M
MariaChristi
Guest
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Continuing to listen and learn from St. Louis de Montfort’s treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, we hear more about the motives for embracing this devotion:
Continuing to listen and learn from St. Louis de Montfort’s treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, we hear more about the motives for embracing this devotion:
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful. Kindle in us the Fire of Your Love, as you have done in all our saints but especially in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother and Model for the Church. Enable us to learn from Jesus as Mary and the saints did by listening to ALL God has revealed in Jesus who told us: “Learn of ME, for I am Meek and Humble of Heart”. (cf Mt. 11:29)This is what we do by this devotion. We offer and consecrate all we are and all we possess to the Blessed Virgin in order that our Lord may receive through her as intermediary the glory and gratitude that we owe to Him. We deem ourselves unworthy and unfit to approach His infinite majesty on our own, and so we avail ourselves of Mary’s intercession.
- St. Bernard tells us that God, seeing that we are unworthy to receive His graces directly from Him, gives them to Mary so that we might receive from her all that He decides to give us. His glory is achieved when He receives through Mary the gratitude, respect and love we owe Him in return for His gifts to us. It is only right then that we should imitate His conduct, “in order”, as St. Bernard again says, “that grace might return to its author by the same channel through which it came to us”.
- Moreover, this devotion is an expression of great humility, a virtue which God loves above all others. A person who exalts himself debases God, and a person who humbles himself exalts God. “God opposes the proud, but gives his graces to the humble.” If you humble yourself, convinced that you are unworthy to appear before Him, or even to approach Him, He condescends to come down to you. He is pleased to be with you and exalts you in spite of yourself. But, on the other hand, if you venture to go towards God blindly without a mediator, he vanishes and is nowhere to be found. How dearly he loves the humble of heart! It is to such humility that this devotion leads us, for it teaches us never to go alone directly to our Lord, however gentle and merciful though he may be, but always to use Mary’s power of intercession, whether we want to enter His presence, speak to Him, be near Him, offer Him something, seek union with Him or consecrate ourselves to Him.
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