It is most fitting to give the Blessed Virgin a seat of honor here as this meditation bears the numeral of Pentecost. It was after our Lords ascension to heaven that His disciples had all met together “constantly in prayer, together with some women, including Mary the mother of Jesus” (Ac 1. 14). This was on the day of Pentecost, “When Pentecost day came round, they had all met together” (Ac 2. 1). It is wonderful to see how our Lord founded His community of love on earth. First He united it as one wholeness, as one “Christo total”, and this is the prerequisite for the personal sanctification of each an everyone of its member as a limp on the body, “And there appeared to then tongues as of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them” (Ac 2. 3).


It is thus how the Blessed Virgin appears in the Militant church on earth on the icon of the Blessed Virgin of Perpetual Help (Beata Virgo de Perpetuo Succursu). When we contemplate the icon we she the Lord of Life – Jesus Christ – as a child with both of His hands grasped around the hands of His mother. He is afraid! He is looking at what is frightening Him: the archangel Michael carrying the token of His passion – the Cross.
   What does this fear reveal except the human nature of Christ? To the left on the icon we see the archangel Gabriel carrying his staff. Gabriel is the protector of the northern quarter of the Tetramorph, the place of the desert prayer. The Archangel Michael is on the other hand the protector of this eastern quarter where we are now on our pilgrimage along this Sacred Way.
   The icon gives us an account of the fact that as a child Jesus was deeply disturbed and ran to His mother for help. He gives us thus a pattern to follow in our own trials on earth: we can also run to His mother for help and thus bear all sufferings in our own sufferings in the Night of the spirit which we are about to enter.

This is the role of the Mother of Perpetual help in the live of grace: to give consolations. Just as Jesus we can seek refuge in her motherly and tender love. The icon gives us account of the fact that both Jesus and Mary suffered by the weakness of their human nature. The angle said to Mary, “Rejoice, you who enjoys God's favor!” (Lk 1. 29). Mary was “deeply disturbed” (Lk. 31) by the words of Gabriel and he consoled her, “Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God's favor.” God has opened her spiritual eyes  – her spiritual perception – and the invisible and spiritual world is  “ganz anderes”, not like anything else that we have experienced in the world of the natural senses.

The icon tells us also the same truth: that we have to rise above the weakness of the human nature in its alienation from God, adjust it to this new spiritual reality by the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. If we need strength we must ask for it and live in accordance with the law of the Spirit (Rm 8. 2). The Holy Spirit will raise us above this nature in His grace which as a matter of fact is not our true nature in its alienation from God.
   What takes place at the eternal birth of the Word in Mary is that the All Holy Trinity makes an abode in her as Luke gives us account of by the words of the archangel, “Look! You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High . . . The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with his shadow” (Lk 1. 31, 35). Gabriel is God's messenger or minister announcing the coming of the Most High Trinity, “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” (Heb 1. 14).

As at the Announcement the same mystery takes place in every Christian soul at baptism: the All Holy Trinity makes an abode in that soul, AND WE SHALL COME TO HIM AND MAKE A HOME IN HIM (Jn 14. 23). But the Blessed Virgin persevered this mystery in her heart, her face was so fully turned to this birth that she received nothing save this birth (see Med. 17). This she was able to do as she was a flawless mirror being in the live of grace. The Blessed Theotokos and ever Virgin Mary was such a flawless mirror being and that is why the Church calls her a "mirror of righteousness" or Speculum justitiae, as Elizabeth of the Trinity put it. [1] This is the cairn of the dogma of the Ineffabilis Deus which is so precious to the Church as it emphasizes the victory of God's grace. “It also signifies that for the Church and for every human being, grace is more original than sin,” [2] God desires in His vehement love that we realize as His children that the fallen nature is unnatural – a disease of a corrupted free will as was discussed above (Med. 35). How is sin defined? “Original sin is the deprivation of grace.” [3]
  
    Deprivation of grace is according to the Council of Trent the cairn of mortal sin, absence of life, “the death of the soul“ – the absence of the Holy Spirit and His grace. The true life streams into the essence of the soul from the Holy Spirit in the effects of sanctifying grace, a mystery which the Greek church fathers named apporoia or the influx of grace. Sin is alienation from God and our own true nature, a lack of self knowledge. The English word sin is derived from the ancient Icelandic word sundra: to disperse or shatter, to tear something apart. Satan and his evil spirits in the air are not only able to stain the mirror of the heart: they can break it by heresies as mother Teresa mentioned above (Med. 41). This is the tragedy of numerous souls who break this mirror: they don't believe!

