Digital Marian Helper Spring_2018

To serve the Immaculate Conception means serving the pro-life cause T here is something inevitably, inherently pro-life about a religious order founded on the basis of an absolute self-offering — an oblatio — to defend and promote the truth of the Immaculate Conception. In 2017, a general chapter of the Marian Fathers o f the Immaculate Conception determined that the founding date of the Congregation would change. The founding had been dated to Oct. 24, 1673, when Bishop Stanislaw Jacek Swiecicki arrived at the hermitage in Korabiew Forest to conduct a canonical visitation. But from now on, the Congregation would acknowledge Dec. 11, 1670, as the official day of their founding. Why? Because that was the day that St. Stanislaus Papczynski ( 1631– 1701) made his oblatio , professing publicly his inten- tion to found the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception. He concluded thusly: I avow that I believe in whatever the Holy Roman Church believes and will successively teach to be believed, mostly indeed I avow that the Most Holy Mother of God Mary was conceived without original stain and I promise to propagate and defend her honor even by suffering the loss of my life. … From that self-gift to God and His Mother has flowed forth all the history, works, and spiritual fruits of the Marian Fathers. The Marian Fathers are rooted, then, in the truth that life begins at the moment of conception because they defend and promote the truth that the person whom we honor as the Mother of God with all her many titles began to exist at that first moment of her conception. Further, the Marian Fathers know that the Blessed Virgin Mary has total enmity with the devil. That, after all, is what “immaculate” means — she was preserved 28 M arian H elper  • S pring 2018   • marian.org R ooted in truth By Chris Sparks