St Stan Illustrated Story

62 B efore leaving Warsaw, Fr. Papczynski had paid another visit to Bishop Wierzbowski and obtained, without difficulty, per- mission to wear the new religious habit that he had chosen for his fu- ture Marians. This habit differed only in color from that of the Piarist Fathers. That of the Piarists was black; the one that Fr. Stanislaus chose for his Congregation was white. He apparently thought that white would be the most appropriate color for those who were to be members of the “Society of the Im- maculate Conception.” The spotlessness of Mary’s Conception could not, in his opinion, be so well expressed by any other color. Further- more, he was convinced that the public wearing of the white habit would be a powerful aid in spreading the cult of the Immaculate Con- ception which, after all, was to be one of the principal aims of the new religious community. Shortly after his arrival at Lubocz and with the knowledge of the Apostolic Nuncio, Fr. Stanislaus was vested in the new white habit, “in honor of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” “I have now offered myself,” writes the Saint, “in the white habit, as a new ‘candidate’ of this Mother, to serve her for ever.” (There seems to be a play on words in the use of the term “candidatus,” which in Latin may also mean “one dressed in white.”) And so in the year 1671, within the octave of the Feast of the Nativity of Mary, in the Chapel of the karski Court at Lubocz and before a “miraculous” painting of Our Blessed Lady, the ‘first seed of the new Congregation dedicated to honoring Mary’s Immaculate Conception was sown and began to take root.