Q&A: What is the Difference Between Love of Eternal Wisdom vs True Devotion?

Both the Love of the Eternal Wisdom (LEW) and the True Devotion (TD) are spiritual masterpieces. Rather than pit one against the other as you seem to be doing, it would be better to compare one to the other and point out differences.

Both are chef d’oeuvres: LEW of his youth, TD of his mature years. LEW is, for the most part, written at a time of crisis in the saint’s life, when he experienced painful tensions with his ecclesiastical superiors; TD was written in the calm of his hermitage at La Rochelle where in his last few years he had found an extremely supportive Bishop. TD is, as he himself tells us, the fruit of his many years of preaching missions and retreats. LEW is fundamentally a contemplative gaze at the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom primarily through the lens of the sapiential books especially The Wisdom of Solomon. The TD is, as he entitles it, the “Preparation for the Reign of Jesus Christ” through the reign of Mary. The theology of Cardinal de Berulle is more pronounced in the TD which accounts for the fact that LEW has more of an appreciation for nature and creation in itself; of all his works, LEW has the strongest touch of Jesuit humanism. The TD is his most popular writing, appealing to all segments of the Church and more than other writing of the saint, is the reason he may be declared a Doctor of the Church.

With Father Lethel, OCD (Théologie de l’Amour de Jésus, p. 108). It must be said that not only the saint’s mariology but also his christology is more clearly enunciated in the TD than in LEW. TD can be called a more unified thought, a more mature and more theological work than LEW.