St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort was born in Brittany on 31 January 1673 and died in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, in the Vendée, worn out by his apostolic labours on 28 April 1716.21 His life, as has already been observed,22 coincides almost perfectly within the chronological limits (1680-1715) of the period covered by Paul Hazard in his work, by now rightly a classic, on the crisis of the European conscience.23 De Montfort was beatified by Leo XIII on 22 January 1888 and proclaimed a saint by Pius XII on 20 July 1947.24 He, declared Pius XII, was “the apostle, par excellence, of Poitou, of Brittany and of Vendée”. The Vendeans who took up arms against the revolutionary impiety were descendants of the country people whom the great saint, with his popular missions, had preserved from the germs of the revolution, so much so that, as the same Pontiff affirms, it was written without exaggeration “that the Vendée of 1793 was the work of his hands”.25
“The great incentive for his whole apostolic ministry, his great secret for attracting and giving souls to Jesus, is his devotion to Mary.”26 Our Lady, in her role of Mediatrix between Jesus Christ and men, was the object of the ardent meditation of de Montfort. Around the universal Mediation of Mary, the French saint, according to Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, “built a whole Mariology that is the greatest monument of all times to the Virgin Mother of God”.27
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira and St Louis Marie de Montfort, in a certain sense, necessarily had to find one another. Devotion to Our Lady was in fact the foundation of the spirituality of Doctor Plinio who learnt it as a child through his mother’s example, especially one aspect of it: that of the divine maternity.28 The most holy Virgin — wrote the Brazilian thinker — is
“the incomparable quintessence, the most extensive synthesis of all the mothers that have ever existed, that exist and that will exist; of all the maternal virtues that the intelligence and heart of man can know. Even more, of those great degrees of virtue that only the saints can find, and to which only they are able to approach, flying on the wings of grace and heroism. She is the mother of all children and of all mothers. She is the mother of all men. She is the mother of the Man. Yes, of the God-Man, of God who was made man in the virginal womb of this Mother, to redeem all men. She is a Mother who can be defined with just one word — the sea (mare) — which in its turn gives origin to a name. A name that is a heaven: it is Mary.”29
Miraculous painting of Our Lady of Good Counsel, venerated in the Chapel of Colégio São Luis, in the capital of São Paulo.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, who had been a member of the Marian congregation and a Carmelite tertiary throughout his whole life, knew, practised and spread the main devotions to Our Lady: he recited the Holy Rosary daily, as well as the Angelus and the Little Office of the Immaculate Conception; he wore the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and always carried the Miraculous Medal revealed to St Catherine Labouré. But among all the devotions he found the most perfect to be the de Montfort consecration to the Most Holy Virgin known as “slavery of love”.
Father Antonio Royo Marín affirms that no Marian devotion can be compared to that promoted by St Louis de Montfort in the Treatise on the true devotion to the Blessed Virgin.30 It is “the book” par excellence, that contains a “sublime doctrine”.31 “This little treatise” writes Father Garrigou-Lagrange in his turn “is a treasure for the Church, as is its summary that the Blessed made for a religious sister under the title ‘The Secret of Mary’.”32 “It may be said” according to Father de Finance “that with him consecration reached its perfect expression.”33
Among the numerous testimonies, that of John Paul II himself is significant: he thus described the role of the Treatise in his spiritual formation:
“Reading this book marked a decisive turning-point in my life. I say a turning-point, because it was the time of a long interior journey that coincided with my clandestine preparation for the priesthood. It was then that I happened on this unique Treatise, one of those books that it is not sufficient to ‘have read’. I remember that I carried it with me for a long time, even in the soda factory, so much so that its lovely cover was stained with lime. Time and again, I read certain passages over and over. I soon realized that beyond the Baroque form of the book, there was something fundamental. The result was that, the devotion of my infancy and even of my youth towards the Mother of Christ was replaced by a new attitude, a devotion that came from the most profound depth of my faith, as if from the very heart of the Trintarian and Christological reality.”34
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira “discovered” the Treatise and consecrated himself to Our Lady at the age of twenty-two, after having made a novena to St Thérèse of Lisieux to ask for progress in his spiritual life. His life and work may be considered a continuous meditation on the work of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort.
“If a work exists in which one can understand that ‘intellectual light’ full of love, of which Dante speaks, that work is the one of Grignion de Montfort.”35
“I believe I err not by affirming that, in essence, the Treatise is but an exposé of two great truths taught by the Church. Truths from which she extracts all the necessary consequences and under whose light is examined every spiritual life. These two truths are the spiritual maternity of Our Lady in relation to the human race and the universal mediation of Mary Most Holy.”36
From the Treatise on the true devotion to the Blessed Virgin originates Revolution and Counter-Revolution, of which the author himself illustrated the main points of connection with the Montfort masterpiece.37
With the approach of the canonization of de Montfort, while the nuclear flame was consuming Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira pointed out the deep connection of this episode with the distribution of the “True Devotion” in the world.
