Christ: The Beginning and the End

Christ: The Beginning and the End

St. Louis de Montfort’s Love of the Eternal Wisdom was a work that he composed while he was still a young priest, . . .

. . . probably about three or four years after his ordination in June of 1700. It was the result of his years of study in the seminary, during which time he had steeped himself in the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. Throughout the years of his training, he had been a voracious reader of the theological and spiritual books of his day.

Like any author, Montfort was, in a sense, a product of his own reading and studying. The 17th and 18th centuries were not noted for their theological development, but they certainly produced a profusion of extraordinary devotional writers. This was true especially in France where men like Berulle, Olier, Tronson and Condren – not too well known in the United States – molded the thinking of the seminarians and young priests. Their main preoccupation was to re-establish the primacy of Christ in the devotional life of the people and to show the indispensable role of our Blessed Lady in the work of mankind’s redemption.

People Did Not Pay Enough Attention of Their Being Children of God

What these authors were reacting to was the rather sad state of genuine piety in France at the time. Montfort notes the serious neglection of the peoples’ religious education. Their everyday devotions, as these writers pointed out, were more a matter of routine observances than of conviction. They saw that, for the most part, people were not paying enough attention to the sublime truth of their being children of God, loved and cherished by a Redeemer who had given His life to prove to them that their own personal salvation was a matter of infinite concern to Christ.

St. Louis de Montfort entered the priesthood with every determination to become a missionary to the neglected people of France, especially to those who lived in the villages and farms. It was to the ordinary villager and farmer, the most neglected, that he was inspired to direct his apostolate. In his mind, they were most in need of education and encouragement.

From these writers of the so-called French School of Spirituality, . . .

. . . he derived the idea of reviving belief in Christ our Lord as the Alpha and the Omega (the Beginning and the End). There was, he saw, a great need to restore in the minds of the average man and woman the basic Christian concept of the primacy of Christ our Redeemer. The underlying need, as he saw it, was for knowledge of Christ, a knowledge that was sadly lacking among so many. Without knowledge of Christ, he insisted, there can be no love of Christ.

Without Knowledge of Christ There Can Be No . . .

“Is it possible,” he writes at the very beginning of his book on Divine Wisdom, “for a man to love that which he does not know? Can he love ardently that which he knows but imperfectly? Why then is the adorable Jesus, Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, loved so little? Because He is not known, or known but little. Very few of us, like St. Paul, make a sincere study of the supereminent science of Jesus which is, nevertheless, the most noble, the most consoling, the most useful and the most necessary of all sciences in heaven and on earth.”

His reasoning was simple enough. If people are to understand and love Christ our Lord as the Beginning and the End of all things, it is absolutely imperative that they know Him. As he wrote later on: “Jesus our Savior, true God and true man, must be the ultimate end of all our other devotions; otherwise, they would be false and misleading. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of everything . . . He is the only teacher from whom we must learn.  The only Lord on whom we should depend and be united. And, the only model that we should imitate.

. . .  Love of Christ

This was the object that he had in mind when he composed his Love of the Eternal Wisdom. It was an attempt on his part, as a young and fervent priest, to rectify some of the prevalent tendencies in the popular devotions of his time. He notes the spiritual poverty of the villagers and farmers. Montfort notes the theological and devotional ignorance of the poorer clergy. And, he notes the sharp disparity between the French intellectuals and the uneducated mass of the average people who were held in contempt by the elite.

His  goal was remarkably similar to that of the unknown author . . .

. . . of what was apparently his favorite book of the Old Testament, the Book of Wisdom. The author of Wisdom had set out to show the superiority of God’s wisdom in dealing with His chosen people to the prevalent and insidious “wisdom” proclaimed by the Hellenizers of the city of Alexandria in Egypt. In much the same way, St. Louis de Montfort attempted to show the people of his time that Christ, the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom of God, was far superior to “the wisdom of the world. ”

We Possess Christ When We Love Him

Keeping this similarity in mind, it becomes quite evident why Montfort insisted so much on knowledge of Christ which is the first step to what he calls “the possession of Wisdom.” We possess Christ, the Divine and Incarnate Wisdom when we love Him. And we cannot love Him unless we know Him. Knowledge of Christ, according to Montfort, is bringing Christ into our minds, a possession that spreads, so to speak, from our minds into our hearts and souls.

One might object that this is perhaps a bit too Platonic an approach for such a practical and down-to-earth people as are our American Catholics. But one might also respond that this attitude is a kind of brushing off of the understanding and intelligence of so many of our so-called average Catholics who show a far deeper appreciation of and longing for a spirituality that is totally devoted to Christ our Redeemer, the Beginning and the End of all things.