Saint Joseph’s Pre-eminence, 2023

previously posted March 4, 2020 by evensong

“An exceptional divine mission calls for a corresponding degree of grace.”

Thus does Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange begin to explain St. Joseph’s pre-eminence. He continues,

To understand it we must add one remark: Those whom God Himself chooses directly and immediately to be His exceptional ministers in the work of redemption receive from Him grace proportionate to their vocation. This was the case with St. Joseph. He must have received a relative fulness of grace proportionate to his mission since he was chosen not by men nor by any creature but by God Himself and by God alone to fulfill a mission unique in the world. We cannot say at what precise moment St. Joseph’s sanctification took place. But we can say that, from the time of his marriage to Our Lady, he was confirmed in grace, because of his special mission.

Continue reading “Saint Joseph’s Pre-eminence, 2023”

The Strength and Tenderness of Our Saviour’s Love for Us

Something Lovely from Rev. Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange to remind us of Christ’s unfailing love.

The Strength and Tenderness of Our Savior’s Love for Us

Christ’s love descends upon our souls from the summit of the beatific vision, and in Jesus’ love for us we find the same two qualities which are so different: the deepest tenderness and the most heroic strength. Our Lord’s tender mercy for souls did not lessen for a moment, in spite of all the ingratitude, the opposition, and the hatred that He met on His path.

We human beings find it easy to love with tender affection a few persons in our family or among our friends, but often this tenderness is entirely a matter of superficial feelings. . .

Our hearts are poor, miserly with their affection: the indifferent remain outside, and all the more so those who have offended or wounded us. Toward the latter we are even hard and sometimes pitiless. The supernatural tenderness of Christ for souls is deep, because its primary object is the soul and the desire for its eternal happiness. At the same time, it is universal, immense, and extends to everyone.

Jesus is, as He Himself says, the Shepherd of souls; all can become the sheep of His fold, and He knows each of them by name. He is concerned about those that are absent, He rushes forth to seek them and takes them up on His shoulders. He explains to them with kindness the doctrine of salvation, and He even waits upon them. He chooses His apostles among the poor and the humble. . . .

What does He say to sinners? “Come to me, all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you” (Matt. 11:28).

He is the father of the prodigal son, He embraces the child who is unhappy through his own fault. He forgives the adulterous woman who was about to be stoned. He receives repentant Mary Magdalen, and at once opens to her the mystery of His intimate life. He speaks of eternal life to the Samaritan woman in spite of her unsavory past. He promises prompt entry into heaven to the good thief.

“Christ died for all,” says St. Paul. Many turn from Him, but He drives no one away. And even when many have turned away from Him, He intercedes for the ingrates, as when He prayed for His executioners. This is the supreme degree of mercy, sweetness, and humility. He tells Peter that he must forgive “seventy times seven,” that is, always, and He is the first to do it.

He is the voluntary victim who offered Himself up to save us. “Greater love than this no man hath,” Jesus Himself has told us, “that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus bore the punishment that each of us should have borne. He suffered because of sin in the measure of His love for God whom sin offends, and in the measure of His love for our souls which sin ravages and kills.

The sorrowful and immaculate heart of Mary was intimately associated with this heroic oblation, and helps us to fathom this mystery. . . .Jesus has consented to take for Himself the loathsome chalice of Gethsemane, so that He might give us the chalice of His precious blood which is raised up every morning on the altar. These two chalices represent the whole history of the world of souls. They are as it were the two pans of the scales of good and evil, and it is good that prevails. The precious blood of Christ can obliterate all crimes if their perpetrators beg forgiveness.

Jesus, by His victory over sin on the cross, is the source of life and of holiness, the source of all consolation, the salvation of those who hope in Him, the hope of the dying, the delight of the saints, as the Litany of the Sacred Heart reminds us.

Finally, He has left us the Eucharist so that He might remain with us until the end of the world and give Himself as food to each and every one of us.

To His privileged friends who follow His example, He says: “It is My love which keeps open the wound of My heart. I desire to prove to souls that My heart is never closed. On the contrary, My greatest wish is that souls may enter through My wounded heart, which is an abyss of charity and mercy. It is only in the heart of God that they will find solace for their sufferings and strength for their weakness. If they will but hold out their hands to Me, I will lead them to it Myself.”

We remain selfish because our love is too weak, too poor, too narrow, and because it is pitifully engrossed with our own selves. The heart of Jesus will dilate our hearts by teaching us to love above all else the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

Why are we cowards? Because we do not love enough, because our hearts are cold, because we rely far too much on our own strength when our helplessness is obvious, and because we do not depend enough on the heart of Jesus, on His love for us. The heart of Jesus is able and desires to give us the saintly powers we need, confidence and love, which inspire adoration, thanksgiving, and atonement, by placing the glory of God above all else.