“The atomic bomb of Catholicism has been ready for two centuries. When it finally explodes, one will understand the full meaning of the words of Scripture: ‘non est qui se abscondat a calore ejus’. This bomb has a sweet name, because the bombs of the Church are those of a Mother. It is called Treatise on the true devotion to the Blessed Virgin. A book just over one hundred pages long. In it, each word, each letter is a treasure. This is the book of the new times to come. (…) And, we repeat, this ‘True devotion’, is the atomic bomb, not to kill but to resurrect, that God placed in the hands of the Church forseeing the grief of this century.”38
The Brazilian thinker always stressed the prophetic nature of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort and his relevance for the twentieth century: “If someone asked me to indicate the type of apostle for our times, I would unhesitatingly answer by mentioning the name of a missionary… who died precisely 239 years ago!”39
St Louis de Montfort is still modern, just as the prophet Elias would be very modern today in the sense of being the most adapted and adequate person for our time.
“‘Adapted’, in the sense of being apt to do good. ‘Adequate’, also, in the sense of having the adequate means of correcting our time. And for these very reasons most modern. Because to be modern is not necessarily to be like the times. Frequently it could be just the opposite. But, for an apostle, to be modern is to be in condition to do good to the century in which he lives….”40
Notes:
21, Among the numerous biographies of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, the best remain the Cf. especially P.-J. Picot de Clorivière, La vie de M. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, Paris- St.Malo-Rennes 1785. The main works of the Saint are: The Love of Eternal Wisdom (1703-04), Letters (1694-1716), Hymns (1700-16), True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin and The Secret of Mary (1712), The Secret of the Rosary (1712), Prayer for Missionaries (1713), Letter to the Friends of the Cross (1714), Original Rule of the Daughters of Wisdom (1715), now collected in God alone. The Collected Writings of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, New York, Montfort Publications, 1987. The Daughters of Hope, the Missionaries of the Company of Mary, the Brothers of Christian Education of St Gabriel refer to Montfort as their founder or spiritual inspirer. On 8 June 1981 the superiors general of these religious families addressed an appeal to John Paul II that St Louis Marie de Montfort be declared a ‘Doctor of the Church’ “considering his great holiness, the importance of his doctrine, the remarkable influence that he continues to exercise over the universal Church” (Personal letter to the Holy Father).
22. Marco Tangheroni, Introduction to St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, Il segreto ammirabile del Santo Rosario, It. tr. (Siena, Edizioni Cantagalli, 1975), pp. 7-8.
23. P. Hazard, The European mind.
24. Pius XII, Homily for the canonisation of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort of 21 July 1947, in DR, vol. IX, pp. 177-83.
25. Ibid, p. 178.
26. Ibid, p. 182.
27. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Prologue to the Argentine edition of Revolución y Contra-Revolución, (Buenos Aires, Tradición, Familia, Propriedad, 1970), p. 16.
28. On the divine maternity of Mary, solemnly proclaimed in Ephesus in 431, J. Collantes S.J., La fede nella Chiesa cattolica, pp. 298-301.
29. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “O serviço uma alegria”, Folha de S. Paulo, 13 September 1980, It. tr. Cristianità, no. 85, May 1982, p. 14.
30. Antonio Royo Marín O.P., La Virgen Maria, (Madrid, BAC, 1968), 367.
31. Ibid, p. 393.
32. R. Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., Vita spirituale, (Rome, Città Nuova, 1965), p. 254.
33. Joseph de Finance S.J., Consécration, in DSp, vol. II,2 (1953), col. 1583 (coll. 1576-83); Jean Weeger, André Derville, Esclave (spiritualité de l’), in DSp, vol. IV,1 (1960), coll. 1067-80; M. Gebhard, La devotion du Saint Esclavage du point de vue dogmatique, Lyon, J. Poncet, 1967.
34. John Paul II, N’ayez pas peur, edited by André Frossard, (Paris, Editions Robert Laffont, 1982), 184. Father Ernesto Mura, in Il corpo mistico di Cristo (Alba, Paoline, 1949), vol. II, pp. 131-3, 167-73, recalls the influence of the Treatise on St Pius X and on his Encyclical Ad diem illum, of 2 February 1904.
35. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Grignion de Montfort”, O Legionário, no. 376, 26 November 1939.
36. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Grignion de Montfort”, O Legionário”, no. 378, 10 December 1939.
37. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Grignion de Montfort”, articles cit.; ID., “Pro Maria fiant maxima”, O Legionário, no. 379, 17 December 1939; ID., Prologue to the Argentine edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution.
38. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Grignion de Montfort”, O Legionário, no. 689, 21 October 1945.
39. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Doutor, Profeta e Apóstolo na crise contemporánea”, Catolicismo, no. 53, May 1955, p. 1. Cf. also ID., “O Reino de Maria, Realização do mundo melhor”, Catolicismo, no. 55, July 1955; ID., “Exsurge Domine! Quare obdormis?”, Catolicismo, no. 56, August 1955, and the article by Cunha Alvarenga (= José de Azeredo Santos), “Servo de Maria, Amigo da Cruz e apóstolo da Contra-Revolução”, Catolicismo, no. 64, April 1956.
40. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Doutor, Profeta e Apóstolo na crise contemporánea.