Gottle of Geer:
Maximilian Kolbe came up with the horrible statement that “Mary is the quasi-incarnation of the Holy Spirit”.
Kolbe offers us a profound insight here as to why God ordains that the Holy Spirit operates through the Blessed Virgin, by using the analogy of the Incarnation in the work of redemption. God could have ordained that our redemption be effected without his Son becoming incarnate and dying on the Cross. But because all our knowledge comes through the senses, God was better able to reveal to us the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity and his merciful love for us through the Incarnation — by the fact that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). In an analogous manner, God is better able to reveal to us the Third Person of the Trinity, God-who-is-Love, and to reveal how this Person distributes the graces merited by Christ, through a concrete, sensible sign — a human person; and that person is the Blessed Virgin Mary.
While having taken care to stress that the union between the Holy Spirit and Mary “is not of the same order as the hypostatic union linking the human and divine natures in Christ,” Kolbe had written, in formula style, in Latin: "
Filius incarnatus est: Jesus Christus. Spiritus Sanctus quasi incarnatus est: Immaculata. "(The Son is incarnate: Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is quasi incarnate: the Immaculata.) In his book,
Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit, Fr. H. M. Manteau-Bonamy, O.P., offers a thoughtful commentary on Kolbe’s use of the term, “quasi incarnate”:
Bold words indeed! But, faced with the words Mary spoke at Lourdes: “I AM the Immaculate Conception,” there is really nothing else to say, unless we wish to suppose that Mary was then giving herself only a symbolic name. Moreover, these bold words are those of an expert theologian; he uses the necessary restriction, “
quasi incarnates,” which forces the mind of the believer to open itself up to the mystery, while not disturbing its faith. He constantly maintains that the Son alone was truly made man, not the Holy Spirit. The task of the theologian is not to demonstrate the ineffable, but to try to express it if he can in terms, which will provoke the heart of the believer to go beyond what the mind can understand. The Holy Spirit is
“quasi” (in some manner) incarnate, without being really and strictly incarnate; for Mary the Immaculata is, as such, taken up by the Holy Spirit in all her being, as a woman and a mother.
Although Mary’s words to Bernadette at Lourdes, being private revelation, would not hold much persuasive force for the non-Catholic, Fr. Manteau-Bonamy’s comments about the meaning of “quasi incarnate” may help one to understand better why God wills that the Holy Spirit operate through his spouse, the Blessed Virgin.
We can even say this profound truth — that Mary is the “living human image/ icon” (or, using Kolbe’s term, the “quasi incarnation”) of the Holy Spirit — is revealed in Scripture in Mary’s own words: “My soul doth magnify the Lord” (Luke 1:46). Mary’s soul magnifies the Lord; specifically, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, because she is (to use Kolbe’s description) the created Immaculate Conception, formed through the power of the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. As a creature she is the most perfect expression by the Creator of created, fruitful love, intended by him to reflect or image the divine Person who is Uncreated Love, the Fruit of the love flowing eternally between the Father and the Son.
Dwight P. Campbell
Full article at: catholicculture.net/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=4270
It’s unastonishing that many Protestants are not very favourably impressed by the claims of the CC - to say the least, when they come across these things. ##
