Mary, Beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father

(I n a few weeks we’ll celebrate Christmas and the Nativity. However, Pope John Paul wishes us to meditate on the Beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father by first concentrating) on the Mystery of the Incarnation and the role played by the three Divine Persons in this central mystery of our Faith.

If Man Loves Me

To quote from the Catholic Catechism: “The ultimate end of the whole divine economy is the entry of God’s creatures into the perfect unity of the Blessed Trinity. ‘If a man loves me,’ says the Lord, ‘he will keep my Word, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make our home with him.’ ” And again, “Anyone who glorifies the Father does so through the Son in the Holy Spirit; everyone who follows Christ does so because the Father draws him and the Spirit moves him.” (C.C. No. 259 )

If Pope John Paul’s theology and spirituality is Trinitarian and Christological, it is also Marian, in the sense that he has a profound understanding of Mary’s role as the representative of the human race in the central mystery of what theologians call: the Redemptive Incarnation. And this explains, in part, why he is so enamored of our Founder, St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s Marian Spirituality. Here is how he puts it.

“Reading this book (Montfort’s True Devotion To Mary ), was to be a turning point in my life . . . I soon discovered that over and above the baroque style of the book, there was something fundamental; and the devotion which I had as a child and an adolescent towards the Mother of God gave way to a deeper devotion of faith, as if from the very heart of Trinitarian and Christological realities.

Relationship with the Mother of God

“Whereas I had formerly held back, lest my Marian Devotion should detract me from that due to Christ, I understood, in the light of reading the Treatise of Grignion de Montfort, that the very opposite was the case. Our interior relationship with the Mother of God is the direct result of our being bound up to the Mystery of Christ. It is therefore not a question of the one preventing us from seeing the other.

“Quite the contrary in fact: the ‘true devotion’ to the Blessed Virgin becomes clearer and clearer to the one who is making progress in the Mystery of Christ, the Incarnate Word, and in the Trinitarian Doctrine of salvation which is centered on this mystery. It can be said that Christ Himself points out His Mother to the one who tries to know and love Him, as He did to St. John at the foot of The Cross . . .” (Do Not Be Afraid, Andrei Frossard, 1982).

To Know and Love the Father

To know and love the Father in a deeper and more personal way is obviously the Holy Father’s goal … St. Louis de Montfort would remind us, as Jesus Himself taught us, that we have a Father in Heaven who loves us to the point of sending us His Only Begotten Son to take on our human nature, to be born of the Virgin Mary, and die on the Cross to redeem us from our sins, thereby reconciling us with the Father.

Quoting St. Augustine, St. Louis de Montfort writes: “The world being unworthy to receive the Son of God directly from the hands of the Father, He gave his Son to Mary for the world to receive Him from her.” (T.D. #16 ) Our Saint then goes on to say: “God the Father imparted to Mary his fruit-fulness, as far as a mere creature was capable of receiving it, to enable her to bring forth his Son and all the members of his Mystical Body.” (T.D. #17)

Finally, referring to his Total Consecration to Jesus Through Mary, St. Louis writes: “In giving ourselves to Jesus through the hands of Mary, we imitate God the Father Who gave us His Son only through Mary.” (S.M. No. 35)

Now you know why St. Louis de Montfort’s “Prayer to Mary” opens with these words: “Hail Mary, most beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father. Hail Mary, admirable Mother of the Son. Hail Mary, most faithful Spouse of the Holy Spirit, etc.” (S.M. No. 68)

And now you know why the Holy Father wants to stress Our Lady’s role as the Mother of the Child, Whose birthday the Church and the entire Christian world is about to celebrate!

Mary and the Incarnation: Fresco painting in the Chapel at The Montfort Spiritual Center

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