Continuing "Wonderful Effects of "True Devotion to Mary"

[MariaChristi]

3. The gift of pure love

1. The Mother of fair love will rid your heart of all scruples and inordinate servile fear. She will open and enlarge it to obey the commandments of her Son with alacrity and with the holy freedom of the children of God. She will fill your heart with pure love of which she is the treasury. You will then cease to act as you did before, out of fear of the God who is love, but rather out of pure love. You will look upon him as a loving Father and endeavour to please him at all times. You will speak trustfully to him as a child does to its father. If you should have the misfortune to offend Him you will abase yourself before Him and humbly beg His pardon. You will offer your hand to Him with simplicity and lovingly rise from your sin. Then, peaceful and relaxed and buoyed up with hope you will continue on your way to Him.

4. Great confidence in God and in Mary

1. Our Blessed Lady will fill you with unbounded confidence in God and in herself:

1) Because you will no longer approach Jesus by yourself but always through Mary, your loving Mother.

2) Since you have given her all your merits, graces and satisfactions to dispose of as she pleases, she imparts to you her own virtues and clothes you in her own merits. So you will be able to say confidently to God: “Behold Mary, your handmaid, be it done unto me according to your word.”

3) Since you have now given yourself completely to Mary, body and soul, she, who is generous to the generous, and more generous than even the kindest benefactor, will in return give herself to you in a marvellous but real manner. Indeed you may without hesitation say to her, “I am yours, O Blessed Virgin, obtain salvation for me,” or with the beloved disciple, St. John, “I have taken you, Blessed Mother, for my all.” Or again you may say with St. Bonaventure, “Dear Mother of saving grace, I will do everything with confidence and without fear because you are my strength and my boast in the Lord,” or in another place, “I am all yours and all that I have is yours, O glorious Virgin, blessed above all created things. Let me place you as a seal upon my heart, for your love is as strong as death.” Or adopting the sentiments of the prophet, “Lord, my heart has no reason to be exalted nor should my looks be proud; I have not sought things of great moment nor wonders beyond my reach; nevertheless, I am still not humble. But I have roused my soul and taken courage. I am as a child, weaned from earthly pleasures and resting on its mother’s breast. It is upon this breast that all good things come to me.”

4) What will still further increase your confidence in her is that, after having given her in trust all that you possess to use or keep as she pleases, you will place less trust in yourself and much more in her whom you have made your treasury. How comforting and how consoling when a person can say, “The treasury of God, where He has placed all that He holds most precious, is also my treasury.” “She is,” says a saintly man, “the treasury of the Lord.”(St. Louis de Montfort)

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear CapitalistCatholic,

Thanks for your “heart” indicating you liked this post. I hope if you have never read True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin by St. Louis de Montfort, you may begin to read it. The link will take you to the online version, or you may want to purchase your own paperback copy. It is a small book but powerful enough to change lives as it did for St. John Paul II who wrote that reading St. Louis’ book on True Devotion was a “turning point” in his young life.

Reading it and consecrating myself totally to Jesus through Mary as St. Louis teaches in this little book has been a great grace in my life. I will be eternally grateful to the Dominican Nun who taught my religion class in High School about “True Devotion to Jesus through Mary” and helped us to pray the Act of Total Consecration. If you have any questions about it I’ll be glad to anwer them, as best I can.