“The Child is to be found only

With Mary His Mother”
(Pius X, “Ad diem illum”)

SOMETIMES the first reaction of even good Catholics to St. Louis de Montfort’s True Devotion is epitomized in the question, Why all this emphasis on the Blessed Virgin?” Their confusion on this point is quite understandable, for as far as too many Catholics are concerned, Our Blessed Lady is just another saint, one of the hundreds whom the Church has canonized. Well, of course, it is the purpose of this magazine to answer that question and to show just Why Our Lady is so important.

The truth of the matter is that Mary is not simply another saint whom we are allowed and encouraged to venerate. She is like no other saint because she alone is the Mother of God and the Mother of all mankind. She alone has given Christ to the world, and she alone continues to give Him. It is only through her hands that all the gifts of God are bestowed upon us. And because Christ comes to us only through Mary, – God has ordained that we are to return to Him in the same Way – through Mary. This is the basic truth of devotion to
the Blessed Virgin, the foundation upon which is laid all that Montfort has written about her necessity and importance. We go to Jesus through Mary, because Jesus has come to us through her.

HOW CHRIST COMES TO MAN

There are two ways in which our Lord comes to us. The first has already taken place; the second will be at the end of time when He comes to judge the living and the dead. But besides, there is another coming of Christ which is not Visible and exterior, but invisible
and spiritual. This is His presence in the souls of the just through sanctifying grace. His first visible coming was from the time of the Incarnation to His glorious Ascension into heaven. His spiritual, invisible presence in the souls of men Will go on until the end of time.

Christ’s first visible presence, and His coming into the souls of the just, can both be summed up in the one word “redemption.” When our Lord came for the first time, it was for the purpose of dying upon the cross to reopen for us the gates of heaven. His spiritual coming is to apply the fruits of His death to man, to make us the children of God through the gift of sanctifying grace. In a word. it is for the purpose of being reborn spiritually within us. Christ came to us physically to redeem us; He comes into our souls spiritually in order to continue and complete the work of the redemption,

CHRIST COMES THROUGH MARY

It is evident enough from the gospel that when Christ came into the world physically, He Came through Mary. In the first chapter of his gospel, St. Luke has given a clear account of the part she played in the Incarnation of the Son of God. God intended no one for this role but Mary. He did not give the choice to several women, but only to the one whom He had predestined from all eternity to be the mother of the Savior. Through Mary, and through her alone, He became man. As Montfort has put it, “whatever sighs the patriarchs may have sent forth, whatever prayers the prophets and saints of the Old Law may have offered up to obtain this treasure,…it was Mary alone Who merited it.” (TD. no. 16)

Not only in His physical coming, but also in His spiritual rebirth in our souls does Christ come to us through Mary. “God having willed to commence and complete His greatest works by the most Holy Virgin..we may well think that He will not change His conduct.., for He is God, and He changes not.” (TD. no. 15) The plan of God for man’s redemption is not like the work of a clumsy apprentice, so haphazard and tentative that He would begin the redemption through Mary and then decide to complete it without her. “The gifts of God are without repentance”, St. Paul assures us, so that having chosen to begin redemption through Our Lady, God will undoubtedly continue it through her. Hence, sanctifying grace, by means of which Christ is reborn spiritually within us, comes to us only through Mary. Through her, as Pope Pius X tells us, “all spiritual gifts are communicated to Christ’s mystical body.”

TO JESUS THROUGH MARY

It is because Christ comes to us only through Mary that Montfort insists so much upon the importance of devotion to Our Lady. If God had meant her to he unimportant, He would not have given her alone the power to form Christ within our souls, to transmit all His blessings to mankind. “The Child is to be found only with His Mother Mary”, as Pius X tells us. We can have Him only through Mary. And hence it is that we owe her a debt of love and gratitude, that we should be truly devoted to her.

This is the conclusion that His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, has drawn from the fact that it is only through Mary that Christ comes to men. .“Since, as St. Bernard says, “it is the will of God that we should obtain all through Mary,” all should have recourse to her, and should lay at – the foot of her altar their supplications, their tears, their sorrows, and from her seek solace and comfort“. The Blessed Virgin is in fact so powerful With God and with His Only-Begotten Son that, as Dante sings:

“. . . he who grace desires, and comes not
To thee for aidance, fain would have desire
Fly Without Wings . .”

Why all the emphasis on the Blessed Virgin? “Because it is Mary alone who has found grace before God;… it is only through her that all those who have since found grace before God have found it at all; and it is only through her that all those who shall come afterward shall find it . .. The Most High has made her the sole treasurer of His treasures, and the sole dispenser of His graces…

Mary is everywhere the veritable tree who bears the Fruit of life, and the true Mother who produces it” (TI). n. 44)