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True devotion to Mary leads us closer to Jesus Letter
of the Pope on St. Louis de Montfort's
On
December 8, 2003, Pope John Paul II wrote a letter
to the Montfort religious family, on the occasion of the 160th
Anniversary of the publication of the Treatise on True Devotion to the
Blessed Virgin, written by St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort. Here
are large excerpts from this letter: by
Pope John Paul II A classical text of Marian spirituality
I
myself, in the years of my youth, found reading this book a great help.
“There I found the answers to my questions”, for at one point I had
feared that if my devotion to Mary “became too great, it might end up
compromising the supremacy of the worship owed to Christ” (Gift
and Mystery).
Under the wise guidance of St. Louis Marie, I realized that if one lives
the mystery of Mary in Christ, this risk does not exist. In fact, this
Saint's Mariological thought “is rooted in the mystery of the Trinity
and in the truth of the Incarnation of the Word of God” (ibid.). Since she came into being, and especially in her most difficult moments,
the Church has contemplated with special intensity an event of the
Passion of Jesus Christ that St. John mentions: “Standing
by the Cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary,
the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw His mother, and
the disciple whom He loved standing near, He said to His mother, ‘Woman,
behold, Your son!’. Then He said to the disciple,
‘Behold, Your mother!’ And from that hour the
disciple took Her to his own home” (Jn 19: 25-27). Throughout its history, the People of God has experienced this gift of
the crucified Jesus: the gift of His Mother. Mary Most Holy is truly our
Mother who accompanies us on our pilgrimage of faith, hope and charity
towards an ever-more intense union with Christ, the one Saviour and
Mediator of salvation (cf. Constitution Lumen
Gentium, nn. 60, 62).
This Saint's teaching has had a profound influence on the Marian devotion
of many of the faithful and on my own life. It is a lived teaching of
outstanding ascetic and mystical depth, expressed in a lively and
passionate style that makes frequent use of images and symbols. However,
the considerable development of Marian theology since St. Louis Marie's
time is largely due to the crucial contribution made by the Second
Vatican Council. The Montfort teaching, therefore, which has retained
its essential validity should be reread and reinterpreted today in the
light of the Council. In this Letter I would like to share with you, men and women religious of
the Montfort families, a meditation on certain passages from the
writings of St. Louis Marie that may help us in these difficult times to
nourish our faith in the maternal mediation of the Mother of the Lord. To Jesus through Mary St. Louis Marie proposes the loving contemplation of the mystery of the
Incarnation with unusual effectiveness. Authentic Marian devotion is
Christocentric. Indeed, as the Second Vatican Council recalled,
“Devoutly meditating on Her [Mary] and contemplating Her in the light
of the Word made man, the Church reverently penetrates more deeply into
the great mystery of the Incarnation” (Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church Lumen Gentium,
n. 65). The
love of God through union with Jesus Christ is the purpose of every
genuine devotion, since Christ, as St. Louis Marie wrote, “is our only
Master who has to teach us; our only Lord on whom we ought to depend;
our only Head to whom we must be united; our only Model to whom we
should conform ourselves; our only Physician who can heal us; our only
Shepherd who can feed us; our only Way who can lead us; our only Truth
whom we must believe; our only Life who can animate us; and our only All
in all things who can satisfy us” (Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 61). Devotion to the Blessed Virgin is a privileged means “of finding Jesus
Christ perfectly, of loving Him tenderly, of serving Him faithfully” (Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 62). St. Louis immediately expands this
central desire to “love tenderly” into a passionate prayer to Jesus,
imploring Him for the grace to participate in the indescribable
communion of love that exists between Him and His Mother. Mary's total relativity to Christ and through Him, to the Blessed
Trinity, is first experienced in the observation: “You never think of
Mary without Mary interceding for you with God. You never praise or
honour Mary without Mary's praising and honouring God with you. Mary is
altogether relative to God; and indeed, I might well call Her the
relation to God. She only exists with reference to God. She is the echo
of God that says nothing, repeats nothing, but God. If you say `Mary',
She says `God'. St. Elizabeth praised Mary and called Her blessed
because She had believed. Mary, the faithful echo of God, at once
intoned: `Magnificat anima mea
Dominum'; `My soul magnifies the Lord' (Lk 1: 46). What Mary did
then, She does daily now. When we praise Her, love Her, honour Her or
give anything to Her, it is God who is praised, God who is loved, God
who is glorified, and it is to God that we give, through Mary and in
Mary” (cf. Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 225). Again, in prayer to the Mother of the Lord, St. Louis Marie expresses the
Trinitarian dimension of his relationship with God: “Hail Mary, beloved
Daughter of the Eternal Father! Hail Mary,
admirable Mother of the Son! Hail Mary, faithful
Spouse of the Holy Spirit!” (The
Secret of Mary, p. 71). Although this traditional greeting
used earlier by St. Francis of Assisi contains different levels of
analogies, there is not a shadow of doubt that it expresses effectively
Our Lady's special participation in the life of the Most Holy Trinity. St. Louis Marie contemplates all the mysteries, starting from the
Incarnation which was brought about at the moment of the Annunciation.
