71 resurrection of Christ. It entails creative engagement in the transformation of all aspects of human life—cultural, social, economic and political. Living as new people, we cannot put aside this “newness” and not include it into different areas of our lives and our environment. Such an apostolate was probably envisioned by Blessed George Matulewicz when on October 15, 1910, he wrote: “Animated by the Spirit of Christ, we must try to gather together and organize people of good will—to train and prepare them to work, and then, together with them and through them, to bring Christ everywhere, to restore and renew all things in Christ . . . to attract all to Christ.”21 A Marian is the new man who has accepted Jesus as his Savior and His Mother as a gift at the cross, so as to live according to the new law of love, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, to proclaim the boundless richness of God’s mercy as the Good News for everyone. The Immaculate Conception as the Sign of the Primacy of Grace The Marian as a Man Who Proclaims God’s Grace The truth of the Immaculate Conception of Mary reveals the path of the presence and the work of God in the history of salvation; God, who selfl essly offers Himself to man, meets him half-way to offer Himself to him. The grace with which Mary was fi lled in the fi rst moments of her existence is “the grace of Christ” (gratia Christi), which is bestowed by God due to the redeeming death of Christ. In Mary Immaculate, we discover the newness of grace of the New Covenant which means that God Himself is grace. Grace then is not only “God’s loving care” but His sanctifying presence.22 Remaining in grace means staying in the sphere of God’s love, that is in relation with God. If someone stops accepting this love—he dies in spirit. The Immaculate Conception of Mary reveals the mystery of one who “has not known the history of a life without God,” but rather, from the very beginning and completely, is permeated with God’s love, becoming for us the “mirror and refl ection of the life of God alone.”23 The mystery of the Immaculate Conception shows us the gratuitousness of Christ’s salvation. Mary is Immaculate not by the power of her merits, but by 21 George Matulaitis-Matulewicz, Journal, October 15, 1910, 3. 22 Cf. R. Cantalamessa, Maryja zwierciadłem dla Kościoła [Mary, the Mirror for the Chuch], Warsaw 1994, p. 30. 23 Jan Paweł II, Maryjny wymiar Koscioła (The Marian Dimension of the Church), (address to the College of Cardinals and members of the Roman Curia, December 22, 1987), in: Jan Pawel II o Matce Bożej [John Paul II about the Mother of God], vol. 3, p. 13.
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