Montfort’s Spirituality: Call and Response to Happiness: Part II: The Call of God – Jesus, the Eternal Incarnate Wisdom
Fr. J. Patrick Gaffney, SMM
A lthough St. Louis de Montfort employs many titles for Jesus, there is one which, like Blessed Henry Suso, he prefers: The Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom. The teachings of this missionary become clearer as we probe this title.
1. Jesus the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom.
“Taking up St. John’s expression, ‘the Word became flesh’ (Jn 1:14), the Church calls ‘Incarnation’ the fact that the Son of God assumed a human nature in order tom accomplish our salvation in it … Belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God is the distinctive sign of Christian faith” (CCC 461, 463).
The Incarnation of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity is the hermeneutical key to Montfort’s Spirituality. The saint tells us that we “should hold in high esteem devotion to Jesus, the Word of God, in the great mystery of the incarnation, March 25th, which is the mystery proper to this devotion … “ (TD 243). It is the Incarnation which is the root and source of his teachings. It is the mystery which gives unity and cohesion to the various elements which form part of his spirituality. As the theme of God’s loving fidelity to his covenant binds together all the books of the Bible, so too the Incarnation of the Word is the golden thread which ties together all the teachings of Saint Louis de Montfort making them one path to the infinite brightness of the Father.
So important is this mystery to Montfort’s thought that it becomes the division of his first work, The Love of Eternal Wisdom: “I am going, in my own simple way, to portray Eternal Wisdom before the Incarnation, in the Incarnation and after his Incarnation and show by what means we can possess Him” (LEW 7). His preferred synonym for the Incarnation itself is “Jesus and reigning in Mary” (TD 248), or “the mystery of the Incarnation where we find Jesus only in Mary” (TD 246). So taken up is he with this “first mystery” that he makes it part of his identity, signing a number of his letters “Grignion, priest and unworthy slave of Jesus in Mary” (L5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12).
“The Incarnation is the first mystery of Jesus Christ; it is the most hidden and it is the most exalted and least known” (LEW 248). The purpose of his preaching is to proclaim the basic truth, as he shows in his commentary on the Hail Mary: “We praise God the Father because he so loved the world that he gave us his only Son as our Savior. We bless the Son because he deigned to leave heaven and come down upon earth, because he was made man and redeemed us. We glorify the Holy Spirit because he formed our Lord’s pure body in the womb of Our Lady, that body which was the victim for our sins” (SR 46). With the entire French School of Spirituality, Saint Louis de Montfort is the “indefatigable herald of the Incarnation.
The Incarnation centers, of course, on the Word become flesh. However, the Incarnation came to be because in God’s plan, a woman spoke “fiat.” The strong accent the saint gives to Our Lady in the Incarnation is evident throughout his writings: “ … it was in Mary that Jesus perfectly atoned to his Father on behalf of mankind … in Mary he gave his Father infinite glory, such as his Father had never received from man” (TD 248). Mary’s role at the Incarnation will be examined in further detail below when studying Our Lady as the means Wisdom chose to come to us.
“It was in this mystery that Jesus anticipated all subsequent mysteries of his life by the willing acceptance of them. Consequently, this mystery is an abridgement of all his mysteries since it contains the intention and the grace of them all” (TD 248). Therefore, the miracles, the proclamation of the kingdom of God, the atoning Cross and glorious resurrection, the Church, the Eucharist, the Sacraments, all grace, all mysteries are rooted and ‘contained’ in the Incarnation.
The Virgin [and Child] With Angels (cropped) : Painter: William-Adolphe Bouguereau: 1900
This oil on canvas painting now resides in Petit Palais, Paris. For those that have visited The Shrine of Our Lady of the Island, a print of the full painting resides in the rear of Church.
The Father and the Spirit are never separated from Jesus, the Incarnate God the Son. To proclaim the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, therefore, always – and especially in the writings of Saint Louis de Montfort – essentially demands a Trinitarian context.
The underlying philosophical reason is clear: the beginning is never merely the first point of a series of further moments in time. Rather, the beginning contains what follows and is the never repealed law that governs everything flowing from it. The beginning transcends and makes immanent the moments resulting from it; its structure is different from theirs qualitatively and not just quantitatively (cf. W. Kasper, Jesus the Christ, Paulist Press, 140). Like the bride and groom who enter the sacramental state of matrimony, accepting whatever flows from it – in sickness or in health, for better or for worse – so too the Incarnation, the wedding of the Eternal Bridegroom, the Lord, and the Bride, creation, is the abridgement of everything which flows from it. The Incarnation is, therefore, the plan of God “who never changes” (cf. TD 15). It is the blue-print of salvation history, the once-and-for-all design of the Creator. All truths, all salvific mysteries flow from it, according to God’s will. Throughout his writings, especially on the Blessed Virgin, Montfort insists upon this principle of the Incarnation.