Thus, in the Treatise
on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Mary appears as
“the true terrestrial paradise of the New Adam”, the “virginal and
immaculate earth” of which He was formed (n. 261). She is also the New
Eve, associated with the New Adam in the obedience that atones for the
original disobedience of the man and the woman (cf. ibid.,
n. 53; St. Irenaeus, Adversus
Haereses, III, 21, 10-22, 4). Through this obedience, the Son
of God enters the world. The Cross itself is already mysteriously
present at the instant of the Incarnation, at the very moment of Jesus'
conception in Mary's womb... “All
our perfection,” St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort writes,
“consists in being conformed, united and consecrated to Jesus Christ;
and therefore, the most perfect of all devotions is, without any doubt,
that which most perfectly conforms, unites and consecrates us to Jesus
Christ. Now, Mary being the most conformed of all creatures to Jesus
Christ, it follows that, of all devotions, that which most consecrates
and conforms the soul to Our Lord is devotion to His holy Mother, and
that the more a soul is consecrated to Mary, the more it is consecrated
to Jesus” (Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 120). In addressing Jesus, St. Louis Marie expresses the marvel of the union
between the Son and the Mother: “She
is so transformed into You by grace that She lives no more, She is as
though She were not. It is You only, my Jesus, Who lives and reigns in
Her... Ah! If we knew the glory and the love which
You receive in this admirable creature... She is so intimately united
with You... She loves You more ardently and glorifies You more perfectly
than all the other creatures put together” (ibid.,
n. 63). One of the loftiest expressions of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort's
spirituality refers to the identification of the faithful with Mary in
Her love for Jesus and in Her service to Jesus. Meditating on St
Ambrose's well-known text: “Let the soul of Mary be in each of us to
magnify the Lord, and the spirit of Mary be in each of us to rejoice in
God” (Expos. in Luc., 12, 26: PL 15, 1561), he writes: “A
soul is happy indeed when... it is all possessed and overruled by the
spirit of Mary, a spirit meek and strong, zealous and prudent, humble
and courageous, pure and fruitful” (Treatise on True
Devotion, n. 258). Mystical identification with Mary is fully
directed to Jesus, as he says in the prayer: “Finally, dearly beloved
Mother, grant, if it be possible, that I may have no other spirit but
Yours, to know Jesus and His divine will; that I may have no other soul
but Yours, to praise and glorify the Lord; that I may have no other
heart but Yours, to love God with a love as pure and ardent as Yours”
(The
Secret of Mary, pp. 71-72). Holiness, the perfection of charity The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium
states: “But while in the Most Blessed Virgin the Church has already
reached that perfection whereby she exists without spot or wrinkle (cf.
Eph 5: 27), the faithful still strive to conquer sin and increase in
holiness. And so they turn their eyes to Mary who shines forth to the
whole community of the elect as the model of virtues” (n. 65).
