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213. My dear friend, be sure that if you remain faithful to
the interior and exterior practices of this devotion which I will point
out, the following effects will be produced in your soul:
1. Knowledge of our unworthiness
By the light which the Holy Spirit will give you through Mary, his
faithful spouse, you will perceive the evil inclinations of your fallen
nature and how incapable you are of any good apart from that which God
produces in you as Author of nature and of grace. As a consequence of
this knowledge you will despise yourself and think of yourself only as
an object of repugnance. You will consider yourself as a snail that
soils everything with its slime, as a toad that poisons everything with
its venom, as a malevolent serpent seeking only to deceive. Finally,
the humble Virgin Mary will share her humility with you so that,
although you regard yourself with distaste and desire to be disregarded
by others, you will not look down slightingly upon anyone.
2. A share in Mary's faith
214. Mary will share her faith with you. Her faith on earth was
stronger than that of all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and
saints. Now that she is reigning in heaven she no longer has this
faith, since she sees everything clearly in God by the light of glory.
However, with the consent of almighty God she did not lose it when
entering heaven. She has preserved it for her faithful servants in the
Church militant. Therefore the more you gain the friendship of this
noble Queen and faithful Virgin the more you will be inspired by faith
in your daily life. It will cause you to depend less upon sensible and
extraordinary feelings. For it is a lively faith animated by love
enabling you to do everything from no other motive than that of pure
love. It is a firm faith, unshakeable as a rock, prompting you to
remain firm and steadfast in the midst of storms and tempests. It is an
active and probing faith which like some mysterious pass-key admits you
into the mysteries of Jesus Christ and of man's final destiny and into
the very heart of God himself. It is a courageous faith which inspires
you to undertake and carry out without hesitation great things for God
and the salvation of souls. Lastly, this faith will be your flaming
torch, your very life with God, your secret fund of divine Wisdom, and
an all-powerful weapon for you to enlighten those who sit in darkness
and the shadow of death. It inflames those who are lukewarm and need
the gold of fervent love. It restores life to those who are dead
through sin. It moves and transforms hearts of marble and cedars of
Lebanon by gentle and convincing argument. Finally, this faith will
strengthen you to resist the devil and the other enemies of salvation.
3. The gift of pure love
215. 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
216. 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."
5.
Communication of the spirit of Mary
217. The soul of Mary will be communicated to you to glorify the Lord.
Her spirit will take the place of yours to rejoice in God, her Saviour,
but only if you are faithful to the practices of this devotion. As St.
Ambrose says, "May the soul of Mary be in each one of us to glorify the
Lord! May the spirit of Mary be in each one of us to rejoice in God!"
"When will that happy day come," asks a saintly man of our own day
whose life was completely wrapped up in Mary, "when God's Mother is
enthroned in men's hearts as Queen, subjecting them to the dominion of
her great and princely Son? When will souls breathe Mary as the body
breathes air?" When that time comes wonderful things will happen on
earth. The Holy Spirit, finding his dear Spouse present again in souls,
will come down into them with great power. He will fill them with his
gifts, especially wisdom, by which they will produce wonders of grace.
My dear friend, when will that happy time come, that age of Mary, when
many souls, chosen by Mary and given her by the most High God, will
hide themselves completely in the depths of her soul, becoming living
copies of her, loving and glorifying Jesus? That day will dawn only
when the devotion I teach is understood and put into practice. Ut
adveniat regnum tuum, adveniat regnum Mariae: "Lord, that your kingdom
may come, may the reign of Mary come!"
6. Transformation into the likeness of Jesus
218. If Mary, the Tree of Life, is well cultivated in our soul by
fidelity to this devotion, she will in due time bring forth her fruit
which is none other than Jesus. I have seen many devout souls searching
for Jesus in one way or another, and so often when they have worked
hard throughout the night, all they can say is, "Despite our having
worked all night, we have caught nothing." To them we can say, "You
have worked hard and gained little; Jesus can only be recognised
faintly in you." But if we follow the immaculate path of Mary, living
the devotion that I teach, we will always work in daylight, we will
work in a holy place, and we will work but little. There is no darkness
in Mary, not even the slightest shadow since there was never any sin in
her. She is a holy place, a holy of holies, in which saints are formed
and moulded.
219. Please note that I say that saints are moulded in Mary. There is a
vast difference between carving a statue by blows of hammer and chisel
and making a statue by using a mould. Sculptors and statue-makers work
hard and need plenty of time to make statues by the first method. But
the second method does not involve much work and takes very little
time. St. Augustine speaking to our Blessed Lady says, "You are worthy
to be called the mould of God." Mary is a mould capable of forming
people into the image of the God-man. Anyone who is cast into this
divine mould is quickly shaped and moulded into Jesus and Jesus into
him. At little cost and in a short time he will become Christ-like
since he is cast into the very same mould that fashioned a God-man.
220. 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.
221. 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.
7. The greater glory of Christ
222. 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!
223. 2) 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.
224. 3) 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.
225. 4) Lastly, you never think of Mary without Mary thinking of God
for you. You never praise or honour Mary without Mary joining you in
praising and honouring God. Mary is entirely relative to God. Indeed I
would say that she was relative only to God, because she exists
uniquely in reference to him.
She is an echo of God, speaking and repeating only God. If you say
"Mary" she says "God". When St. Elizabeth praised Mary calling her
blessed because she had believed, Mary, the faithful echo of God,
responded with her canticle, "My soul glorifies the Lord." What Mary
did on that day, she does every day. When we praise her, when we love
and honour her, when we present anything to her, then God is praised,
honoured and loved and receives our gift through Mary and in Mary.
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