Since all mysteries are “contained” in the Incarnation, then surely the mystery of the redeeming Cross is also included. Montfort is explicit on this point; referring to Heb 10: 5-7, he places these words on the lips of Jesus at the Incarnation: “My heart is ready, my God, my Father, to do your will … I adore You and I love You. Here I am. Dispose of Me; I place in the middle of my being both your Cross and your law. You make me see even at this hour that it must be that I embrace the Cross, it must be that I die on it. I wish it my God, it is my choice” (H41:3-5). “[I] came into the world only to embrace the Cross, to set it in my heart, to love it from my youth, to long for it all the days of my life” (FC 16).
The Incarnation is accomplished for our salvation: “He who is has willed to come to that which is not so that that which is not may become God or He Who is; he did this perfectly in giving himself and submitting himself entirely to the young Virgin Mary without ceasing to be in time, He Who Is from all eternity … The inaccessible has come close, He has united Himself intimately, perfectly and even personally to our humanity by Mary” (TD 157). It is for us that He took the form of a slave and became obedient unto death, death upon a Cross (cf. Phil 2: 7; TD 72; LEW 223). This self-emptying of the Word, (kenosis) who comes to serve us (cf. Mk 10:45) can itself be called, then, “slavery of love.” Infinite Love serves us with redemption by offering Himself upon The Cross as the once-and-for-all divine holocaust of Love. The mystery of The Cross in the earthly life of Jesus-Wisdom will be examined below when studying The Cross as a means Wisdom chose to come to us.
2. Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom – Jesus is the Eternal Wisdom.
He is the Son of God, the only Son. He is therefore, as Montfort strongly underlines, Divine. The Person of Jesus is the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, the great mystery of Infinite Love. The awesomeness, the grandeur of Jesus is always uppermost in the mind of the saint: Jesus Christ is the LORD. And yet, precisely because of this majesty of infinite holiness, Montfort stresses that no one is as attractive, so yearning to be with us, so loving, so tender as Jesus (cf. LEW 117-132). He is Lord but always very gentle (H 119:4). Montfort is predominantly an Alexandrian in Christology, emphasizing the awesome, majestic divinity of Jesus. However, his early word, Love of the Eternal Wisdom, and his Christmas Hymns (H57-66) also include an Antiochene approach, emphasizing the Humanity of Christ.
Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom is the incarnate Word spoken in silence from all eternity and spoken out loud at the Incarnation. The mystery of the Trinity is pervasive in the spirituality of Montfort. As all flows from the Triune of God so all things flow back to the Trinity. Montfort’s battle cry, then, is the simple yet so profound motto he inherited from the French School: GOD ALONE! Everything is planned, measured, judged in the light of God “Who alone is my Tenderness.” Nothing else matters in the spirituality of this saint of the absolute. Everything has reality only inasmuch as it comes from and converges at the center, God Alone.
Like Bernard and Bonaventure, God Three in One is considered by Montfort primarily as the infinite mystery Love. We find in God, then, the three essential relationships of love: the Lover, the Beloved and the Loving Who binds together the Lover and Beloved, i.e., the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God is Love (cf. S, eighth sermon, point one); “God Alone is my tenderness” (H 52:11). It is this mystery of Love which permeates the spirituality of the saint. One of the greatest obstacles in our path into the Trinity is not to recognize that we are loved, pursued by Love Who so yearns for us (cf. LEW 72).
The journey of the soul leads through the Son in the Holy Spirit to the Father, “the essential source from whom all perfect gifts and all graces flow” (SM 9), the “Father of lights from whom every good gift originates,” our “Abba” (H 7:31), whose loving, maternal care for each one of His children, “never fails,” (L 2) for He is “goodness” (H 27:1) and “tenderness” (H13:20,18:24, 5S:11).
Even His chastisements are proof of His infinite love for us (H 98:1). The Father is then the “fons totius trinitatis,” the Blazing Light of Infinite Love, “loving us to excess” as Montfort often repeats not only of the Father but also of the Son, Eternal Wisdom, (LEW 45, 64, 108; SR 67; HD’ 8; H 128:6, 158:5) who “rests in His (the Father’s) womb” from all eternity (H 81:1).
The Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of love” (MR 16). The stress Montfort spirituality gives to the Holy Spirit is remarkable. References to the Spirit, “the substantial love of the Father and the Son” (TD 36), abound in his writings. Montfort instructs his people to sing: “Come, Father of Lights, Come God of Charity. … Let there descend into my soul a coal of your Fire which penetrates it with Flame and fills it with God” (H 141:1).
It is the Spirit who reveals Jesus, the Spirit who unites Eternal Wisdom and full humanity in the womb of Mary, the Spirit who fills the Incarnate Wisdom. It is the Spirit who takes possession of Mary in a special way at her Immaculate Conception and at the Incarnation of Wisdom. LEW 94 tells us that when Incarnate Wisdom shares Himself with others, He shares all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who produces through Mary both the Head and the members of the Mystical Body. The spirituality of Saint Louis de Montfort is a glorious hymn to the “Holy Spirit Who by His Love joins them (the Eternal Father and the Adorable Word) with an ineffable bond” (H 85.6).
The Father and the Spirit are never separated from Jesus, the Incarnate God the Son. To proclaim the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, therefore, always – and especially in the writings of Saint Louis de Montfort – essentially demands a Trinitarian context.
(to be continued)
