Montfort’s Spirituality: Call and Response to Happiness: Part IV: The Means Wisdom Takes to Come to Us

Through the Cross the Universe is Conquered

It is through the Cross that Jesus “has chained hell, overturned the rebel (Satan), and conquered the universe”.  (H 19:6). It is through the Cross that Jesus Himself attains the glory of Resurrected Lord: “Even when He had become man He could have imparted to His body the same joy, the same immortality and the same blessedness which He now enjoys. But He did not choose this because He wanted to be free to suffer”. (LEW 163).

“The Triumph of the Cross” is the title of two of his Hymns, 19 and 102. The victory of Easter is the fruit of the redemptive Cross. “Never the Cross without Jesus or Jesus without the Cross”.

Poverty and The Cross

Poverty is “the companion of His Cross” (108:7). The total surrender by Jesus of material goods during His lifetime reaches its highest point in His self emptying on the Cross.  It is the culmination of a life of radical and voluntary poverty manifested in the Incarnation itself (cf H 20:4), in his Nativity (H 58:7), in his life (H 64:4; 123:3) and in His preferential love for the poor (H 108:3). “He suffered even in material things, apart from the poverty of his birth, of his flight into Egypt and His stay there, and the poverty of His entire Life. During His passion He was stripped of His garments by soldiers who shared them among themselves and then fastened Him naked to a Cross without as much as a rag to cover His body” (LEW 158).

Voluntary Poverty

It is by voluntary poverty that Jesus willed to redeem the world. Quoting Rupert of Deutz, Montfort says; “At the Incarnation, the eternal Father proposed to His Son the saving of the world either by joyful means or by suffering, by acquiring honors or by suffering contempt, by wealth or by poverty, by living or by dying. Hence while remaining Himself glorious and triumphant, He could have redeemed men and taken them with Him along a way paved with joys, delights, honors and riches had He wished to do so. But He chose rather to endure the Cross and the sufferings. He chose this in order to give God His Father greater glory and to men a proof of greater love”.  (LEW 164).

Saint Louis de Montfort was so moved by Jesus’ depth of poverty from His Incarnation to His Cross, that he too chose to live in radical, voluntary poverty. He called upon his Missionaries of the Company of Mary to do the same (cf. LCM).

2. Our Lady

 

 

Our Lady

Saint Louis de Montfort does not merely state that “‘The greatest means of all, and the most wonderful of all secrets for obtaining and preserving divine Wisdom is a loving and genuine devotion to the Blessed Virgin”. (LEW 205). Rather, he insists on first laying the solid Biblical foundations from which authentic or true devotion will necessarily flower. This root of his spirituality is, not surprisingly, found in Mary’s role at the Incarnation, as revealed in Scripture and Tradition. It is primarily because God freely wills to make Mary necessary in His immutable plan of salvation.  That Mary is such an efficacious means of arriving at union with Divine Wisdom.

Mary’s Role in Salvation

Mary’s intrinsic role in the incarnation – the never to be repealed pattern of salvation history as noted above – is highlighted by Montfort especially when he reveals the meaning of Mary’s loving consent to God’s plan. Simply put, it is through her free response to God’s plan, through her Yes, her fiat that the redemptive Incarnation becomes a reality. The Incarnate Word who in His Person is perfect offering to the Father shares with His Mother His self-emptying, so that she too glories in the title “slave”. (cf. Phil 2:7; Lk 1:38; 48). Thereby indicating her total, loving offering to the Father in union with her Son.

Following the French School and most especially Saint John Eudes, because of her role in the Incarnation, Mary is “the Daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son, Spouse of the Holy Spirit,” not only at the enfleshment of the Eternal Word but in the entire economy of salvation. “God the Father wishes Mary to be the mother of His children until the end of time.  Jesus, God the Son wishes to form Himself and in a manner of speaking, become incarnate every day in His members through His dear Mother . . God the Holy Spirit wishes to fashion His chosen ones in and through Mary.

Mary and End-Times Marvels

Together with the Holy Spirit, Mary produced the greatest thing that ever was or ever will be: a God-Man. She will consequently produce the marvels which will be seen in the end-times. The formation and the education of the great saints who will come at the end of the world are reserved to her, for only this singular and wonderous Virgin can produce in union with the Holy Spirit, singular and wonderful things. When the Holy Spirit, her Spouse, finds Mary in a soul, He hastens there and enters fully into it. He gives Himself generously to the soul according to the place it has given to His spouse”. (cf. TD 29-36).  And all flows from her role in bringing into the world our Redemption, Jesus the Lord, through her faith-consent.

