Pope John Paul II and Treatise on True Devotion to Mary

Pope John Paul II and Treatise on True Devotion to Mary

“Reading this book was to be a turning point in my life. I say turning point, although it was in fact a long spiritual journey coinciding with my clandestine preparation for the priesthood. It was at that time that this remarkable treatise fell into my hands – one of those books which it is not sufficient simply ‘to have read.‘ I remember carrying it about with me for a long time, even into the factory, which resulted in the lovely cover being soiled with lime. I kept turning back, time and time again, to certain passages. I soon discovered that over and above the baroque style of the book, there was something fundamental; and the devotion which I had as a child and an adolescent towards the Mother of God gave way to a deeper devotion of faith, as if from the very heart of Trinitarian and Christological realities.

“Whereas I had formerly held back, lest my Marian Devotion should detract me from that due to Christ, I understood in the light of reading the treatise of Grignien de Montfort, that the very opposite was the case. Our interior relationship with the Mother of God is the direct result of our being bound up to the mystery of Christ. It is, therefore, not a question of the one preventing us trom seeing the other.

“Quite the contrary in fact: the ‘True Devotion’ to the Blessed Virgil becomes clearer and clearer to the one who is making progress in the mystery of Christ, the Incarnate Word, and in the Trinitarian Doctrine of salvation which is centered on this mystery. It can be said that Christ Himself points out His Mother to the one who tries to know and love Him, as He did to St. John at the foot of the Cross.”

The above is an excerpt from the book. ”DO NOT BE AFRAID.” by Andre Frossard, conversations with John Paul II. Editions, Laffront, 1982,
pp. 184—188.