This Thursday is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, a Holy Day of
Obligation and a beautiful day to honor Our Lady, our tender Heavenly Mother. St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan priest who died in Auschwitz, wrote a beautiful meditation on the Immaculate Conception. In fact, he loved this mystery of Mary so much that he often referred to Mary as, simply, "The Immaculata". Here are a couple excerpts from St. Maximilian's reflections:

“Who are you, O Immaculate Conception? Not God, for God has no beginning. Not Adam, made from  the dust of the earth. Not Eve, drawn from Adam’s body. Nor is she the Incarnate Word who already existed from all eternity and who was conceived, but is not really a 'conception.' Prior to their conception the children of Eve do not exist, hence they can more properly be called 'conceptions'; and yet you, O Mary, differ from them too, because they are conceptions contaminated by original sin, whereas you are the one and only Immaculate Conception.”

“In the union of the Holy Spirit with her, not only does love bind these two beings, but the first of them [the Holy Spirit] is all the love of the Most Holy Trinity, while the second [the Blessed Virgin Mary] is all the love of creation, and thus in that union heaven is joined to earth, the whole heaven
with the whole earth, the whole of Uncreated Love with the whole of created love: this is the vertex of love.”

“What kind of union is this? It is above all interior; it is the union of her very being with the being of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her, lives
in her, from the first instant of her existence, and he will do so always, throughout eternity... This uncreated Immaculate Conception conceives divine
life immaculately in the soul of Mary, his Immaculate Conception. The virginal womb of her body, too, is reserved for him who conceives there in time—everything material comes about according to time—the divine life of the God-Man.”