Heart of Jesus, of whose fullness we have all received, have mercy on us!

(Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P. Collection [16 Books] . Aeterna Press. Kindle Edition)

The above thoughts are offered to you, as they were written, in love; for in the end, that is all we will have and the love with which we meet our dear Saviour is all the love we shall have for all eternity.

Now, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, we have entered into a time where there is a growing lack of love, an environment of darkness, confusion and acrimonious discord.

Harmony is becoming an undefinable concept in what passes for our society today. And part of our task is to maintain the entirely Christian concept from the early church, “See how these Christians love one another.” As St. John of the Cross enjoined us, “Where there is not love, put love in and you will draw love out.”

A lofty concept, to be sure, but within reach for those who put aside reliance on their own wills, their own reasoning, and trust with all their loving hearts, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is just for this especial time that He has given us devotion to His Sacred Heart. These two hearts have designs of mercy on us, and so we take up our Rosaries and follow Our Most Blessed Mother, our sure path to Him and the joys He has prepared for us, which no one can take from us.

The coming trials can do nothing to take us from Our Saviour as long as we hold fast to the sure means He offers us from His Cross, that is, the Immaculate Heart, the perfectly pure and invincible will of the Blessed Virgin Mary who always protects those whom He entrusts to her.

. NOTE: It is only in His love that we shall be saved in the coming calamitous ordeal, only in His love! And the way to that love? Only in the sorrowful and immaculate Heart of the most loving Mother of God. By her Holy Rosary, we will be confirmed in love, taught to love her Divine Son, Our Savior as she herself loves Him.

This article is already too long and I have not come near to saying what I had hoped to tell you. I will write more soon, God willing. Until then,

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.

Purification and Presentation, 2023

Today  we offer a new post to commemorate one of the oldest feasts in the Church, the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple. Our post combines elements from previous essays from 2018 and 2020, including writings from St. Francis de Sales, Ven. Mother Maria de Agreda, and Father Garrigou-Lagrange O.P.,  among others.

The feast of the Purification of Mary is also the feast of the Presentation of the Child Jesus in the Temple, and both rites were observed in order to fulfill Mosaic Law; that is to say, this venerable old feast is all about obedience! The obedience of Mary, the most pure and perfect example of God’s creation humbly submitting to the ancient Mosaic Law of purification, and the Divine Infant, truly God as well as truly man, submitting in utmost humility to the Mosaic Law, consecrating themselves to God as models for us.  Continue reading “Purification and Presentation, 2023”

Notes Towards Consecration to Mary, III, 2022

Continuing our series in preparation for renewal of our Consecrations to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the feast of her Immaculate Conception December 8.

The third selection from Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s, “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life”.

MYSTICAL UNION WITH MARY

A soul faithful to the devotion of which we have been speaking performs all its actions through Mary, in Mary and for Mary, and attains thereby to great intimacy with Our Lord. To consider only humility, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the following are the more precious fruits of consecration to Mary when it is lived fully: a gradually increasing participation in Mary’s humility and faith, great confidence in God through her, the grace of pure love, and the transformation of the soul to the image of Jesus.

PARTICIPATION IN MARY’S HUMILITY AND FAITH

By the light of the Holy Ghost the soul consecrated to Mary will come to learn of all the evil that is in itself; it will see by experience that it is naturally incapable of every salutary and supernatural good and that through self-love it opposes many obstacles to the work of grace within it. Thus, it will attain to that contempt of self of which St. Augustine speaks in the City of God (Bk. XIV, ch. 28):

“Two loves have built two cities. The love of self even to the degree of despising God has built the city of Babylon, and the love of God even to the degree of despising self has built the city of God.”

And from St. Grignion de Montfort,

“The humble Mary will make you a sharer in her deep humility, so that you will despise yourself and no one else, and you will love to be despised. “She will give you a share in her faith also, which was greater than the faith of the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and all the saints. She herself has that faith no longer, for she sees all things clearly in God in the light of glory; but she keeps it . . . in the Church militant for her most faithful servants.

