Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
On this First Saturday, as the Church prepares to celebrate the great feast of the Immaculate Conception, we have posted an article on the Kolbe Center website showing the inseparability of the Immaculate Conception from the Immaculate Creation. As explained below and in more detail in that article, the link between the Immaculate Conception and the Immaculate Creation also explains why today has been Our Lady’s special day since the First Saturday of the world.
“I am the Immaculate Conception”
In 1858, on the eve of the publication of Charles Darwin’s book Origin of Species, the Queen of Prophets appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous and identified Herself as “the Immaculate Conception,” thus giving the lie to the diabolical deception of human evolution. It was St. Maximilian Kolbe who through a lifetime of meditation on Our Lady’s words realized that Our Lady’s self-identification as “the Immaculate Conception” affirmed the special creation of Adam and Eve, body and soul, and excluded the possibility that their bodies could have been produced through an evolutionary process. In the last major piece of writing that he wrote or dictated before going to the starvation bunker in Auschwitz, he wrote:
Who then are You, O Immaculate Conception?
Not God, of course, because he has no beginning. Not an angel, created directly out of nothing. Not Adam, formed out of the dust of the earth (Gen. 2,7). Not Eve, molded from Adam’s rib (Gen. 2,21). Not the Incarnate Word, who exists before all ages, and of whom we should use the word “conceived” rather than “conception”. Humans do not exist before their conception, so we might call them created “conceptions.” But you, O Mary, are different from all other children of Eve. They are conceptions stained by original sin; whereas you are the unique, Immaculate Conception.
With these words, St. Maximilian laid bare the consoling truth that, if the human body had evolved and if “theistic evolution” were true, then Adam and Eve must have been conceived in the womb of a sub-human primate. And since theistic evolutionists must believe in the dogma of Original Sin as defined by the Council of Trent, they must hold that Adam and Eve were “conceived without sin.” Therefore, if theistic evolution were true, the Blessed Mother would have had to say, “I am AN Immaculate Conception,” or “I am Immaculate Conception NUMBER THREE.” But She did not say that—because, as St. Maximilian explained in the passage quoted above, Adam and Eve were created, not conceived.
As consoling as it is to read these words of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the relationship between Our Lady’s identification as the Immaculate Conception and the traditional Catholic doctrine of Creation goes far beyond her indirect affirmation of the special creation of our first parents at Lourdes. In our newly-published article, we show that the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is inseparable from God’s revelation that the entire work of creation was supernatural and that, like the Immaculate Conception Herself, the first created world was immaculate when it came forth from Him in the beginning. In the light of this truth, it will become clear that theistic evolution—the idea that God used the same kinds of material processes going on now to produce the first human beings, in a process involving hundreds of millions of years of death, deformity and disease—is a blasphemy against the perfect goodness of God and the infallibility of His Holy Church.
The Creation-Providence Distinction
The Catholic doctrine of creation set forth by all of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church clearly distinguishes between the period of creation when God created, formed, and furnished the universe and established the framework of natural laws, and the period of providence, in which we live, and in which creatures interact according to their God-given natures within the framework of natural law. Thus, traditional Catholic theology respects the integrity of the natural world, provides a proper framework for the development of the natural sciences, and welcomes the discoveries of natural scientists, confident that these discoveries will never contradict but will rather confirm the truth of Divine Revelation.
The traditional Catholic doctrine of creation differs drastically from theistic evolutionism, a system of thought that seeks to reconcile Catholic doctrine with evolution. Theistic evolutionists believe that God created matter and energy but used material processes over long periods of time to produce all of the different kinds of living and nonliving things in the universe. Thus, theistic evolutionism makes no distinction between God’s activity during the creation period and God’s activity in the present order of things—except to acknowledge an ex nihilo creation of matter at the time of the alleged Big Bang. According to this view, natural scientists can extrapolate from natural processes operating in the present all the way back to the beginning of creation and can explain the origin of the different kinds of living things, including the first human body, solely in terms of the material processes operating in the world today.
“Human Nature Cannot Comprehend the Creation of God”
In sharp contrast to this view, the Church Fathers and Doctors, including St. Thomas, held that natural science cannot investigate the origin of the different kinds of creatures—not only because this took place in the past, but also because the order of nature that humans experience through their senses differs radically from the order of creation in which God supernaturally created all things in the beginning. On this point St. John Chrysostom writes:
With great gratitude let us accept what is related (by Moses), not stepping out of our own limitations, and not testing what is above us as the enemies of the truth did when, wishing to comprehend everything with their minds, they did not realize that human nature cannot comprehend the creation of God (emphasis added).
