Q&A: I appreciate Saint Louis Marie’s insight into Jesus—Wisdom, but am not attracted to his Marian Spirituality. Do you have any difficulty with this?
Father J. Patrick Gaffney, SMM
Yes, I do. More importantly, Saint Louis de Montfort apparently does. Wisdom in Montfort’s spirituality is not something abstract. It is part and parcel of his incarnational theology and therefore centers on Wisdom as personally manifested, as personally externalized in this creation: Jesus, triumphantly crucified. And Jesus-Wisdom is also not to be intellectualized as an abstraction. Jesus, incarnate Wisdom, the true goal of all creation, is so attractive, so beautiful, so fulfilling that the soul’s yearning for Wisdom qualifies everything one says, does, or desires. And the greatest means of finding Wisdom is our Lady of Wisdom, Mary.
Montfort has little use for those who live in the abstract of ivory towers. Rather, he demands that we take that long and most difficult trip from the head to the heart, from the abstract to the incarnational, from staring—at to union-with. His insight into Jesus—Wisdom which you say you appreciate, is then essentially bound with striving for union with Wisdom. It therefore involves the woman whose yes brought Wisdom into this world, whose intercession can only be directed towards union with Wisdom. As Saint Louis de Montfort says that Wisdom cannot be separated from The Cross, so too he says that it is easier to separate the light from the sun than to separate Jesus from Mary (cf TD 63). The eternal and incarnate Wisdom is the fruit of Mary’s faith, not only of her womb. The link is willed by God. It is eternal. Sharing in Mary’s faith is the way to Wisdom.
