In the article, “Leaving Behind the Filioque?”, I briefly analyzed two passages of the Holy Father’s apostolic letter, In Unitate Fidei (“In the Unity of Faith”), expressing the concern that a decades-old, ecumenically driven agenda of downgrading the dogma of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son seems to be picking up steam. Pondering this development in light of the earlier DDF document that downgraded two beloved Marian titles — Co-Redemptrix and Mediatrix of All Graces — I began to wonder if there might be a mystical connection between these doctrines that are being sidelined.

I do believe that the Pneumatological¹ and Mariological doctrines here under consideration are indeed closely connected, and I would like to explore that connection here. I am not claiming that, in the minds of the DDF officials or Pope Leo himself, there is an effort afoot to downgrade these doctrines because they are connected. That would be reading something into these developments that the facts do not bear out, but there is, I insist, a deep, mystical connection between these doctrines.

Let us begin at the beginning, in eternity.

The Trinitarian Processions

God the Son proceeds from His Father as the Logos, or Word. This first procession in the Trinity, called “generation,” is, therefore, intellectual; it is a procession of thought, or knowing. The second procession — of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son — is called “spiration,” and it is volitional, as it proceeds from willing or loving. The intellect knows, the will loves. The Holy Ghost is the substantial love of the Father and the Son for one another. He is Charity in Person. Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas say that the Holy Spirit proceeds as the breath of love between the Father and the Son. The Catechism of the Council of Trent indicates the volitional nature of this procession in these words: “the Holy Ghost proceeds from the divine will, inflamed, as it were, with love.” Because the Holy Spirit is Substantial Charity, those things which particularly manifest God’s love for us (e.g., the Incarnation, sanctification, the gifts) are appropriated to the Third Person. It is also for this reason that He is called “Gift” and “Kiss of Love,” for both connote a manifestation of charity. This, in the briefest of summaries, is an explanation of the Filioque.

Now, you may ask, what is its connection to the downgraded Marian titles? Leaving aside the title Co-Redemptrix, which bears a more direct connection to Christ the Redeemer and therefore to Soteriology,² I will connect the dots between the Filioque and the doctrine of Mary Mediatrix of All Graces, which are fundamentally connected inasmuch as both pertain to the ongoing work of the sanctification of souls, a work that continues in the Church and which derives its efficacy from the merits of the Passion of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Savior.

Spouse of the Holy Ghost

In Chapter two of the Gospel of Saint Luke, as the ambassador of the Heavenly Court, Saint Gabriel delivers to the Blessed Virgin the divine proposal for the predestined Incarnation of Our Lord. At verse 34, Mary asks a question before giving Her consent, and the Archangel answers Her:

And Mary said to the angel: How shall this be done, because I know not man? And the angel answering, said to her: The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

That action of the Holy Ghost coming upon and overshadowing Our Lady to render the Holy Virgin fruitful is why we say in the Nicene Creed that “For us men and for our salvation He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.” The powerful portrayal of Virginal fecundity by the sanctifying agency of the Third Person of the Trinity is also why we call the Blessed Virgin the “Spouse of the Holy Ghost.”

I said above that the procession of the Holy Spirit is a procession of loving, and that He is, in eternity, Substantial Charity. To Him, therefore, is the temporal act of the Incarnation appropriated, as God becoming Man is an act of love par excellence. Now, while Our Lady was intimately united to the Holy Ghost since Her ineffable Immaculate Conception, what Saint Luke relates in the Annunciation scene, complete with its overshadowing language, entails a sort of marital imagery: by a non-carnal, spiritual analogy with marriage, the Holy Ghost renders Mary — the completely willing cooperatrix with His grace — the most fruitful woman ever. What resulted was the “new thing upon the earth” that Jeremias 31:22 prophesied: “A WOMAN SHALL COMPASS A MAN.” It is no exaggeration to speak of Her as the most fruitful Woman ever because She is the Mother of the Incarnate Logos, of Him who called Himself, “the Life,” so She is the “Mother of Life Himself,” and, in Him, She is also the “mother of all the living,” that is, the “Second Eve.”

The point must be emphasized: Contrary to what the heretics say, the Virgin Mary was no mere passive instrument of the divinity, like the Cross upon which Our Lord was hung, or the donkey upon which She sat when She Herself (with Him in utero) trod to Bethlehem. No, the dialogue in Luke 1 between Her and Saint Gabriel makes no sense in that scenario. Holy Mary was an informed and willing accomplice in the divine plans for God’s glory and our salvation.

