Mar. 11 - Wk 2 - Day 1 - "to acquire a greater understanding of Mary"

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we begin Week 2, as St. Louis describes in the 33 Day Preparation for Total Consecration on Mar. 25:

1. Each day of the second week they should endeavour in all their prayers and works to acquire an understanding of the Blessed Virgin and ask the Holy Spirit for this grace. They may read and meditate upon what we have already said about her. They should recite daily the Litany of the Holy Spirit and the Ave Maris Stella as during the first week. In addition they will say at least five decades of the Rosary for greater understanding of Mary.

Note: St. Louis wrote: “They may read and meditate on what we have already said about her” He is not making reading “True Devotion” an absolute requirement. His stress is on Prayer especially to the Holy Spirit.

Litany of the Holy Spirit: see HERE

Ave Maris Stella: see HERE

5 decades of the Rosary for greater understanding of Mary

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful. Kindle in us the Fire of Your Love. Please help us all to acquire a greater understanding of Mary

 

[hazcompat]

Lumen Gentium
Chapter VIII

V. Mary the sign of created hope and solace to the wandering people of God

1. In the interim just as the Mother of Jesus, glorified in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected is the world to come, so too does she shine forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come,(304) as a sign of sure hope and solace to the people of God during its sojourn on earth.

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear KBS, patricius, and Stephie,

Thanks so much for your “faith-full” hearts, and your continuing companionship on this journey. Perhaps, like me, this week of seeking “to acquire a greater understanding of Mary” is a particular blessing. St. Louis, by God’s Grace “saw” in Faith that the way to Jesus was most direct in going through Mary – just as Jesus first came to us through her!

Prayer to the Holy Spirit is especially important, and so we pray the beautiful Litany of the Holy Spirit that He may reveal to us a greater understanding of Mary. He was sent to the Church at Pentecost by the Father and Jesus to begin His Special Mission of bringing the Church into the complete Truth of Jesus – and thus the truth also of Mary.

In praying the Ave Maris Stella and the Litany of Mary, we listen to the many ways The Church acknowledges God’s Gift of Mary to us, in the titles given to her. And in praying the Rosary we relive with her the Mysteries of her life with Jesus and with Joseph as a Holy Family.

Please let us pray for one another and for all God’s Children to grow this week in a greater understanding of Mary – to know and love and serve her more; and so begin to know, love and serve God in the perfection of Charity.

 

[MariaChristi]

Thanks, hazcompat, for your quote from paragraph 68 of “Lumen Gentium”; paragraph 68 follows after words in paragraph 67 which help give us more context;

…true devotion…proceeds from true faith, by which we are led to know the excellence of the Mother of God, and we are moved to a filial love toward our mother and to the imitation of her virtues.

Mary is the sign of hope in the “interim” of our lives here on earth. By God’s Grace, we can “see by faith” how Mary “is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected…”

Faith leads to Hope and to Charity. Those three infused Supernatural Virtues work together, but in heaven there will be no need for Faith since we will see by the beatific Vision, and no need for hope for we will possess Him for whom we hoped. Only Charity remains forever --for God is Love and we are called into union with Him in the perfection of Charity.

During this week may we be especially moved by faith to filial love for our mother and imitation of her virtues.

 

[patricius79]

I love this passage from True Devotion to Mary, which shows the great goodness of our Mother.

1. If you live this devotion sincerely, you will give more glory to Jesus in a month than in many years of a more demanding devotion. Here are my reasons for saying this: 1) Since you do everything through the Blessed Virgin as required by this devotion, you naturally lay aside your own intentions no matter how good they appear to you. You abandon yourself to our Lady’s intentions even though you do not know what they are. Thus you share in the high quality of her intentions, which are so pure that she gave more glory to God by the smallest of her actions, say, twirling her distaff, or making a stitch, than did St. Laurence suffering his cruel martyrdom on the grid-iron, and even more than all the saints together in all their most heroic deeds! Mary amassed such a multitude of merits and graces during her sojourn on earth that it would be easier to count the stars in heaven, the drops of water in the ocean or the sands of the sea-shore than count her merits and graces. She thus gave more glory to God than all the angels and saints have given or will ever give him. Mary, wonder of God, when souls abandon themselves to you, you cannot but work wonders in them!
   http://www.montfortian.info/writings/files/The-True-Devotion-to-Mary.pdf