“The more you win her love . . . the more you will have a pure faith, which will make you set little store by the sense-perceptible and the extraordinary; a faith living and animated by charity which will make you act from a motive of pure love; a faith firm and immovable as a rock which will make you constant in the midst of storms and afflictions; a faith active and piercing which, like a mysterious master-key, will give you entry to all the mysteries of Jesus, the final destiny of man, and the heart of God Himself; a courageous faith which will make you undertake and bring to achievement great things for God and the salvation of souls; a faith that will be your flaming torch, your divine life, your hidden treasure of divine wisdom, your all-powerful weapon, yours to use for the enlightenment of those who are in darkness and the shadow of death, for the inflaming of those who are lukewarm and who need the purified gold of charity, for the restoration to life of those who are dead by sin, for touching and uprooting by your sweet and powerful words the hearts of marble and the cedars of Lebanon, and finally for resisting the devil and all the enemies of salvation.”

GREAT CONFIDENCE IN GOD THROUGH MARY

By confidence we mean that firm hope which tends towards eternal glory with sureness of direction. According to St. Grignon de Montfort, the Blessed Virgin inspires great confidence in God and in herself:

1st—since through consecration we approach Jesus no longer alone but in the company of His Mother;

2nd—having given Mary all our merits, graces and satisfactions to dispose of as she wills, she in return will communicate to us her virtues and clothe us with her merits;

3rd—since we have given ourselves to Mary she will give herself to us. We can say to Mary: “I belong to you, O Holy Virgin. Save me.”

. . .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.

Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., Reverend Reginald. The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life (pp. 268-269). Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Also available: Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life”. Available from TAN Publishing.

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.

~ by evensong for love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, King.
Vouchsafe that I may praise thee, O Sacred Virgin! Give me strength against thine enemies!

Notes Towards Consecration to Mary, 2022

previously posted December, 2021 by evensong

As an aid towards the renewal of our Consecrations to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the feast of her Immaculate Conception, December 8, we will offer a few selections taken from the work, “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life” by the great Thomist, Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Father Garrigou-Lagrange stated his purpose in that work was to explain the principle theses of Mariology in relation to our interior life of progress towards God. He remarked that he had noticed that often a theologian admitted some prerogative of Our Lady in his earlier years under the influence of piety and admiration of her dignity. A second period then followed when the doctrinal difficulties came home to him more forcefully, and he was much more reserved in his judgement.

Finally there came the third period, when, having had time to study the question in its positive and speculative aspects, he returned to his first position, not now because of his sentiment of piety and admiration, but because his more profound understanding of Tradition and theology revealed to him that the measure of the things of God—and in a special way those things of God which affect Mary—is more overflowing than is commonly understood.

“I have endeavoured to show how these three periods may be found exemplified in the process of St Thomas’ teaching on the Immaculate Conception. These periods bear a striking analogy to three others in the affective order. It has often been noticed that a soul’s first affective stage may be one of sense-perceptible devotion, for example to the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Virgin. This is followed by a stage of aridity. Then comes the final stage of perfect spiritual devotion, overflowing on the sensibility.”

And so, today we begin considering the Blessed Virgin Mary in the light of Father Garrigou-Lagrange’s three stages of the spiritual life.

CONSECRATION TO MARY

Consecration to Our Lady is a practical form of recognition of her universal mediation and a guarantee of her special protection. It helps us to have continual childlike recourse to her and to contemplate and imitate her virtues and her perfect union with Christ. In the practice of this complete dependence on Mary, there may be included—and St. Grignon de Montfort invites us to it—the resignation into Mary’s hands of everything in our good works that is communicable to other souls, so that she may make use of it in accordance with the will of her Divine Son and for His glory.

Simple Daily Consecration

“I choose thee this day, O Mary, in the presence of the whole court of Heaven, as my Mother and Queen. I give and consecrate to you as your slave my body and my soul, my interior and exterior possessions, and even the value of my past, present and future good actions, allowing you the full right to dispose of me and of all that belongs to me, without any exception whatever, according to your good pleasure, for the greater glory of God, in time and in eternity. Amen”

This offering is really the practice of the so-called heroic act, there being question here not of a vow but of a promise made to the Blessed Virgin. We are recommended to offer our exterior possessions to Mary, that she may preserve us from inordinate attachment to the things of this world and inspire us to make better use of them. It is good also to consecrate to her our bodies and our senses that she may keep them pure. The act of consecration gives over to Mary also our soul and its faculties, our spiritual possessions, virtues and merits, all our good works past, present and future. It is necessary, however, to explain how this can be done. Theology gives us the answer by distinguishing what is communicable to others in our good works from what is incommunicable.

WHAT IN OUR GOOD WORKS IS COMMUNICABLE TO OTHERS?

There is, however, something in our good works which we can communicate to others whether on earth or in purgatory. There is in the first place the merit de congruo proprie, founded on the rights of friendship with God by grace. God gives grace to some because of the good intentions and good works of others who are His friends. There are, in the second place, our prayers; we can and should pray for our neighbor, for his conversion and his spiritual progress; we should pray also for the dying, for the souls in purgatory. There are finally our acts of satisfaction.