Commenting on Jesus’ words in John’s Gospel, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work,” St. John Chrysostom summed up the consensus of the Fathers on the distinction between the order of creation and the order of providence:
The Divine Scripture indicates here that God rested from His works; but in the Gospel Christ says: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work” (John 5:17). In comparing these utterances, is there not a contradiction to be found in them? May it not be so; in the words of Divine Scripture there is no contradiction whatsoever. When the Scripture here says: “God rested from all his works,” it thereby instructs us that on the Seventh Day He ceased to create and to bring out of nonexistence into existence; but when Christ says: “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,” it thereby indicates to us His uninterrupted Providence, and it calls “work” the preservation of what exists, the giving to it of continuance (of existence) and the governance of it at all times.
All of the Fathers held that the period of creation was completed with the creation of the first human beings on the sixth day and that the period of Providence began on the Seventh day. They based their teaching on Genesis 2:3: “The seventh day was called the Sabbath, because God, having finished the creation of the world, rested” and on Hebrews 4:3: “God’s works from the foundation of the world were finished.” Summarizing the patristic teaching on these two points, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:
…the completion of the universe as to the completeness of its parts belongs to the Sixth day, but its completion as regards their operation, to the Seventh (ST.1. Q.73 r. 3) . . .Nothing new was afterwards made by God, but all things subsequently made had in a sense been made before, in the work of the Six Days ...those individual creatures that are now generated existed in the first of their kind (ST.1 Q.73 r.3)
According to St. Thomas, the perfection of the original creation did not preclude a development of that creation to a final end. But this was not an evolutionary development, because he insists that “all the parts” of the first creation were complete in the beginning:
The perfection of a thing is twofold, the first perfection and the second perfection. The first perfection is that according to which a thing is substantially perfect, and this perfection is the form of the whole; which form results from the whole having its parts complete . . . Now the final perfection, which is the end of the whole universe, is the perfect beatitude of the saints at the consummation of the world; and the first perfection is the completeness of the universe at its first founding, and this is what is ascribed to the seventh day.
St. Augustine is often touted as a proto-“theistic evolutionist,” but he always distinguishes between the finished work of creation and the natural order of providence. In The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, for example, he explains God’s “rest” as His cessation from creating new kinds of creatures:
It could also be said that God rested from creating because He did not create henceforward any new kinds of creatures, and that even until now and beyond He works by governing the kinds that He then made. None the less, even on the seventh day His power ceased not from ruling heaven and earth and all that He had made, for otherwise they would have perished immediately.
Let us, therefore, believe and, if possible, also understand that God is working even now, so that if His action should be withdrawn from His creatures, they would perish. But if we should suppose that God now makes a creature without having implanted its kind (genus) in His original creation, we should flatly contradict Sacred Scripture, which says that on the sixth day God finished all His works.
He also wrote:
…we understand that God rested from all the works that He made in the sense that from then on He did not produce any other new nature, not that He ceased to hold and govern what He had made. Hence it is true that God rested on the seventh day, and it is also true that He works even until now.
In another passage, St. Augustine explicitly reproaches those who, like most, but not all, Catholic theologians today, conflate the order of providence in which we live with the order of creation in the beginning. He writes:
The creation of natures here [in Genesis] is something unfamiliar, because it is the creation of things for the first time. For what is so unique and unparalleled in the constitution of the things of the world as the world itself? Surely we are not to believe that God did not make the world because He does not make worlds today, or that He did not make the sun because He does not make suns today.
St. John Chrysostom sums up the patristic view of the creation/providence distinction in a similar way when he asks:
What does it mean that first there is heaven, and then earth, first the roof and then the foundation? God is not subject to natural necessity; He is not subject to the laws of art. The will of God is the creator and artificer of nature and of art and of everything existing (Eight Homilies on Genesis 1:3).
In contrast to evolutionary models which hold that new kinds of organisms came into existence and others became extinct long before the appearance of the first human beings, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom and St. Thomas, with all of the Fathers and Doctors, held that the first created world was perfect because:
1. God brought all of the different kinds of creatures into existence together with Adam and Eve in perfect harmony;
2. the creation of new kinds of creatures ceased after the creation of Adam and Eve, so that—as St Thomas says in the Summa—“In the works nature creation does not enter, but is presupposed to the works of nature”; and
3. because each kind of creature was perfectly designed for its place in the universe.
