St. Max and Lourdes - The Waters, The Movement, The Dogma

LOURDES’ FAME: THE HEALING WATERS

·         April 6, 1914 St. Maximilian wrote a letter to his mother explaining:
“There’s been nothing important in this time, except this: I nearly lost a finger (the thumb) on the right hand.” An abscess had formed and made it necessary to surgically remove (at least part) of the bone of his thumb.  After a short story, Kolbe continued, “He’s good, our doctor, he knew I had the water from Lourdes,  (and) with joy he applied it himself. And what happened? In the morning, instead of an operation of the bone, I heard the hospital surgeon say that the surgery was no longer necessary. After a few medications I was completely healed…”  SK 12

LOURDES’ IMPORTANCE TO THE MOVEMENT/confirmation of the dogma:

·         From a Radio Address on December 8, 1937:

“Faith in the Immaculate Conception of the most Blessed Virgin Mary, which we celebrate today, goes back to the beginning of the Church, even though it was not defined as a dogma until 1854. Four years later at Lourdes the Immaculate herself, at the request of Bernadette, declared, ‘I am the Immaculate Conception’. As a result of the proclamation of this dogma devotion to the Immaculate spread more and more widely throughout the world, and many associations undertook to do battle beneath her standard for the kingdom of God on earth.

One of these association is the Knights of the Immaculate, which has as its international monogram the letters ‘MI’….”  (Kolbe Reader pg. 162)

LOURDES’ IMPACT ON THE KOLBEAN SPIRITUALITY

·         “To Saint Bernadette, who questioned her several times at Lourdes, the Immaculate Virgin answered: I am the Immaculate Conception.

With those words, she clearly stated not only that she had been conceived without sin, but that in fact, she is the Immaculate Conception itself: and that is something different, just as there is a difference between a white object and its whiteness, and between a perfect object and its perfection.

Speaking about Himself, God said to Moses: ‘I am who am.’ (Ex 3:14), which means: it is of My very essence, My very nature that I should always exist, and that My existence should come from Myself, in Whom there is no beginning.   On the other hand, the Immaculate Virgin draws her origin from God. She is a creature, a conception, but still, the Immaculate Conception.” (Stronger than Hatred, pg. 44)