TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION AS THE BRIDGE TO CHRISTMAS

Meditation inspired by the Most Holy Virgin Mary

to Myriam van Nazareth

Dear sisters and brothers in Jesus and Mary,

Advent is a very special time of year. The world is carried away with the expectations of the presents that will be exchanged on Christmas Eve and the inebriating atmosphere associated with the decorations, the sparkling lights and everything man is led to believe Christmas is all about. However, the true essence of this time is a lot more profound than all of this. The Advent and its ultimate fruit, Christmas, is about opening up the very depths of our souls so as to bring up the very best hidden inside our heart of hearts: the germ of sanctity our Creator has sown into the soil of our very nature in its virgin state, the state it was like prior to man’s committing the original sin.

We might look at this inner core of our soul, the germ of sanctity, as being the light which, if properly connected and lit, is able to make the Christmas tree of our soul beam with the only Light that carries God Himself: Christ, the Light of the world that was lit to the fullest on the Cross of Mount Calvary, thereby chaining the powers of darkness in every human soul who would be willing to live in His image.

The brightness of our 'inner Christmas tree' depends on the vital force of our soul, which in turn is determined by the extent to which we are truly willing and anxious to lead a virtuous life marked by self-denying Love. The Advent is the pre-eminent invitation to work ourselves up towards a true experience of Light in every single detail of our inner dispositions.

It is the birth of this Light we are expecting during the Advent. Whether we are truly willing to light it inside our own soul is in the deepest sense a matter of life and death, as life is only a bearer of 'Life' (notice the capital letter, as it denotes Divine Life) to the extent to which we duly prepare the soil of our soul to receive all the seeds Divine Providence is constantly trying to enrich it with. The effort we make to prepare the soil of our soul to lead a holy life, is what is understood by 'true following of Christ'. The true coronation of a life on earth is a Divine judgment stating our life has actually made a positive difference for all creatures Divine Providence has made us encounter on our journey through life.

Such a judgment is like a certificate of fruitfulness, saying a soul has been genuinely trying to do God’s Works through every action, thought, feeling, desire and inner disposition displayed while living in this world. This certificate is, in a manner of speaking, a key opening the gates of eternal bliss. Eternal bliss infinitely exceeds the transient pleasures conjured up by the ways of the world and intended by God’s infamous adversary to blind all souls to the one true Light and source of true happiness flowing from God’s Heart. This is why we all tend to get captured by the countless tricks of the world to fix our attention on worldly things, interest and enticing promises.

The promise to end all promises, the Birth of Christ, could only be fulfilled if a female human could be prepared to carry Divinity inside herself. This female human should therefore be as pure as a perfectly holy tabernacle. This was only possible if the soul of this female was conceived without the blemish of the original sin. This was the unique prerogative God bestowed the soul of the Woman with: Mary of Nazareth, the 'Immaculata' who was to be the Mother of the Man-God, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Redeemer.

Therefore the Birth of Christ is inextricably linked to the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This is why this booklet combines texts and prayers concerning Mary’s Immaculate Conception and texts and prayers pertaining to the Advent and Christmas. The Immaculate Conception is the perfect image, even the embodiment, of the fullest possible harvest from the germ of sanctity. The Holy Virgin Mary, the Immaculata, the only soul made worthy of carrying Divinity in Her virginal womb, is the perfect Bridge for any soul that truly longs to cross the tempestuous river of worldly life to reach the Land of Promise safely, i.e. in a state of the highest possible sanctity. She is the Mirror reflecting God’s own Heart as a Source of stainless und unconditional Love. She was the very first Disciple of Christ, the Bride of the Holy Spirit and therefore rightly the Seat of Wisdom.

