Because of its specific, pervasive and profound emphasis on the role of Mary in salvation history, the spirituality of Saint Louis de Montfort is rightly called a Marian path of perfection. A cursory reading of the saint’s works makes this evident as do the testimonies of the followers of Montfort among whom are to be counted the Popes of this century. It is nothing less than a square-circle to affirm that this marian apostle does not emphatically require of his disciples a life of intense and habitual union with the Mother of God.
Nonetheless, “marian spirituality” must be correctly understood. It can only be considered authentic to the extent that it is essentially one with evangelical Christian spirituality itself. A type of Marian Spirituality which is “apart from” or “beyond” or “parallel to” the fundamentally one Christian spirituality is, Saint Louis de Montfort would say, diabolical (cf. TD 62). Pope John Paul II, one of the most ardent followers of Montfort Spirituality, insists that “in the field of spirituality . . . the specialists in mariology must show the necessity of a harmonious insertion of the ‘marian dimension’ into the one Christian spirituality.”
What then about this essential marian dimension of Montfort Spirituality? Does Saint Louis truly harmonize his stress on Our Lady’s role in Christian life with the whole of Gospel spirituality and with its divine center, the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity?
There are essential characteristics required of marian spirituality – and of all theologies and spiritualities – if it is to be counted truly Catholic. Pope Paul VI discusses these in his Apostolic Constitution Marialis Cultus. Readers of The Queen have often been reminded of the Constitution’s insistence that all devotion to Our Lady must be trinitarian, christocentric and ecclesial. Briefly, this means that authentic devotion to the Mother is essentially devotion to the Son, the incarnate Word thereby inserting Mary’s clients more profoundly and intimately into the Body of Christ, the Church.
Authentic marian spirituality fulfills these essential criteria in manyways. Suffice it to mention two of the most important: first, Mary is always considered in relationship to Christ, and secondly, she is proclaimed as icon of the Church in all its holiness. Following the lead of the excellent Roman mariologist, Father Stefano DeFiores, S.M.M., whose article Maria nel mistero di Crista e della Chiesa (In our Italian Montfort Magazine Madre e Regina) is the inspiration for this essay, we can call these two ways, the principle of relationality and the principle of identification.
Painting: Madonna and Child: Pinturicchio (1454-1513)
This is a first of two articles in a series on Mary in the Mystery of Christ and the Church: Is Marian Spirituality Evangelical?
1. Mary considered in relationship to Christ.
It can be said that this specific point is the Chief characteristic undergirding Montfort’s Marian Spirituality: Mary is nothing of herself, she is a pure (i.e., only a) relationship to God: “Mary is altogether relative to God, and indeed, I might well call her the relation to God. She only exists with reference to God. She is the echo of God that says nothing, repeats nothing but God . . .
“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 and it is to God that we give, through Mary” (TD 225). Saint Louis de Montfort clarifies this statement when he so forcefully and at great length stresses that “Jesus Christ our Savior, true God and true Man, ought to be the last end of all our other devotions else they are false and delusive . . . if then we establish solid devotion to our Blessed Lady, it is only to establish more perfectly devotion to Jesus Christ and to provide an easy and secure means for finding Jesus Christ. If devotion to our Lady removed us from Jesus Christ, we should have to reject it as an illusion of the devil” (TD 61—62). Mary is not a “step” which we have to climb in order to reach Jesus. Encountering her, we encounter Jesus. Pope John Paul II writes in Crossing the Threshold of Hope that it was Saint Louis of Montfort who taught him that all devotion to Mary is centered on Christ.
Vatican Council II asserts this “relationality” of Mary to her Divine Son when it teaches that she is not an obstacle holding back communion with Christ; rather, she makes this immediate union more profound: “The Church does not hesitate to profess this subordinate role of Mary which it constantly experiences and recommends to the heartfelt attention of the faithful so that encouraged by this maternal help they may the more closely adhere to the Mediator and Redeemer” (Constitution on the Church, 62), “Devoutly meditating on her and contemplating her in the light of the Word made man, the Church reverently penetrates more deeply into the great mystery of the Incarnation and becomes more and more like her spouse when she (Mary) is the subject of preaching and worship she prompts the faithful to come to her Son, to his sacrifice and to the love of the Father” (Constitution on the Church 65).
Saint Louis de Montfort can therefore call Our Lady the “mysterious milieu,” i.e., the place of the encounter with God in Jesus Christ (TD 265). It is in her that the marriage between God and man takes place; it is in her that mankind becomes one with the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
This way of “relationality,” i.e., devotion to our Lady is devotion to her Son, is so strongly insisted upon by Saint Louis de Montfort that it must be called the fundamental premise of his Marian Spirituality. Readers of The Queen will want to study this point at greater length by examining the articles in Jesus Living in Mary: Handbook of the Spirituality of Saint Louis de Montfort (available on Montfort Publications here), especially Mary, Consecration. Suffice it here to cite Montfort’s decisive statements that he does not proclaim “two consecrations,” one to Jesus and another to Mary. “We consecrate ourselves at one and the same time to Mary and to Jesus” (TD 125) and “The more one is consecrated to Mary the more one is consecrated to Jesus” (TD 120).
Mary, “the mediator of intercession,” is, therefore, the means and Jesus, the only “mediator of redemption (TD 86) is the goal of Marian
Spirituality. Again, this is a truth which permeates the writings of Saint Louis de Montfort. The Consecration which is a summary of his
teaching, is entitled: “The Consecration of oneself to Jesus, Wisdom Incarnate, through the hands of Mary” (LEW 223).
However, the most important way that Saint Louis de Montfort demonstrates this principle of relationality is his insistence that total
consecration to Mary is a synonym for the perfect renewal of baptismal life (LEW 223, 225; TD 120, 126—130). And since baptism is our immersion into the Redeemer, the Son of God made flesh, and thereby our initiation into the Church, the people of God, Montfort Marian Spirituality is clearly trinitarian/christocentric and ecclesial.
By baptism, the Christian is consecrated, anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit, a child of God, a sharer through Christ in the divine nature. The intensification of baptismal life is precisely what Saint Louis de Montfort envisages as the goal of his Marian Spirituality. Baptism is the fundamental consecration of an individual; from it flows participation in Christ’s priestly, prophetic and kingly roles. What Montfort’s Marian Spirituality is promoting, therefore, is the basic, radical evangelical spirituality which all Christians are called to live. It is precisely because of this identification of perfect consecration with baptismal renewal that Montfort can declare that it is impossible to overturn his Marian Spirituality without overturning at the same time “the foundations of Christianity” (TD 163).
(To be continued: Part II May Be Found Here)