All this superabundant fecundity is the result of Her Divine Spouse “overshadowing” Her at the Annunciation. Thus, the Third Person, from whom no other Person proceeds in Eternity, but who Himself proceeds from the Other Two as their Consubstantial Love, bears fruit — not in an eternal procession, but in the temporal mission of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Saint Louis Marie Explains

Saint Louis Marie de Montfort has some things to say on this subject, and that great Marian apostle clearly ties in the Blessed Virgin’s espousals with the Holy Ghost both to Her bearing the God-Man at the Incarnation, and to Her continuing to reproduce Him in souls:

God the Holy Ghost being barren in God — that is to say, not producing another Divine Person — is become fruitful by Mary, whom He has espoused. It is with her, in her, and of her, that He has produced His Masterpiece, which is a God made Man, and whom He goes on producing in the persons of His members daily to the end of the world. The predestinate are the members of that Adorable Head. This is the reason why He, the Holy Ghost, the more He finds Mary, His dear and indissoluble Spouse, in any soul, becomes the more active and mighty in producing Jesus Christ in that soul, and that soul in Jesus Christ.

It is not that we may say that our Blessed Lady gives the Holy Ghost His fruitfulness, as if He had it not Himself. For inasmuch as He is God, He has the same fruitfulness or capacity of producing as the Father and the Son, only that He does not bring it into action, as He does not produce another Divine Person. But what we want to say is, that the Holy Ghost chose to make use of our Blessed Lady, though He had no absolute need of her, to bring His fruitfulness into action, by producing in her and by her Jesus Christ in His members; a mystery of grace unknown to even the wisest and most spiritual among Christians. (True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Father Faber translation, pp. 10-11, emphasis mine throughout.)

He says more briefly in The Secret of Mary:

As the Holy Ghost has espoused Mary and has produced in her, by her and from her, His masterpiece, Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate, and has never repudiated His spouse, so He now continues to produce the elect, in her and by her, in a mysterious but real manner. (No. 13)

Saint Louis Marie also connects the espousals of Mary to the Holy Ghost with Her being the Mediatrix — or, as he says, “Dispensatrix” — of All Graces:

To Mary, His faithful Spouse, God the Holy Ghost has communicated His unspeakable gifts; and He has chosen her to be the dispensatrix of all He possesses, in such sort that she distributes to whom she wills, as much as she wills, as she wills, and when she wills, all His gifts and graces. The Holy Ghost gives no heavenly gift to men which He does not pass through her virginal hands. Such has been the Will of God, who has willed that we should have every thing in Mary; so that she who impoverished, humbled, and hid herself even to the abyss of nothingness by her profound humility her whole life long, should now be enriched, and exalted by the Most High. Such are the sentiments of the Church and the Holy Fathers. (True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Father Faber translation, pp. 12-13)

According to the great Marian missionary, there is indeed a connection between Our Lady being the Spouse of the Holy Ghost and Her being the Dispensatrix of All Graces. Saint Louis Marie does not speak in terms of the Filioque as we have, but there is another great Marian apostle who does, one who loved Saint Louis Marie very much and who — to borrow a phrase — stood on the shoulders of that great giant of the French school to see beyond: to the ineffable union of Mary with the Holy Ghost, commenced in the Immaculate Conception, as the basis of Her being Mediatrix of All Graces.

Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe and the Immaculate Conception

There is a fine article on the Catholic Culture site by Rev. Dwight P. Campbell, “The Holy Spirit And Mary.” It is a résumé of Saint Maximilian’s Mariology and the emphasis that he puts on the union of Mary with the Holy Ghost. Father Campbell bases his article largely on the wonderful book of Père H. M. Manteau-Bonamy, O.P., Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit, and I, in turn, base most of what follows on Father Campbell’s piece.

Father Campbell begins by making the point that while Saint Louis de Montfort and most other authors emphasized Mary’s Divine Maternity as the basis for Mary’s mediation of grace, Saint Maximilian links it primarily to Her union with the Holy Ghost. There is, as Father Campbell explains, a fittingness to this: “Jesus, the Source of all grace, came through Mary via the work of the Holy Spirit; therefore it is fitting that all grace continue to come through Mary by the work of the Holy Spirit.” The Polish Conventual Friar refers to Mary as the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, but, he is not completely satisfied with this term because, as he says, the intimacy between Mary and the Third Person goes beyond it:

Among creatures made in God’s image, the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all. 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. (Manteau-Bonamy, 57, quoting from Final Sketch by Kolbe.)