Holiness is the perfection of charity, of love of God and neighbour that
is the object of Jesus' greatest Commandment (cf. Mt 22: 38). It is also
the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. I Cor 13: 13). In Montfort spirituality, the dynamism of charity is expressed in
particular by the symbol of the slavery of love to Jesus, after the
example and with the motherly help of Mary... “There is nothing among
Christians which makes us more absolutely belong to Jesus Christ and His
holy Mother than the slavery of the will, according to the example of
Jesus Christ Himself, who took on the status of a servant for love of
us, and also according to the example of the Holy Virgin who called
Herself the servant and handmaid of the Lord (Lk 1: 38). The Apostle
refers to himself as `the slave of Christ' (servus
Christi) as though the title were an honour. Christians are
often so called in the Holy Scriptures” (cf. Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 72). Indeed,
the Son of God, who came into the world out of obedience to the Father
in the Incarnation (cf. Heb 10: 7), subsequently humbled Himself by
making Himself obedient unto death, and death on the Cross (cf. Phil 2:
7-8). Mary responded to God's will with the total gift of Herself, body
and soul, forever, from the Annunciation to the Cross and from the Cross
to the Assumption. The obedience of Christ and the obedience of Mary are
not, of course, symmetrical because of the ontological difference
between the divine Person of the Son and the human person of Mary. This
also explains the resulting exclusivity of the fundamental salvific
efficacy of obedience to Christ, from whom His own Mother received the
grace to be able to obey God totally, and thus collaborate in the
mission of Her Son. The
slavery of love should therefore be interpreted in light of the
wonderful exchange between God and humanity in the mystery of the
Incarnate Word. It is a true exchange of love between God and His
creature in the reciprocity of total self-giving. The
“spirit [of this devotion] consists in this: that we be interiorly
dependent on Mary Most Holy; that we be slaves of Mary, and through Her,
of Jesus” (The
Secret of Mary, n. 44). Paradoxically, this “bond of
charity”, this “slavery of love”, endows the human being with full
freedom, with that true freedom of the children of God (cf. Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 169). It is a question of giving oneself
to Jesus without reserve, responding to the Love with which He first
loved us. Those who live in this love can say with St Paul: “It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2: 20). The “pilgrimage of faith” I
wrote in Novo
Millennio Ineunte: “One can never really reach Jesus except
by the path of faith” (n. 19). This was the path that Mary followed
throughout Her earthly life, and it is the path of the pilgrim Church
until the end of time. The Second Vatican Council placed great emphasis
on Mary's faith, mysteriously shared by the Church, shedding light on
the journey of Our Lady from the moment of the Annunciation to the
moment of the redemptive Passion (cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen
Gentium, nn. 57, 67; Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Mater, nn.
25-27). In
the writings of St. Louis Marie we find the same accent on the faith
lived by the Mother of Jesus in Her journey from the Incarnation to the
Cross, a faith in which Mary is the model and type of the Church. St.