The existence of the false ego is based on its alienation from God. Thus the Blessed Virgin is the source of all true self knowledge and knowledge of the Church. To be in opposite state of sin means to live in right relationship to God and that means to be “full of grace” (Lk 1. 28). The Blessed Virgin sheds light upon the fact that when this alienation has been overcome and the thoroughfare of God's grace opened, the soul has become a silver clear channel of His grace and the child is born. If we use the terminology of modern quantum mechanics we can maintain that the soul becomes a light conductor in the live of grace (Med. 34).
   The original sin consisted in the fact that man turned the mirror of his soul from God and his Creator. The great achievement of the Cappodocian fathers in theology was to define the nature of the Vision of the Celestial City. Thus Gregory of Nyssa did not only speak of the contemplation as reflection, but as a participation in God,


This Light of Glory will shine in a human soul when she turns the mirror of her heart to God as the Blessed Virgin in the impulses of divine love in the prayer. While this veil remains – the sinful ego – the soul doesn't see, and this “veil will not be taken away till they turn to the Lord” (2 Cor 3. 16). Thus the soul is only able to see the “glory on the face of Christ“ and thus she becomes a temple of the Spirit which was prefigured by the Sanctuary of the Tabernacle of the Old Covenant.


This is how it loud, this dogma which Pope Pius IX declared as a formal dogma and obligatory for the Church in 1854. By this dogma the Church simply confesses an ontological fact of how the eternal Word is born in a human soul, a fact that has been preserved within the Church from earliest of times and sheds unique light on our own nature as human beings. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is emphasized by Luke's own words when he says that Mary was kecharitomene or “enjoys God’s favor” which in the more familiar translation loud “full of grace” (Lk 1. 28). All depends on how we understand the words culpae labe of the Latin text or the stain of original sin. We have already seen how Teresa of Avila shed light upon this truth : “I was given  understanding what it is for a soul to be in a mortal sin. It amounts to clouding this mirror with mist and leaving it black; and thus the Lord cannot be revealed or seen,“  (Med. 42) or by Ruysbroeck words  “our Lord Christ Jesus, for He is, according to His Godhead, a shining forth of the Eternal Light, and an irradiation of the glory of God, and a flawless mirror in which all things live“ (Med. 3)
   The Blessed Virgin was such a flawless mirror being at the moment of the announcement and thus a pattern for all souls to follow in the live of grace in their growth in the Vision of the Holy City, or by the words of Gregory of Nyssa  shedding still further light on this mystery,


This is the reason why the enemy of redemption – the fallen guardian cherub – hates the image of this woman that guides all souls to her Son as the First living ark of the New Covenant, “So the serpent vomited water from his mouth, like a river, after the woman, to sweep her away in the current” (Rv 12. 15). This power which the Bible calls death and Satan works with feverous hate to destroy this image of the mother because he realizes that every soul that looses sight of the mother will sooner – rather than later – loose her Son out of sight.
   This dark power of deceptions hates the mother of the child as she is the Immaculate Conception. It is thus how the Church expresses the greatest mystery in the life of the Blessed Virgin, that from the first moment of her creation she responded involuntarily to the impulse of love. Teresa of Avila experienced such impulses repeatedly in the eternal birth of the Word in herself:
 

The prince of theologians, Thomas Aquinas, refers to this mystery of the Virgin as self reflection, “In all the angels the first act of self reflection was good. But then some went on to turn to the Word with praise, while others remained in themselves, swollen with pride. Thus the first act was common to them all; it was by the second that they were separated. In the first instant they were all good; in a second, they divided into the good and the evil“ [7]
   In conformity to the dogma of the Church Mary's second self reflection was as of God's holy angels, to “turn to the Word with praise“ as she did not reject “the supernatural bliss which depends on the grace of God,” did not trust in her own natural power, but followed the involuntarily impulse of love. The ideology behind the Immaculate Conception does not mean that the Blessed Virgin did not need redemption. The theologian John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) resolved this enigma by pointing to the fact that the Immaculate Conception bore witness of the redemptive power of Christ that can save in two ways in time. In Mary's case Christ's redemptive power preserved her from being touched by sin even for an instant, while also rescuing from sin these already fallen. Given this reason the Council of Trent (1545-1563) excluded Mary from its decree on original sin which became the foundation of the dogma of the Immaculate Mother of God.

As every soul the Blessed Virgin sheds light on the community of the Church as one wholeness as well as on the predestination of each individual soul: to become holy in her sanctification, “to be holy and faultless before him in love” (Ep 1. 4). In this light we understand the words which came from the lips of our Lord while He was still with us on earth,


Of course these words refers to the body of sin consisting of the 'members' of the vices which Abba Chearemon spoke of above (Med. 37).


On the icon of the Blessed Virgin of Perpetual Help we she that she carries the crown of victory just as her Son. When we read this fourth chapter in the Book of Life it reminds us on what we read in the second chapter of this same book after our time of spiritual dyslexia in the courtyard, a singular adornment and a heavenly crown,  eternal reward of all virtues,


This token of honor she received from her Son and became thus the First Living Ark of the New Covenant. By her hand she points continuously to her Son in her role as the Hodigitria saying: leave your position and follow Him, so that you may know which way to take (Js 3. 4). It is thus how she leads the soul to the first great tool in the Holy: the golden table of loaves. It is thus precious for us all to scrutinize the Icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help because it is at the next great tool of the Sanctuary, the golden table of loaves, where the soul enters the first stage of the prayer of union. It is in this prayer stage where it enjoys the enormous favors of sanctifying grace, but also its darkest hours of sufferings in the NIGHT OF THE SPIRIT because of her human weakness.

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