In the words of St. Augustine, in the City of God,:
In this creation, had no one sinned, the world would have been filled and beautified with natures good without exception. (City of God, Book XI, Chapter 23).
The Immaculate Conception and the Immaculate Creation
Except for St. Augustine, who preferred an instantaneous creation of all things, virtually all of the Church Fathers held that God created the heavens and the earth and all that they contain in six 24-hour days. All of the Fathers taught that God created Adam as the King of creation and Eve from his side as the Queen of the first created world. In this way, the seventh day became associated with the rest of the Lord in the perfection of the first created world, and with the creation of Eve. These two types were fulfilled on Holy, or “Great,” Saturday, when the Body of Jesus the New Adam rested in the tomb having brought forth His Bride the Church from His side while He slept on the Cross. Mary the New Eve exemplified the Church holy and immaculate in God’s New creation.
Indeed, in the first millennium most of the Eastern Christian world and much of the West observed the Saturday Sabbath as a day of reflection and Eucharistic worship. According to the fifth century Greek historian Socrates:
The people of Constantinople, and almost everywhere, assemble together on the Sabbath [Saturday], as well as on the first day of the week [Sunday], which custom is never observed at Rome or at Alexandria.
In the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, a widely-respected document of the 3rd and 4th centuries, bishops were directed to:
observe the Sabbath, on account of Him who ceased from His work of creation, but ceased not from His work of providence: it is a rest for meditation of the law, not for idleness of the hands.
In the early Church, according to The Apostolic Constitutions, Holy or Great Saturday was the only Saturday on which fasting was permitted (cf. Apostolic Constitutions, VII, 23). In the minds of the first Christians, Saturday remained the joyful commemoration of the seventh day of creation. It was a continual reminder that God’s creative work was finished on the seventh day and that He ceased to bring from non-existence into existence on that day. At the same time, it was a reminder that all things visible and invisible had been brought into existence ex nihilo during the hexameron, the six days of creation. In yet another way, the Sabbath foreshadowed the Sabbath rest of the Lord at the end of human history when God would rest in his sanctified people and they would rest in Him.
When Catholics of the Roman Rite began to treat Saturday as a penitential day, this partially obscured the meaning of the Sabbath celebration and blurred the distinction between the order of creation “in the beginning” and the order of providence that began on the seventh day. There is no doubt that the neglect of this distinction helped to pave the way for the all but universal acceptance of theistic evolutionism among bishops and theologians in Europe and North America.
To the evolutionist mentality, “the present is the key to the past.” Thus, there never was a time when God created all of the different kinds of creatures ex nihilo “in the beginning.” Instead, natural scientists are allowed to speculate endlessly as to how all things evolved over billions of years under conditions essentially identical to those that exist today. This in turn has led to an almost total amnesia in regard to the perfect harmony of the first-created world, so that the present fallen order of things is identified with the world as it came forth from God’s hands. Without the Saturday Sabbath as a liturgical reminder that God’s first created world was “very good,” the effects of man’s sin are trivialized and God is made the author of death, deformity, and disease. When the Saturday “Sabbath rest” is understood as the commemoration of “the first perfection of the universe,” the faithful are continually reminded that the Immaculate Conception is inseparable from the immaculate creation.
Our Lady of Fatima and the First Saturday Devotion
We have seen that the practice known as the First Saturday devotion hearkens back to an ancient liturgical practice of the Eastern Church—a practice with profound theological significance for our times. In an apparition of December 10, 1925, in Tuy, Spain, Our Lady told Sister Lucy of Fatima:
I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.
The purpose of this practice was to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and to make reparation for...
- Attacks upon the reality of Mary's Immaculate Conception
- Attacks against her the reality of Mary's Perpetual Virginity
- Attacks upon Mary's Divine Maternity and the refusal to accept her as the Mother of all mankind
- Those who try to publicly implant in children's hearts indifference, contempt and hatred for Immaculate Mary
- For those who insult Mary directly in her sacred images.
The devotion involves the following practices on five consecutive first Saturdays with the specific intention of making reparation for the offenses (above) against the Blessed Virgin.