For Saint Maximilian Maria, the Immaculate Conception is the foundation for Mary Mediatrix in Her work of assisting the Holy Ghost in distributing divine grace. The primacy Saint Maximilian puts on the Holy Ghost as distributor of grace is theologically very sound. To the Father, we appropriate the work of creation, to the Son, redemption, and to the Holy Ghost, sanctification. As the Substantial Charity — the Love in Person — of the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost is, in His temporal mission, “the Sanctifier” because He imparts to us all the graces merited for us by Jesus Christ. Mary’s role as Mediatrix (specifically, as “Distributrix”) of Grace has Her continuing in time the formation of Jesus in souls by Her continuously being made fruitful by the Holy Ghost. This is a truth Saint Louis Marie teaches, but not with the precision of Saint Maximilian Maria, who is clearer on the distribution of grace being principally the work of the Holy Ghost, and, therefore, of Mary with the Third Person.

For Saint Maximilian Maria, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary commenced Her intimate union with the Paraclete. “Mary’s mediation is a consequence of the dogma of her Immaculate Conception,” he said (Manteau-Bonamy, 90, quoting from Miles Immaculatae, I, by Kolbe, 1938). “Immaculate Conception,” names the act of love of the Holy Ghost to Mary, by which, in a singular and ineffable grace, He united Her to Himself. It also names that grace itself, or, rather, the effect of that grace, so much so that “THE Immaculate Conception” becomes Mary’s very identity. Hence, She could tell little Saint Bernadette at Lourdes, “I am the Immaculate Conception,” words that preoccupied, even haunted, Saint Maximilian Maria.

Saint Maximilian’s theology of the union of Mary with the Holy Ghost runs very deep. His theology of the Holy Ghost has this unique feature: In meditating on the words of Our Lady to Saint Bernadette, he drew the insight that, as Mary is the created Immaculate Conception by the power of the Holy Ghost, the Divine Spirit Himself — as the breath of love of the Father and the Son — is the Uncreated Immaculate Conception. Here is Father Campbell summarizing the Polish Franciscan:

This procession [of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son], he says, can be given the proper name of Uncreated, Eternal Immaculate Conception, which describes the act of love (an act of the divine will) flowing eternally between the Father and the Son.

And here is Saint Maximilian Maria himself:

And who is the Holy Spirit? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. If the fruit of created love is a created conception, then the fruit of divine Love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a divine “conception.” The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the “uncreated, eternal conception,” the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.

At the risk of going long, I will quote one more passage from Saint Maximilian Maria, followed by the rich commentary on it by Father Campbell:

He [the Holy Spirit] makes her fruitful from the very first instant of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity. This eternal “Immaculate Conception” (which is the Holy Spirit) produces in an immaculate manner divine life itself in the womb (or depths) of Mary’s soul, making her the Immaculate Conception, the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary’s body is kept sacred for him; there he conceives in time… the human life of the God-man. (Manteau-Bonamy, 4, quoting from Final Sketch by Kolbe.)

Father Campbell, commenting on this, draws some important connections:

Now we can grasp more clearly what Kolbe means when he refers to the Holy Spirit as the Uncreated Immaculate Conception, and to Mary as the created Immaculate Conception. The Holy Spirit immaculately produced or “conceived” in Mary’s soul, at the instant of her conception, the singular grace which preserved her from all stain of Original Sin; and further, through this singular grace he united Mary to himself in a most ineffable manner and communicated to her, a creature, the capacity to become, as Pius IX says, “the dwelling place of all [His] grace.” This singular grace which unites Mary so closely to the Holy Spirit enables her to reflect within her soul (with her freely-willed cooperation) the Holy Spirit’s most essential attribute: love that is superabundantly fruitful. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, this singular grace of divine love bears fruit in Mary: in her womb, with the Incarnation; and in her cooperation with the Holy Spirit in the distribution of all graces merited by Christ. As Kolbe says, “He makes her fruitful, from the very first instant of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.” 

In Her intimate union with the Person who is Substantial Love — the “Uncreated Immaculate Conception,” in Saint Maximilian Maria’s lexicon — the Blessed Virgin becomes fruitful and super-abundantly so from the moment of Her Immaculate Conception to the Incarnation, to now, when She still mediates the grace of Her Divine Spouse to those redeemed by Her Son.

By the grace of the Holy Ghost, mediated to us through His fruitful and faithful Spouse, let us believe, profess, and treasure these two related doctrines: The Filioque and Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces!

---