Editorial: The Three Demons

The Three Demons

In the True Devotion alone, Saint Louis de Montfort three times warns against scruples, cares and fears.

The same three also surface in other writings of the saint. For this missionary, scruples, cares and fears are the most difficult hurdles blocking the path of holiness. They are, in Montfort Spirituality, the three demons which hold us back from advancing into the blinding light of the Triune God.

• Scruples spring from a diabolical conviction that God is a tyrant determined to trap someone in sin and unwilling to truly grant forgiveness.

• Cares are the many idols we carve out of daily living: overconcern about our health and the future, overanxiety about the children, relatives and friends, agonizing about our reputation, or “what will others think!”

• Fears are the bugbears of the spiritual life. They hound us, pursue us and so often entrap us. Fear can take away all joyful boldness, crush any risk-taking for God, reducing us to mediocrity at best. Montfort warns us about the root of all fears: a servile fear of God. It is reverential fear or awe – not to be afraid of God – which is the beginning of wisdom.

Three Demons Who Keep Us From Growth In Holiness

These three demons are actually the three heads of the one beast who keeps us from our growth in holiness. The monster? The denial of the Tenderness of God which entails the refusal to accept the fundamental truth of our faith; God IS Love. For Saint Louis de Montfort, this is the beast which must be killed if we are to enter into the Holy of Holies, Christ the Lord.

However, it could well be said that scruples, cares and fears do not characterize the present generation. In fact, concern about advance in holiness is not one of the principal worries of contemporary men and women. God – if there be one – is somewhere “out there” tending to His business with little if any interest in what we do with our lives. So why this stress on such old-fashioned demons like scruples, cares and fears?

Present Generation

Old fashioned? Who dares deny that the present generation is marked by heavy cares, deep-rooted fears? The suicide rate of teenagers and young adults sadly verify the tumultuous state of modern society. True, modern man is hardly scrupulous in today’s world of “anything goes”. Yet the source of this malady is identical to that of its opposite extreme, scrupulosity: a lack of conviction that God is close in Love and Tenderness, calling us into total harmony with His Will.

When Saint Louis de Montfort proclaims, therefore, a cure for “scruples, cares and fears”, he is addressing the needs of contemporary men and women. And his prescription is deceptively simple: lose yourself in Mary and you will easily, quickly, directly, intimately be one with Incarnate Love, Jesus. Scruples, cares and fears will melt away in the fire of infinite Love.

Lose Yourself In Mary

‘Lose yourself in Mary’:  model yourself on her Christ-centeredness, open yourself to her loving influence by solid devotion to her – especially by a life of total consecration to Jesus – Wisdom through Mary – so that her faith may be yours. Immersing ourselves in Mary’s faith we become like her, loving servants of the Lord Jesus. When the soul breathes Mary as the body breathes air, when the soul hides itself completely in the depths of her soul, becoming living copies of her total surrender to God in Christ Jesus, then the demon of servile fear – and of scruples and cares – is destroyed. It is in Mary that we truly experience the basic foundation of Montfort Spirituality; God Alone is my Tenderness.

Could it be that Saint Louis de Montfort has hit upon the deepest root of mankind’s alienation from God; its lack of conviction of infinite Love and Tenderness Who is God? Could it be that this missionary is teaching us nothing more than the fundamental evangelical truth that since infinite Love came into this world through Mary’s faith, it is through Mary that we will live most fully in that Love?

His proclamation of the Tenderness of God, of the Love and Meekness Who is the Crucified Jesus-Wisdom, is the challenge that the world needs today. And his Marian path of perfection enables us not only to accept that challenge but to arrive quickly in the power of the Spirit, through Jesus Wisdom to the Tenderness of God Alone. The demons of scrupulosity, cares and fears vanish when we actively and responsibly live in the faith of Mary.