Mary Immaculate: Nature and Grace in Harmonious Unity

Mary, full of grace – Part 1

Mary appears before us as the person conceived without original sin, who is “full of grace” from the first moment of her existence. She is the human being as God conceived it, the archetype of the human being in whom nature and grace are harmoniously intertwined. She is completely open to God and his will, completely at home within the divine – and at the same time completely human, completely natural. Mind and will, feeling and spirit – all harmoniously interconnected, she is God’s dream of wholeness, of the whole human being.

Father Günther Boll relates:

“It was only gradually, in my encounter with Father Kentenich, that it became clear to me what the Blessed Mother as Immaculate meant to him in concrete terms and what consequences he drew from this for his life and his actions, for his entire pedagogical work. Nowhere else have I encountered such a conscious and consistent taking seriously of the dogma of the Immaculate, nowhere else has a theologian seen the anthropological impact of original sin as clearly as Father Kentenich. He had recognized what it means for our human existence that we are burdened with original sin and summed it up in the words, “A rupture runs through our whole being.” We all suffer the inner breakdown, the crumbling of body, mind and soul, of head and heart, of divine and human life. Even as baptized and therefore redeemed Christians, we often suffer the consequences of original sin to the end of our lives.

For Father Kentenich it is true: if Our Lady was born without original sin, she did not bear the consequences of original sin. She is the only human being that comes from paradise, the human being that God really wanted to create: the perfect human being, the fully supernatural and at the same time fully human creature.

Father Kentenich does not stop at this affirmation but goes one step further: in the Virgin as Immaculate, he does not see above all an unattainable model, but is convinced that she has a very special mission for humanity. He is certain that whoever makes a covenant with her is helped to live in harmony with God and with himself. He insisted repeatedly: We can only develop as complete human beings when grace and nature are in harmony. And in this process of growth, the Virgin Mary plays a great role.

This is where Father Kentenich’s fundamental orientation towards pedagogy comes into play. For him, any kind of pedagogy in the end must try to live up to what the beloved God really wanted to bestow on us and fulfilled in the Blessed Mother: that nature and grace work together, that they form a harmonious unity. Thus, he gradually developed an “education by the Immaculate” which was meant to help overcome this inner rupture and, with the help of grace, supported by human nature, to grow very slowly towards a harmonious humanity.

To be continued

Small Biography of  Father Günther Boll –  click here

Source: Günther M. Boll: …first and foremost my heart – Joseph Kentenich – Pedagogue and Founder.