Louis Marie expresses this with a range of nuances, when in his letter
he expounds on the “marvellous effects” of perfect Marian devotion: “The
more, then, that you gain the favour of that august Princess and
faithful Virgin, the more will you act by pure faith; a pure faith which
will put you above all sensible consolations and extraordinary favours;
a lively faith animated by charity, which will enable you to perform all
your actions from the motive of pure love; a faith firm and immovable as
a rock, through which you will rest quiet and constant in the midst of
storms and hurricanes; a faith active and piercing, which like a
mysterious skeleton key, will give you entrance into all the mysteries
of Jesus, the ultimate goal of man, and into the heart of God Himself; a
courageous faith, which will enable you to undertake and carry out
without hesitation great things for God and for the salvation of souls;
lastly, a faith which will be your blazing torch, your divine life, your
hidden treasure of divine wisdom and your omnipotent arms, which you
will use to enlighten those who are in the darkness of the shadow of
death, to inflame those who are lukewarm and who have need of the heated
gold of charity, to give life to those who are dead through sin, to
touch and move by Your meek and powerful words the hearts of stone and
the cedars of Lebanon, and finally, to resist the devil and all the
enemies of salvation” (cf. <M>Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 214). Like
St. John of the Cross, St. Louis Marie insists above all on the purity
of faith and its essential and often sorrowful darkness (cf. The
Secret of Mary, nn. 51-52). Contemplative faith, by giving up
tangible or extraordinary things, penetrates the mysterious depths of
Christ. Thus, in his prayer, St. Louis Marie addresses the Mother of the
Lord saying: “I do not ask you for visions, revelations, sensible
devotion or spiritual pleasures. . .. Here below, I wish for nothing
other than that which was yours: to believe sincerely without spiritual
pleasures" (ibid.,
p. 72). The Cross is the crowning moment of Mary's faith, as I wrote in
the Encyclical Redemptoris
Mater: "Through this faith Mary is perfectly united with
Christ in His self-emptying” (n. 18). A sign of sure hope The
Holy Spirit invites Mary to reproduce Her own virtues in the elect,
extending in them the roots of Her “invincible faith” and “firm
hope” (cf. Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 34). The Second Vatican Council recalled
this: “The Mother of Jesus in the glory which She possesses in body
and soul in Heaven is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to
be perfected in the world to come. Likewise, She shines forth on earth
until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort
to the pilgrim People of God”
(Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 68). This
eschatological dimension is contemplated by St. Louis Marie especially
when he speaks of the “apostles of the latter times” formed by the
Blessed Virgin to bring to the Church Christ's victory over the forces
of evil (cf. Treatise
on True Devotion, nn. 49-59). This is in no way a form of
“millenarianism”, but a deep sense of the eschatological character
of the Church linked to the oneness and saving universality of Jesus
Christ. The Church awaits the glorious coming of Jesus at the end of
time. Like Mary and with Mary, the saints are in the Church and for the
Church to make her holiness shine out and to extend to the very ends of
the earth and the end of time the work of Christ, the one Saviour. In
the antiphon Salve
Regina, the Church calls the Mother of God “our Hope”.
The same term is used by St. Louis Marie who took it from a text of St.
John Damascene, who applies to Mary the biblical symbol of the anchor
(cf. Hom I in Dorm. B.V.M., 14:
PG 96, 719): “We fasten our souls,” he says, “to Your hope, as to an abiding
anchor. It is to Her that the saints who have saved themselves have been
the most attached and have done their best to attach others, in order to
persevere in virtue. Happy, then, a thousand times happy, are the
Christians who are now fastened faithfully and entirely to Her, as to a
firm anchor!” (Treatise
on True Devotion, n. 175). Through the devotion to Mary,
Jesus Himself “enlarges the heart with firm confidence in God, making
it look upon Him as a Father” (ibid., n. 169). Together
with the Blessed Virgin and with the same maternal heart, the Church
prays, hopes and intercedes for the salvation of all men and women. The
Dogmatic Constitution Lumen
Gentium concludes with these words: “The entire body of the faithful pours forth
urgent supplications to the Mother of God and of men that She, who aided
the beginnings of the Church by Her prayers, may now, exalted as She is
above all the angels and saints, intercede before Her Son in the
fellowship of all the saints, until all families of people, whether they
are honoured with the title of Christian or whether they still do not
know the Saviour, may be happily gathered together in peace and harmony
into one People of God, for the glory of the Most Holy and Undivided
Trinity” (n. 69). As
I once again make my own this hope which I expressed, along with the
other Council Fathers almost 40 years ago, I send to the entire Montfort
Family a special Apostolic Blessing. From
the Vatican, 8 December 2003, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. John Paul II This article was published in the March-April, 2004 issue of “Michael”. |
A work destined to become a classic of Marian spirituality was published
160 years ago. St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort wrote the 
As
is well known, my episcopal coat of arms symbolically illustrates the
Gospel text quoted above; the motto Totus
tuus is inspired by the teaching of St. Louis Marie Grignion de
Montfort