Guest Editorial: She Found Wisdom Through Mary

She Found Wisdom Through Mary

T he basilica of St. Mary Major is where we are gathered today. The wealth of its architecture and the splendor of its mosaics, reminds us of the singular beauty of Mary. It is the obvious place to begin a reflection of the new Blessed Marie-Louise’s devotion to the Mother of God.

The depth of spiritual union with Jesus, Wisdom of the Father, achieved by Marie Louise of Jesus is explained by her devotion to Mary. Faithful to the end to the spirituality that her spiritual master, St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, had taught her, she understood and lived the secret of holiness that he had communicated to leer; “It is only through Mary . . . that we can obtain Wisdom”. (LEW 209).

In fact, “It is through the Most Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus Christ came into the world, and it is also through her that he will reign in the world.” A key affirmation that the Treatise of the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin develops.

A Desire For Perfect Conformity to Jesus Christ

Already marked from her child-hood by a solid Marian devotion, Marie Louise of Jesus found her own way in this statement that only confirmed her desire for perfect conformity to Jesus Christ, Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom.

Her first biographer, Father Charles Besnard, who personally knew her so well, tells us to what point she was attached to Mary. “We can say that she was totally consecrated to her dear Mother and Mistress,” he writes, “and as totally transformed, lost and immersed in her . . . She was not satisfied with being her servant, she considered herself as her slave . . . It is through her that she spoke, acted, commanded and gave thanks” (Besnard, Marie Louise, n. 494, p. 360).

She had long meditated in her heart the teaching of Montfort: “God the Father gave his only Son to the world through Mary. No matter what sighs the patriarchs may have expressed, despite the prayers of the prophets and saints of the old law, during four thousand years, to have this treasure, Mary is the only one who merited it and found favor before God through the strength of her prayers and the height of her virtues. The world was unworthy, says St. Augustine, of receiving the Son of God directly from the hands of the Father; he gave him to Mary so that the world could receive him through her”. (TD 16).

To Obtain Divine Wisdom

In order to learn from Mary how to desire and attract Jesus, Eternal Wisdom, Marie Louise always wished to approach the Blessed Virgin, to let herself be transformed in her and through her. Ceaselessly, she studied the mystery of Mary. She strove to conform to her “Good Mother”. Marie Louise seeks to obtain from her, Divine Wisdom, the object of all her desires. In the school of Mary she realized how much humility and forgetfulness of self are essential virtues.

After the example and under the inspiration of Mary, she too called herself and became the Lord’s slave, disposed to listen to His word and conform to it. It is in this attitude of “servant of the Lord” that she welcomed the happy and less happy events which characterized her entire life. She quickly understood that the ways of Wisdom necessarily pass through Calvary. In contemplating Mary at the foot of the Cross, she too had the courage to unite her whole life to that of Jesus, and to offer it in faith, so that it might become a source of life and redemption. She meditated deeply on that word of Jesus: “Behold your Mother”. Following John and Montfort, she took Mary for her all.

Faithfull Servant

There is no doubt that Marie Louise’s prayer was fully answered. She obtained Wisdom that she never ceased to desire and to call upon, by her prayer and mortification. According to Scripture, she received a “measure well filled and flowing over”. (cf. Lk 6,38). The Holy Spirit recognized Mary, his faithful Spouse, in the soul of this faithful “servant”.  As Montfort had foretold, He hastened there to produce in her his fruit which is Jesus, Eternal Wisdom (cf. TD n. 36).

Today, we receive the invitation.

Marie Louise calls us to follow her. “Look around you,” she says, “your societies have lost their senses. In a world where the miracle of technology was supposed to justify the most incredible hopes, dissatisfied, worried and even despairing people are more and more numerous. Why could you not be, in your respective milieux, witnesses to Christian hope, witnesses to the Wisdom of a God who continues to write the history of salvation through the meanderings of the human condition?  This limited and often disappointing humanity can always be victorious over the forces of evil, thanks to the resurrection of Jesus, thanks to the redemptive value attached to human suffering”.

Let us take advantage of this Eucharist to open our hearts, to the grace that calls us. Let us accept generously to be present to the Father in order to freely become disciples, imitators and witnesses of Jesus Christ, Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, in the footsteps of Mary, Montfort and Marie Louise of Jesus.