We can make satisfaction de congruo for others, for example, by accepting our daily crosses to help to expiate for their sins. We may even, if God moves us to do so by His grace, accept the penalty due to their sins as Mary did at the foot of the Cross, and thereby draw down the divine mercy on them. This the saints did frequently. An example is found in the life of St. Catherine of Siena. To a young Sienese whose heart was full of hate of his political enemies, she said:

“Peter, I take on myself all your sins, I shall do penance in your place; but do me one favor; confess your sins.” “I have been frequently to Confession,” answered Peter. “That is not true,” replied the saint. “It is seven years since you were at Confession,” and she proceeded to enumerate all the sins of his life. Confounded, he repented and pardoned his enemies.

Even without having all St. Catherine’s generosity, we can accept our daily crosses to help other souls to pay the debt they owe to the divine justice. We can also gain indulgences for the souls in purgatory, opening to them the treasury of the merits and satisfactions of Christ and the saints and hastening the day of their liberation.

There are, therefore, three things which we can share with others: our merits de congruo, our prayers, our satisfaction. And if we put these in Mary’s hands for others, we ought not to be surprised if she sends us crosses—proportionate, of course, to our strength—to make us really work for the salvation of souls.

WHO SHOULD MAKE THE CONSECRATION?

Who are those who may be advised to make this act of consecration? It certainly should not be recommended to people who would make it for merely sentimental reasons or through spiritual pride, and would not understand its true meaning. But those who are truly spiritual may be recommended to make it for a few days at first and then for some longer time; when finally they are prepared they may make it for their whole lives.

Someone may say that to give everything to Our Lady is to strip oneself, to leave one’s own debts unpaid, and so to add to one’s term in Purgatory. This is in fact the difficulty the devil suggested to St. Brigid of Sweden when she thought of making the act of donation to Mary. Our Blessed Lord explained, however, to the saint that the objection sprang from self-love and made no allowance for Mary’s goodness. Mary will not be outdone in generosity: her help to us will far exceed what we give her. The very act of love which prompts our donation will itself obtain remission of part of our Purgatory.

Others wonder if making the act of donation to Mary leaves them free to pray for relatives and friends afterwards. They forget that Mary knows the obligations of charity better than we do: she would be the first to remind us of them. There may even be some among our relatives and friends on earth and in purgatory who have urgent need of prayers and satisfactions, without our knowing who they are. Mary, however, knows who they are, and she can help them out of our good works if we have put them at her disposal.

Thus understood, consecration and donation make us enter more fully, under Mary’s guidance, into the mystery of the Communion of Saints. It is a perfect renewal of the baptismal promises.

(Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life”) My copy was through AbeBooks but is no longer available there nor can I find it on archive.org. I will post any new information I can find to help you obtain this excellent book.

Thank you for reading! I pray for you always.

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.

  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.

The Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, 2022

 Previously posted on : september 2, 2020  by : evensong

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Holy Eucharist, Our Lord’s Sacrament of Love are under attack as never before and the most harmful attacks are those which come from within the Church, even from  the one who  presents himself to the world as the Vicar of Christ. A recent example was the Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi issued this past June 29, 2022 on “the liturgical formation of the people of God” to quote from the Vatican’s website.
Continue reading “The Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, 2022”

The Merits of the Sorrows of Mary

Previously posted on : september 15, 2020  by : evensong

In Honor of the Sorrowful Heart of Mary

Something special for today, in honor of the Seven Sorrows of Mary, from the writings of Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life”.

The Cause of her Sorrows

What was the profound cause of Mary’s sorrows on Calvary? Every Christian soul for whom practice has made the Stations of the Cross familiar will answer: the cause of Mary’s sorrows, as of those of Jesus, was sin. Happy the souls for whom that answer is a vital truth, who experience true sorrow at the thought of their own sins—a sorrow that only grace can produce in them.

We understand but little of the sorrows of Mary, for little grieves us except what wounds our bodies, our self-love, our vanity, or our pride. We suffer too from men’s ingratitude, from the afflictions of our family or our native land. But sin grieves us but little. We have but little sorrow for our faults considered as offenses against God.

In theory, we admit that sin is the greatest of evils since it affects the soul itself and its faculties, and since it is the cause of the disorders which we deplore in society; it is only too evidently the cause of the enmity between classes and nations. But in spite of that we do not experience any great sorrow for the faults whereby we contribute more or less ourselves to the general disorder.
Continue reading “The Merits of the Sorrows of Mary”

The Strength and Tenderness of the Love of Jesus, 2022

From Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange we offer this thoughtful meditation on the love of Jesus.