- Go to Confession (within 8 days before or after the first Saturday)
- Receive Holy Communion
- Recite five decades of the Rosary*
- "Keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on fifteen mysteries of the Rosary" (separate from the Rosary itself)
Although Our Lady did not make explicit reference to the importance of Saturday in the Eastern Christian traditions of the Church, mentioned above, in light of her request for the consecration of Russia, her emphasis upon the first Saturday takes on a deeper significance.
According to tradition, the Blessed Mother spent most of the years between the Resurrection and her Assumption in Ephesus with St. John the Evangelist. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the most spiritually exalted of all of St. Paul’s letters is addressed to the Ephesians. “You are God’s masterpiece,” St. Paul told them, “created in Christ Jesus for good works that He has prepared beforehand that you might walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The Blessed Mother acted as Mediatrix of all graces by sealing each of those good works prepared for us by Christ with her motherly kiss. From her vantage point in the heart of the Most Holy Trinity, our Blessed Mother also saw and suffered for each and every sin, past, present, and future, thus sharing as co-redemptrix in the saving work of Christ.
But Mary is not only the Mediatrix of all graces and Co-Redemptrix. As the Second Eve she is also a universal Advocate for all souls, past, present, and future. From her resting place in the heart of the Most Holy Trinity, where She now lives and where She lived every moment of her life on earth, Mary intercedes with the Father for each and every soul, invoking the Precious Blood of Jesus upon them, especially at the moment of death. Conscious of this reality, great souls like St. Faustina of Divine Mercy continually asked Our Lady to accompany them to the souls of the dying, both Christian and non-Christian—past, present, and future—even to the souls of dying heretics and infidels.
The more souls believe in Mary’s supernatural maternity and universal advocacy for souls, the more they will join in confidently invoking her intercession not only for their fellow Catholics, but for all souls, past, present, and future—without any limits. Imagine the effect if millions of Catholics prayed confidently for poor sinners in this way! It is this kind of boundless faith that will bring the entire Mystical Body of Christ to its ultimate fulfillment. In the Mystical Body of Christ, the sanctity of Our Lady reveals the fullness to which all Christians are called--a fullness which was first revealed in the humanity of Jesus Christ and which will be achieved by the whole Church when her members attain what St. Paul calls, “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
We are now in a position to understand the importance of Mary’s role as Second Eve and the importance of consecrating ourselves to her as children who imitate her interior life. As St. Louis de Montfort wrote:
Mary has produced, together with the Holy Ghost, the greatest thing which has been or ever will be—a God-man; and she will consequently produce the greatest saints that there will be in the end of time. The formation and education of the great saints who shall come at the end of the world are reserved for her. For it is only that singular and miraculous Virgin who can produce, in union with the Holy Ghost, singular and extraordinary things.
The great saints who practice the perfect interior imitation of Jesus and Mary will not only offer God great glory. With their holy lives they will bring about the ultimate Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the Church and in the world, as St. Louis De Montfort prophesied when he wrote:
They shall be great and exalted before God in sanctity, superior to all other creatures by their lively zeal, and so well sustained with God’s assistance that, with the humility of their heel, in union with Mary, they shall crush the head of the devil and cause Jesus Christ to triumph.
Of these days of Triumph Venerable Mary of Agreda wrote:
It was revealed to me that through the intercession of the Mother of God all heresies will disappear. The victory over heresies has been reserved by Christ for his Blessed Mother... The power of Mary in the latter days will be very conspicuous. Mary will extend the reign of Christ over the heathens and the Mohammedans, and it will be a time of great joy when Mary is enthroned as Mistress and Queen of hearts.
Thus, the commemoration of the first Saturday of the month in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a reminder of the forgotten meaning of the Sabbath rest of Creation and a foretaste of the future rest of the Lord in His saints during the coming “era of peace.”
Through the prayers of Our Lady of Fatima, may the Holy Ghost deliver us from all error and evil and guide us into all the Truth!
Yours in Christ through the Holy Theotokos, in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
P.S. Today is a First Saturday. Please be sure to answer Our Lady’s appeal for the First Saturday devotions as described by the Fatima Center at this link.
P. P. S. The 2025 Kolbe leadership retreat will take place at the Catholic Conference Center in Hickory, North Carolina, from July 31 to August 6. The retreat will equip attendees to defend and promote the traditional Catholic doctrine of creation in their spheres of influence as the foundation of our Faith and as the only firm foundation for a culture of life. For more information and to register for the retreat, please contact Hugh Owen at howen@shentel.net.