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear patricius,

Thanks so much for your reply and the beautiful quote from St. Louis de Montfort in his treatise on “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin”. Thanks also for including the link so anyone reading this thread can rejoice in reading even more from this book. What wisdom God gave St. Louis de Montfort to share with His Church regarding the great gift Jesus gave us in giving Mary to us from His Cross!

When we ponder the virtues of Mary, her humility is first and I believe that is why St. Louis urged us, in the first 12 days of the Preparation for Consecration, “to empty ourselves of the spirit of the world which is opposed to the Spirit of Jesus”. Then in the 1st week “to seek true self-knowledge”. We need to humbly see how frail and often sinful our human nature can be, and seek to purify our own hearts and minds by God’s Grace in order to begin the “dying to self” required of us to live and remain in Jesus as Mary did on earth.

St. Louis assures us:

1. I think I can very well compare some spiritual directors and devout persons to sculptors who wish to produce Jesus in themselves and in others by methods other than this. Many of them rely on their own skill, ingenuity and art and chip away endlessly with mallet and chisel at hard stone or badly-prepared wood, in an effort to produce a likeness of our Lord. At times, they do not manage to produce a recognisable likeness either because they lack knowledge and experience of the person of Jesus or because a clumsy stroke has spoiled the whole work. But those who accept this little-known secret of grace which I offer them can rightly be compared to smelters and moulders who have discovered the beautiful mould of Mary where Jesus was so divinely and so naturally formed. They do not rely on their own skill but on the perfection of the mould. They cast and lose themselves in Mary where they become true models of her Son.
2. You may think this a beautiful and convincing comparison. But how many understand it? I would like you, my dear friend, to understand it. But remember that only molten and liquefied substances may be poured into a mould. That means that you must crush and melt down the old Adam in you if you wish to acquire the likeness of the new Adam in Mary.

And in the paragraphs following the one you quoted, the humble and loving Mother aids us:

1. In this devotion we set no store on our own thoughts and actions but are content to rely on Mary’s dispositions when approaching and even speaking to Jesus. We then act with far greater humility than others who imperceptibly rely on their own dispositions and are self-satisfied about them; and consequently we give greater glory to God, for perfect glory is given to him only by the lowly and humble of heart.
2. Our Blessed Lady, in her immense love for us, is eager to receive into her virginal hands the gift of our actions, imparting to them a marvellous beauty and splendour, and presenting them herself to Jesus most willingly. More glory is given to our Lord in this way than when we make our offering with our own guilty hands.

 

[patricius79]

In this devotion we set no store on our own thoughts and actions but are content to rely on Mary’s dispositions when approaching and even speaking to Jesus.

Yes. St. Maximilian Kolbe said that he knew nothing about how to be united to Mary. He said that she alone must instruct us at every moment.

 

[MariaChristi]

Ah yes, dear patricius, how good it is to have that confidence in Mary our Mother - Perfect Mother and Model that she is, she shares everything with us – as God gifted her, she gifts us with her Love – in countless ways.

Thanks be to God’s Love for giving Mary to us in His Words on Calvary:

“Behold Your Mother”

Like John may we hear the words of Jesus deeply and do the Truth we hear. Let us by God’s Grace take Mary into our lives!

 

[patricius79]

They cast and lose themselves in Mary where they become true models of her Son.

Every day we are tempted to lose ourselves in things of this world, or in relationships with other sinners.

It is so wonderful that we can instead lose ourselves in the highest of all creatures, the Mother of God, so that nothing impedes our relationship with Jesus Christ.

 

[MariaChristi]

Dear patricius,

This casting of oneself into the mold that is Mary, has become more important to me this year than ever before! How very grateful I am to God for His Gift of Mary in my life and in the lives of all, like yourself, dear brother who continue to journey toward that holiness to which we are all called!