fiat" continues at the foot of the Cross where she sacrifices in an effective and intercessory mode. Here, her maternity expands to the whole Church. As Mary was present offering her Son to the Father at the Cross, She is still present in the Mass united with the work of her Son as His Mother and Our in the Holy Spirit.

In the lesson proper, we revisit Bonaventure's structure of theology reflecting the structure of the human soul, but this time we add Bonaventure’s concept of a full versus partial resolution. This moves in two directions. The first is into the mysteries of faith until we trace back all knowledge to theology, and the second in moving from the truth as known to the truth as loved, resolving everything we know into wisdom by love.

St. Maximilian accomplished this double reduction by the profundity of his thought and the reality of his love. He did that truly rare thing: living a truly integral life. And he sealed his teaching by his martyrdom.

And his teaching is on the mediation of Mary being connected to her union of love with the Holy Spirit. Only Jesus mediates between the divine and human, for only He is both God and man. And Mary, like the Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit, mediates by love, by uniting her will to God's will and by helping us to unite our will to hers and so to God's.

Father Peter closes with three points. You need to know the theology under the MI to understand and live it. The Trinity is not above and outside creation and salvation, but rather expands to introduce finite creatures into the infinite life of divine love coming of the Word and the Spirit through the human person Mary. Thus she takes a central place in God's creating and saving plan.

In theology, we perceive this plan and put it into action in our own lives by placing ourselves under the care of the Immaculate Mediatrix and aligning ourselves with her action to build up the kingdom of God on Earth. In this we see how the MI expresses the heart of the Franciscan vocation to rebuild the Church.

This new vision of Catholic life placed under the maternal care of Mary is constituted by realizing the unity of love between her and the Holy Spirit, a love that perfects nature in grace, a love that expands to us through their joint action.

St. Maximilian perceived this and strove to put it into action in a coherent way, making him a true and fully resolved theologian.

We close with questions on the Marian profile of the Church and the correlation between the Christic and the Pneumatological-Marian and how Scotus' analysis of essentially ordered causes show that Mary does not replace the Holy Spirit in Catholic theology, but that their action is co-ordinated and she fulfills the vocation given to her by God. This is prior to the petrine: any apostles must first become a disciple like Mary to then birth Jesus in their soul that of others. We see this in the eschatological vision of Revelation or Apocalypse where we have the LAMB, the ARK/WOMAN, and the NEW JERUSALEM speaking of Jesus, Mary, and the Church.

Ave Maria!

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