MONTFORT’S PREDICTION

One of the Saints to predict this predominant role of Mary in the world was St. Louis de Montfort, a humble French priest of the eighteenth Century, who composed a treatise on devotion to the Mother of God, known today as the “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.” In it he states that “Mary has been up to this time unknown, and this is one of the reasons why Jesus Christ is not known as He ought to he. If then, as is certain, the knowledge and kingdom of Jesus Christ are to come into the world, they will be but a necessary consequence of the knowledge and kingdom of the most holy Virgin Mary, who brought Him into the world for the first time, and who will make His second coming full of splendor.” (True Devotion, no. 13). The purpose of his book is to make Mary known to us, to show us her place in the redemption of man, to explain what she should mean to us, so that her Divine Son will be better known, and hence, better loved in the world.

Undoubtedly, we love only what we know to be good; and the intensity of our love increases in proportion to our understanding of the object’s perfection. No one can love ardently unless he knows well. Parents love their children because they realize that those children are their own flesh and blood. The patriot loves his country because he appreciates the value of his homeland. In like manner, we can love Christ with all our heart as He commands us to do, only when we have a sufficient understanding of the majesty, beauty and goodness of Our Lord and King. And God has given us the most perfect means of obtaining that knowledge – Our Blessed Lady. For as Pope Pius X tells us: “to lead us to a knowledge of Christ, no teacher is more competent than Mary.” (Ad Diem Illum)

That knowledge of Christ is but a consequence of knowing Mary, is an idea that recurs constantly in True Devotion and the other writings of the Saint. Evidently, he intended that idea to be understood exactly as he explained it – in the sense that knowledge of Mary is the means that God has given us to know Christ. ”Mary has been up to this time unknown,” that is, insufficiently known; “and this is one of the reasons why Christ is insufficiently known.”

PRECISION

Here it may be helpful to point out the distinction between two forms of knowledge. One is called speculative, and consists simply in knowing. The other is practical, and is the putting into practice of what is known. For example, a child in school and an astronomer may both know that on certain days of the month the moon is full. But unlike the child whose knowledge is merely speculative, the astronomer will use that knowledge for practical purposes of experiment. He does not stop at simply knowing, but puts his knowledge to some use. In the same way, we can have knowledge of Our Lord, which is purely speculative and knowledge which is practical. We can know that Christ is God, yet refrain from loving and serving Him as we should. On the other hand, we can use that knowledge by acting with the conviction that we are His creatures, that we have been put here upon earth for the purpose of glorifying God in everything that we do. Our speculative knowledge is the understanding of a truth; our practical knowledge is living in conformity with what we know to be a fact.

Both these types of knowledge were in the mind of St. Louis when he asserted that knowing Christ is a necessary consequence of knowing Mary.

One does not have to be a theologian with the genius of a St. Thomas Aquinas to understand that a speculative knowledge of Mary leads necessarily to a like knowledge of her Divine Son.

For Mary, as St Louis points out, “is entirely relative to Jesus“; He is the whole reason for her being what she is. Her entire being, all her perfections, depend upon her intimate connection with our Lord. Knowing what she is and the part she has to play in our salvation leads us to know her Son. For we cannot understand her to be the Mother of God without perceiving at the same time that her Son is God; we cannot know what her universal mediation means without realizing that Christ is our Mediator with the Father; we cannot grasp the idea of her queenship without concomitantly knowing that her Son is King, Mary’s perfections are such that they can be known only in relation to the perfections of Christ.

Through our practical knowledge of Mary, we are infallibly led to a practical knowledge of Christ: In honoring her as the Mother of God, we are honoring Christ Himself; in praying to the Mediatrix, we are at the same time praying to the Mediator; in serving the Queen, we are at the same time serving Christ the King. As St. Louis de Montfort puts it: “You never praise or honor Mary without Mary’s praising and honoring God with you… When we praise her, love her, honor her, or give anything to her, it is God who is praised, God who is loved, God who is glorified.” (True Devotion, no. 225)

There is but one reason for acquiring a better knowledge of Mary: to increase our knowledge and love for her Son. God made us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life. But how can we love Him unless we know Him? How can we know Him as we should unless we take the best means possible? Now the most perfect of all means is Mary, the Mother of God. No one can teach us more about Christ than Mary, for who has a better knowledge of a child than his mother? It is to acquire this knowledge of Christ that we go through Mary, that we try to fathom the depths of her perfections, that we try to grasp the meaning of her function as Mother of God and Mother of all men. Our Lady is becoming more known and better loved in the world. But this is not enough. As Montfort tells us: “We have not yet praised, exalted, honored, loved and served Mary as we ought. She deserves still more praise, still more respect, still more love and still more service.

Mary should be more known than ever for the greater knowledge and glory of the Most Holy Trinity.” (True Devotion, nos. 10 and 50)