CHILD MARY

As the dogma of the Immaculate Conception states,... we know that Our Lady was free from original sin. Positively speaking, this means that she was filled with grace in an unparalleled way, that she was filled with the participation in God's life, in Christ's life. If only for that reason, she is the unique daughter, the unique child of the Father.

We know by faith that, with the exception of the God-Man, no soul is as filled with grace as Mary's soul. For this reason, the Fathers of the Church like to call her the daughter of the Father.

If we ask the Greek Fathers about their attitude toward Our Lady, we receive the simple, clear, forceful answer: She is simply the daughter of the Father. In our language we would rather say: She is simply the child of the Father. What does this mean? Her childlikeness surpasses every imaginable childlikeness in a created being.

The entire nature of Our Lady is Christ-centered and, in Christ and through Christ, Father-centered.

From the very beginning, we must take it for granted that Our Lady not only has the excellent status of a child, but that she also possesses the unparalleled, unsurpassed attitude of a child.

Our Lady was a child, not only ontologically speaking, but also in her entire inner attitude. She possessed what is essential for a child: perfect self-surrender combined with deepest humility and confidence, and a very high degree of love.

Our Lady is the model of genuine childlikeness. She learned childlikeness from the only-begotten Son of God.

Just as Christ centers on the Father, so it is understood that Our Lady centers on the Father, because through Christ she is completely Father-oriented.

When we kneel before Our Lady and realize how God-centered her whole life is, a deep longing stirs in the innermost depths of our hearts.

Mary's love for the heavenly Father has a twofold quality. It jS) on the one hand, service-oriented and, on the other, extraordinarily tender and childlike.

Mary experiences her smallness because she knows she has been created. Before the uncreated, infinite God she experiences herself as a lowly handmaid in a most tender and deep way.

Our Lady made God's will her own. Time and again, therefore, Christ could take delight in the fact that the Father's will governed the will of his Blessed Mother.

The entire life of Our Lady is an actualization of God's will, a constant and absolute surrender to the wish and will of the Father.

“Ecce ancilla Domini! Fiat...” - I am the servant of the Lord! Let it be done to me as you say. (Lk 1:38). These words convey the infinitely simple, childlike self-surrender of her whole nature to the Eternal God's will. Perfect humility, perfect simplicity! Childlikeness, most heroic childlikeness!

At the Annunciation, the Holy Spirit overshadowed Our Lady. Later, in the Cenacle, she received him once more. This makes us understand why she could embody the ideal of childlikeness so gloriously and so heroically. It is a great pity that so little is recorded about her later life.

We believe that Our Lady's being determined her action and that she was the Father's child in a profound way. Psychologically speaking, by the very law of transmission of life, she will, therefore, give to her children a deep, childlike love for the Father. This psychological basis is enhanced through the mediating activity of Our Lady. Mary's mediating function is linked to this psychological process.

If I lead my followers to Our Lady, then she makes them receptive and open for the Father, she makes them capable of experiencing the Father.