Through the unique prerogative of the Immaculate Conception as well as through the unique perseverance with which the Mother of God made full use of this prerogative by leading Her entire life without committing even the slightest sin, God Himself set an extraordinary example for the major condition a human soul should meet so as to be able to carry Christ, i.e. Divinity. The human soul will only be able to actually allow Jesus to be born inside of her, and to secure His permanent dwelling inside of her, to the extent to which her deepest dispositions are similar to Mary’s. The soul will only be able to achieve this through adamant and persistent efforts to:

  • accomplish a stainless purity of actions, words, feelings, thoughts, longings and aspirations. In this respect I recall the Mistress of all souls defining purity as "the faculty which makes a soul resemble God, the extent to which a soul lives in the image of God. A soul in perfect purity would be a soul resembling God completely, a soul living in a perfect state of grace (in a perfect state of sanctity). Therefore purity is the ability to keep at bay everything that may defile a soul and is likely to make her drift away from God". Aspiring for a stainless purity is therefore based on a firm will to avoid all sin, any deviation from God’s Law of True Love;
  • achieve a perfect merger of one’s own free will into God’s Will, meaning: leading a life geared to the accomplishment of God’s Plans and Works, a life in which the soul fully subordinates her own personal needs to those of God’s Plan of Salvation for the benefit of all of creation, as well as to those experienced by all her fellow creatures;
  • achieve an optimal fruitfulness for all trials of life, by lovingly accepting them, knowing that, if trials are experienced in such a disposition, they turn into building blocks for the accomplishment of God’s Plan of Salvation, in the image of the way Jesus and the Mother of Sorrows Themselves dealt with all trials;
  • be fully aware of the position God has put the soul in, viz. as a small junction in the giant network of all creation. The fruitfulness of spiritual life is greatly determined by the awareness of one’s own smallness as well as of the fact that each creature is given a function and a mission in its capacity as an element of the entire network, not as a self-contained element. As soon as this awareness has taken root spontaneously, unrestrictedly and unconditionally the soul will achieve a perfect humility and a spontaneous, fruitful integration into the network of creation, in the capacity as a junction through which the flow of Divine Love is unrestrainedly propelled towards all fellow creatures and to God Himself. As long as a soul tends to regard herself as important she will block the flow of Divine Love, which determines the vital force of all creation as well as the extent to which God and His true Peace are really able to rule creation.

The soul that makes efforts to imitate Mary, the Immaculate Conception, to the fullest possible extent, will in so doing create inside herself the optimal conditions to enable Jesus to be born inside of her and to allow Him to live, act, speak, feel, think and aspire through her. This soul is transformed into a cradle for the Infant Jesus and a fertile soil considered by God to be beneficial to the accomplishment of all His Works. This is why total, unconditional and lifelong consecration to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and carefully living all of Her teachings in the framework of the Science of Divine Life is the Golden Path of a perfect following of Jesus Christ. Mary’s deepest dispositions of soul, heart and mind must serve as examples to every single human soul, for God not only considered Her to be worthy of carrying Christ in Her womb on account of Her Immaculate Conception, She was indeed only able to be the Mother of Christ, the Man-God, because of Her perseverance in being pure, the merger of Her Will with God’s Will, Her perfect humility, and the way She experienced and dealt with everything Divine Providence allowed to cross Her path through life.

It is of paramount importance that we should realize that Mary’s sublimity was owing not only to Her Immaculate Conception, for this was bestowed upon Her by God. Her true sublimity lay in the way She deployed Her free will in every single detail of Her life, in perfect harmony with God’s Will, in total self-denial and in a perfect awareness of Her vocation as a junction in the network of creation. Despite Her unique sublimity Mary did not consider Herself and Her own personal needs to be important. Her only purpose in life was to render an unlimited service to God and to all Her fellow creatures. True consecration to Mary is not merely a matter of words, it only comes alive in all actions the soul performs in uniformity with Mary’s actions, and in an uninterrupted aspiration to make one’s own spiritual, emotional and mental dispositions similar to Mary’s. Consecration is not talked about, it is experienced, in all and any circumstances of life and in everything that is going on inside one’s heart.

May the Immaculate Mary be our Guide on our lifelong journey to the Heart of Christ, and may She help us prepare the Bethlehem of our hearts to receive Him when the hour has come for Him to be born inside of our souls and to live there for all eternity.

Lovingly at the service of the Mistress of all souls, the Immaculata, the Tabernacle of the Most Holy Trinity,

Myriam, Advent 2016