Notes Towards Consecration to Mary IV, 2022

From Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s, “The Mother of the Savior: And Our Interior Life”. 

THE GRACE OF PURE LOVE AND OF
TRANSFORMATION OF SOUL

Those who walk by the way of Mary grow in charity under the influence of her who is called the “Mother of fair love.” (Ecclus. 24:24). “She will take out of your heart every scruple and servile fear; she will expand it so that you will run in the commandments of her Son (Ps. 118:32) with the holy freedom of the children of God. She will introduce into your heart that pure love of which she has all the treasures so that you will no longer serve the God of love in fear as you have done, but in pure love. You will look on Him as your good Father whom you will try to please at all times, with whom you will converse in all confidence.

If you have the misfortune to offend Him . . . you will at once ask forgiveness humbly, you will stretch out your hands to Him . . . and you will continue your journey towards Him with unshaken confidence.” Mary’s soul will be communicated to yours to glorify the Lord and to rejoice in Him, to live the Magnificat. The faithful Christian “inhales Mary in a spiritual manner just as his body inhales the air.”

So well is her spirit of wisdom communicated that her fully faithful servant and child becomes a living image of her mother. Through this communication the soul is transformed to the image of Jesus Christ. “St Augustine calls the Blessed Virgin the mould of God, forma Dei . . , Whoever is cast in this mold is soon formed in Christ . . . Some directors are like sculptors who, placing their trust in their art, deal blow after blow with hammer and chisel to a hard stone or a piece of wood in order to shape it into a representation of Jesus, and sometimes do not succeed . . . one badly-aimed blow can botch the whole work.

But those who accept the secret of grace of which I write are like the artists who work from a mould. Having found the beautiful mould of Mary, where Jesus was formed naturally and divinely, they do not trust their own industry but only the fidelity of the mould, and cast and lose themselves in Mary, becoming thus images of Christ . . . But remember that you can cast in a mould only what has been melted to a liquid: that is to say, you must destroy and melt down the old Adam, to become the new Adam in Mary.”

The way of Mary increases purity of intention. By it a person renounces his own peculiar intentions, even if good, to be lost in those of the Blessed Virgin. “One enters thus into the sublimity of her intentions which were so pure that she gave more glory to God by the least of her actions—for example, by winding her distaff, or by some needlework—than St. Laurence did on the gridiron by his martyrdom, or even all the saints by their most heroic acts . . . or all the angels. . . . By deigning to receive into her virginal hands the gift of our actions she gives them a beauty and splendor which glorify Our Blessed Lord much more than if we offered them to Him ourselves. . . .

Finally, you never think of Mary but that she thinks of God for you. . . . She is all (that) she is relative to God . . . she is the echo of God, who says and repeats but ‘God.’ . . . When she is praised God is loved and praised. We give to God through and in Mary.”

GRACE OF INTIMACY WITH MARY

Some souls are favored with a special grace of union with Mary. Fr. E. Neubert, the Marianist, has gathered a number of significant testimonies in this connection. Reference must also be made to the work “Mystic Union with Mary,” written by a Flemish recluse, Marie de Sainte-Therese (1623–1677), who had personal experience of the subject on which she wrote. Fr. Chaminade, who exercised the priestly ministry at Bordeaux with great zeal during the French Revolution and who founded the Marianists, had the same experience. He wrote: “There is a gift of the habitual presence of the Blessed Virgin even as there is a gift of the habitual presence of God—very rare, it is true, but obtainable through great fidelity.” As Fr. Neubert explains, this text refers to normal and habitual mystical union with Mary. The Ven. L. Ed. Cestac had the same gift. “I do not see her,” he said, “but I feel her presence as the horse feels the hand on the rein.”

Thus these souls are conscious of the influence which Mary exercises on us continually by transmitting actual graces to our souls. Marie de Sainte-Therese has words to the same effect: “That sweet mother has taken me under her maternal direction just as a teacher takes in her own the hand of the child she is teaching to write. . . . She remains almost uninterruptedly before my soul, drawing me to herself in so loving and motherly a manner, stimulating me, guiding me, instructing me in the way of the spirit and in the perfect practice of the virtues. And I do not lose for a single instant the charm of her presence along with that of the Godhead. . . . She produces the divine life in me by an imperceptible inflow of different graces. . . . It is of the nature of love to unite itself to the object loved. . . . Thus tender, burning and unifying love draws the soul which loves Mary to live in her, to be united to her, and to other effects and transformations. . . . Then God shows Himself in Mary and by her as in a mirror.” Such was a great part of the life of this servant of God.

(Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life”.) Available from AbeBooks.com. I can no longer find this book on TAN Books site.

Ed. NOTE: It is precisely this closeness with His Mother which Jesus offered us from the Cross. Thus, this priceless gift from Our Lord in His Passion is still our precious gift today, in the Passion of His Church. This is not the time for spurning His gift! Tomorrow’s post closes our series with a brief summary by Father Garrigou-Lagrange to illustrate the ills ensuing from indifference to Consecration to the Immaculata.

Remember – Our Lady needs us to obey:  First Saturdays of Reparation, daily rosary, at least 5 mysteries, wear her brown scapular and live your Total Consecration to her Immaculate Heart, offering daily duties in reparation and for the conversion of poor sinners.

Open your hearts to the Lord and serve Him only: and He will free you from the hands of your enemies. With all your heart return to Him, and take away from your midst any strange gods” (I Kings 7:3)

†  Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queen of our hearts, Mother of the Church, do thou offer to the Eternal Father the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the conversion of poor sinners, especially our Pontiff.