The Strength and Tenderness of Our Savior’s Love for Us

Christ’s love descends upon our souls from the summit of the beatific vision, and in Jesus’ love for us we find the same two qualities which are so different: the deepest tenderness and the most heroic strength. Our Lord’s tender mercy for souls did not lessen for a moment, in spite of all the ingratitude, the opposition, and the hatred that He met on His path.

We human beings find it easy to love with tender affection a few persons in our family or among our friends, but often this tenderness is entirely a matter of superficial feelings. . .

Our hearts are poor, miserly with their affection: the indifferent remain outside, and all the more so those who have offended or wounded us. Toward the latter we are even hard and sometimes pitiless. The supernatural tenderness of Christ for souls is deep, because its primary object is the soul and the desire for its eternal happiness. At the same time, it is universal, immense, and extends to everyone.
Continue reading “The Strength and Tenderness of the Love of Jesus, 2022”

Notes Towards Consecration to Mary IV, 2021

Continuing with the fourth of five in our series in preparation for renewal of our Consecrations to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the feast of her Immaculate Conception, December 8, 2020.

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 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 or TAN Publishing.

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.

†  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.

Notes Towards Consecration to Mary, III, 2021

Continuing our series in preparation for renewal of our Consecrations to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the feast of her Immaculate Conception December 8.

The third selection from Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s, “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life”.

MYSTICAL UNION WITH MARY

A soul faithful to the devotion of which we have been speaking performs all its actions through Mary, in Mary and for Mary, and attains thereby to great intimacy with Our Lord. To consider only humility, the theological virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, the following are the more precious fruits of consecration to Mary when it is lived fully: a gradually increasing participation in Mary’s humility and faith, great confidence in God through her, the grace of pure love, and the transformation of the soul to the image of Jesus.

PARTICIPATION IN MARY’S HUMILITY AND FAITH

By the light of the Holy Ghost the soul consecrated to Mary will come to learn of all the evil that is in itself; it will see by experience that it is naturally incapable of every salutary and supernatural good and that through self-love it opposes many obstacles to the work of grace within it. Thus, it will attain to that contempt of self of which St. Augustine speaks in the City of God (Bk. XIV, ch. 28):

“Two loves have built two cities. The love of self even to the degree of despising God has built the city of Babylon, and the love of God even to the degree of despising self has built the city of God.”

And from St. Grignion de Montfort,

“The humble Mary will make you a sharer in her deep humility, so that you will despise yourself and no one else, and you will love to be despised. “She will give you a share in her faith also, which was greater than the faith of the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and all the saints. She herself has that faith no longer, for she sees all things clearly in God in the light of glory; but she keeps it . . . in the Church militant for her most faithful servants.

“The more you win her love . . . the more you will have a pure faith, which will make you set little store by the sense-perceptible and the extraordinary; a faith living and animated by charity which will make you act from a motive of pure love; a faith firm and immovable as a rock which will make you constant in the midst of storms and afflictions; a faith active and piercing which, like a mysterious master-key, will give you entry to all the mysteries of Jesus, the final destiny of man, and the heart of God Himself; a courageous faith which will make you undertake and bring to achievement great things for God and the salvation of souls; a faith that will be your flaming torch, your divine life, your hidden treasure of divine wisdom, your all-powerful weapon, yours to use for the enlightenment of those who are in darkness and the shadow of death, for the inflaming of those who are lukewarm and who need the purified gold of charity, for the restoration to life of those who are dead by sin, for touching and uprooting by your sweet and powerful words the hearts of marble and the cedars of Lebanon, and finally for resisting the devil and all the enemies of salvation.”

GREAT CONFIDENCE IN GOD THROUGH MARY

By confidence we mean that firm hope which tends towards eternal glory with sureness of direction. According to St. Grignon de Montfort, the Blessed Virgin inspires great confidence in God and in herself:

1st—since through consecration we approach Jesus no longer alone but in the company of His Mother;

2nd—having given Mary all our merits, graces and satisfactions to dispose of as she wills, she in return will communicate to us her virtues and clothe us with her merits;

3rd—since we have given ourselves to Mary she will give herself to us. We can say to Mary: “I belong to you, O Holy Virgin. Save me.”

. . .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.

Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., Reverend Reginald. The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life (pp. 268-269). Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Also available: Reverend Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., “The Mother of the Saviour: And Our Interior Life”. Available from TAN Publishing.

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.

†  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.