Mary’s consent is, Saint Louis de Montfort says, not only “hypothetically necessary” (cf. TD 14, 39) because unnecessary in itself yet freely willed by God, but it is also a representative consent. The roving missionary insists with Saint Thomas Aquinas that her Yes at the Annunciation is given in the name of the entire human race: “[Mary] consents to the Incarnation in the place of the entire human nature so that there would be a certain spiritual matrimony between the Son of God and human nature” (S.Th III, q.8, a.1).

Mary Found Grace Before God for the Entire Human Race

In the words of Saint Louis Marie: “the Son of God became man for our salvation, but after having asked her consent” (TD 16). “[Mary] found grace before God for the entire human race” (LEW 205). Through Mary, all human-kind, the entire cosmos says Yes to Wisdom’s desire to enter our twisted human family, desperately yearning for redemption. Montfort lyrically praises this consent of Mary when he sings; “You have accomplished without battle what all the earth desired so ardently”. (H 63:4).

This consent is clearly salvific, for the Eternal Wisdom would become man “for our salvation provided she would consent” (LEW 107; cf. Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium 56). “[Jesus] glorified His independence and His majesty in depending upon this lovable Virgin in His conception, His birth, His presentation in the temple and in the thirty years of His hidden life. Even at His death she had to be present, so that He might be united with her in one sacrifice and immolated with her consent to the eternal Father, just as formerly Isaac was offered in sacrifice by Abraham when he accepted the will of God”. (TD 18).

Clearly, “it was through Mary that the salvation of the world was begun”. (TD 49). The saint does not employ the title “Co-redemptrix” – and apparently on purpose, for he was well acquainted with the title – in any of his writings, for fear of being misunderstood by the Calvinists and also by the Catholics of his time. However, Mary’s unique role in the redemption is clearly held by the missionary.

Sharing In Grace

The consent of Mary enters into the fabric of salvation history.  It is forever. Forever Jesus remains the fruit of her womb, the fruit of her faith. (LEW 205). Forever Mary uniquely summarizes humanity the Bride redeemed by Christ, humanity actively and responsibly accepting the Redeemer. She is forever the fiat of all creation yearning for the healing of the one Redeemer. Since God willed Mary’s consent in the Incarnation, “the beginning of all mysteries” in which all mysteries are “contained”.  Montfort loudly therefore proclaims Mary the Mother of the Mystical Body.  She is the Mediatrix of All Grace, the maternal Queen of all.

It is through her that Jesus Christ who is “Incarnate Grace,” comes into this world. It is through her Yes that we share in this Grace, the fruit of‘ her womb, and more importantly, the fruit of her faith. Montfort can therefore declare that “in order to be conformed to the image of the Son of God all the predestinate, while in the world, are hidden in the womb of the Blessed Virgin where they are protected, nourished, cared for and developed by this good Mother, until the day she brings them forth to a life of glory after death which the Church calls the birthday of the just”. (TD 33). This maternal role of Mary over the Body of Christ was promulgated by Crucified Wisdom;  when He uttered: “Woman behold your Son . . . Behold your Mother” (Jn 19: 26- 27; TD 144; SM 66; cf. PM 1).

Conclusion:

The All Powerful Servant, Saint Louis de Montfort’s strongly Christocentric spirituality insists upon both the nothingness of Mary of herself and her mind-boggling holiness. It is precisely her emptiness of self which attracts the Spirit. The Spirit fills her with Divine life for herself and for the other members of the Mystical Body:

She who is:

• “a servant”
• “a nothing”
• “infinitely inferior to Jesus”
• “less than an atom”
• “the little girl”
• “the most obedient of the servants of the Lord”

by God’s mysterious Will is also:

• “Marvelous Virgin,
• “Stunning prodigy”.
• “Clear image of the Trinity”
• “The Immense Ocean of all His Grandeurs”
• “Paradise of the Trinity”
• “Abyss of Grace”
• “Masterpiece of all His Grandeurs”
• “Resting Place of God”
• ”Tabernacle of God”
• “Mediatrix of All Grace”

and the most basic titles of Mary –  in the thought of Montfort – she is “the faithful Mother of God” and therefore, “our Mother in me order of grace.”

To pull out the Mary-thread from the fabric of salvation history, would unravel the entire tapestry, for so God has willed as Scripture and Tradition attest.

 

(to be continued)