H ere’s an excerpt of a delightful email/letter from a youngster writing to someone preparing to make their consecration renewal:

“Boy, do you have any ‘war’ stories from preparation [for renewing consecration]? Seems like every time I renew it now, there are very real manifestations of Satan’s attempts to halt progress . . . the first year, these were so pronounced that a black bird even showed up in the basement, raising cain and trying to distract prayers . My mom had a black lizard show up in her hotel room one time and scared her half to death. This year, it seems like the stuff hasn’t ended since I renewed [the consecration]. If something can go wrong, it has; if something could annoy me, it tries; if something could distract me, it happens . . . It’s almost guaranteed!”

If we’re tempted to toss this letter into the garbage as just quaint kid-stuff, we should recall what Saint Louis de Montfort forcefully states in his True Devotion: “I clearly foresee that raging beasts will come in fury to tear to pieces with their diabolical teeth this little book and the one the Holy Spirit made use of to write it . . . They will even attack and persecute those who read it and put into practice what it contains. But no matter! So much the better! It gives me great encouragement to hope for great success. . .”

True, he mentions no lizards in the hotel room, no blackbirds in the basement. Those problems, no matter how scary, we can handle easily enough. But Montfort is absolutely convinced of the devils’ fury: “[raging beasts] will attack and persecute those who read it (True Devotion) and put into practice what it contains.” Far worse than lizards and blackbirds.

In his own time, the saint was referring to the incredibly rigorous heretics, called Jansenists, who could not bear Saint Louis’ insistence on the tenderness of Jesus and Mary, on his constant teaching that scrupulosity, overconcern and being afraid of God (precisely what they were preaching) were the serious obstacles blocking any advancement into the Trinitarian life. He experienced their persecutions, he painfully suffered their attacks. They even attempted, by poison and ambush, to silence forever his thunderous voice. So powerful were they that Montfort could not even consider publishing his masterpiece on Our Lady for fear that the Jansenists would succeed in their certain demands that it be watered down before royal permission be granted for its publication. Or worse still, they would destroy the manuscript and its author. Typically, he rejoices in this cross, for it is a harbinger of victory. Never could he even have imagined the triumph of his persecuted writing which would become not only a religious bestseller, but the bed-side book of the Pope himself.

Our war-stories are different but sometimes just as ferocious. Our Jansenists, our lizards and blackbirds, are the never-ending moans, “But that all went out with Vatican II . . You’re giving more devotion to Mary than you are to Jesus! . . . A slave of Jesus in Mary? Ghastly! . . . Montfort is one of those religious fanatics, be wary of him. Why all this fuss about Mary? We can be good Catholics without her, after all she’s hardly mentioned in the Gospels . . .” and on and on. When erroneous remarks like these (well-meaning as they may be) come from scholars, or spiritual directors or even some fine priests and bishops, they hinder a person’s adventure into God. Those “teeth” Montfort spoke of are still as sharp as ever. The lizards and the blackbirds are for real. But what a herald of triumph! Montfort saw in this opposition the victorious sign of the cross.

Some will say that there is nothing special about living and preaching Saint Louis de Montfort’s authentic and challenging thought. The difficulties encountered, so they say, are no more than those of every Christian attempting to live Jesus in a post-Christian world. Montfort does not accept that. The Immaculate Mary is such a certain, sure, direct, perfect path to holiness that the powers of hell are experienced in an intense way by those who consecrate themselves to her and try to bring more and more people into the Marian path to the Lord. “Satan, being so proud, suffers infinitely more in being vanquished and punished by a lowly and humble servant of God, for her humility humiliates him more than the power of God . . . The friends of the world . .. have always persecuted and will persecute more than ever in the future those who belong to the Blessed Virgin, just as Cain of old persecuted his brother Abel … But in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ.”