by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
“A Roman and Apostolic Catholic, the author of this text submits himself with filial devotion to the traditional teaching of Holy Church. However, if by an oversight anything is found in it at variance with that teaching, he immediately and categorically rejects it.”
The words “Revolution” and “Counter-Revolution” are employed here in the sense given to them by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution, the first edition of which was published in the monthly Catolicismo, Nº 100, April 1959.
True Devotion to Mary, by Saint Louis de Montfort, is indispensable for those who want to encourage devotion to Mary Most Holy in our days. As we judge this to be our readers’ desire, we advise them not only to read it, but make it their bedside book.
Since Saint Louis de Montfort has analyzed devotion to Mary Most Holy in the best possible way, we will only try to give some examples of how we can take practical application for our spiritual life and for our apostolate from these truths about Our Lady. True piety should not consist of mere sentimental manifestations, but in the construction of spiritual dispositions based on the truths taught by the Church, theology, etc. This is the only way to live a true spiritual life.
Our Lady’s zeal for the cause of God
In the first chapter, article I, item 16, Saint Louis de Montfort teaches us that God the Father gave his only-Begotten to the world through Mary. Only she deserved Him, and found grace before God by the strength of her prayers and the sublimity of her virtues.
If we consider Our Lady’s role in the Incarnation, if we consider that Our Lady is capable, with her prayer, to hasten the Messiah’s coming, what practical applications for the spiritual life can we take from this?
We can consider Our Lady’s zeal for the cause of God. When Our Lady prayed for the coming of the Messiah, she certainly considered the situation into which the chosen people had fallen, the greatest moral poverty possible. In her prayer she ardently desired that the chosen people be brought back to their former situation. She saw, on the other hand, a decadent humanity, knowing better than anyone how many souls were damned in that pagan humanity, and she saw the glory of Satan reigning on that old world.
Our Lady played on earth the role of Saint Michael the Archangel in heaven. Her adoration, asking God to come to the world, is equivalent to the “Quis ut Deus” of Saint Michael the Archangel. She rose up above the surrounding state of things. She is the one with a prayer powerful enough, strong enough, to overturn the whole world by prayer alone. Then is the fullness of time complete, Our Lord Jesus Christ is born, and all humanity is reconstructed, regenerated, elevated, sanctified by Our Lady. Souls begin to be saved. The gates of heaven open. Hell is crushed. Death is overcome. The Catholic Church flourishes throughout the earth. All this comes from Our Lady’s prayer.
Is it not true that Our Lady is a model for us in this way? Is it not true that we should desire in our days the victory of Our Lord, like she did in her day? Is it not true that there is an absolute analogy between the ardor with which she desired the coming of Christ’s reign on earth and the ardor with which we should desire it in our day? Is it not true that, if her prayer was necessary to obtain the Incarnation, it is also indispensable to obtain Jesus Christ’s victory in the today’s world? When I fight for Jesus Christ’s victory, do I remember to pray to Our Lady? When I pray to Our Lady, do I remember to ask her for this grace? Praying the first Hail Marys of the rosary, contemplating the mystery of the Annunciation, would it not be a good prayer to remember Our Lady asking for the coming of Savior? Do I ask her to send another victory of Christ to the world? Do I contemplate the coming of Savior? Do I contemplate the future victory of the Catholic Church in the world?
Doesn’t this apply well to the spiritual life? Isn’t this the way the spiritual life should be seen, lived, led? Isn’t this much more serious than some fussy whimpering? These are the truths that nourish our lives of piety. It is in truths of faith such as these that we find abundant food for our spiritual lives.
To hasten Our Lord’s coming
We can still contemplate Our Lady hastening Our Lord’s coming. Our Lord comes to us at communion. So as we prepare for communion, we should ask Our Lady for some of the sentiments with which she received Our Lord when He became incarnate. If we want to obtain for someone the grace of daily communion, wouldn’t it be very useful to remind Our Lady of the effectiveness of her prayer. Just as she obtained the coming of Jesus Christ to the world, we trust she will obtain the daily coming of Our Lord to that soul?
In the item 17 of chapter I, Saint Louis de Montfort deals with Our Lady’s cooperation with the Eternal Father in the Incarnation. So we can consider Our Lady participating in the Eternal Father’s fecundity, generating members of Christ’s Mystical Body, because all the faithful are members of the Mystical Body of Christ.
When we pass by the baptismal font, we should remember that it was there that we were born to the supernatural life, thanks to a prayer of Our Lady and to the fecundity of God Our Lord. And it was there that we were generated members of the Mystical Body of Christ, of which Our Lady is true Mother. Doesn’t this invite us to pray next to the baptismal font, the door through which we entered the Catholic Church, to ask Our Lady to confirm and preserve us in that grace our whole life? We were generated to the life of grace by Our Lady’s participation in the Eternal Father’s fecundity. And that grace was gratuitous. Without the prayers of Mary Most Holy, we would not have received this grace. If we owe it to Our Lady, let us ask her to maintain us in it, adding to it the virtue of Catholic sense, the coronation of this most opportune union with Christ, that we received through her mediation.
Role of Mary in the sanctification of souls
Saint Louis de Montfort sets forth in article I of his first chapter the principles that God wanted to use Mary in the Incarnation, and He wants to use Mary in the sanctification of souls. Of the truths expressed under this, we can take applications for our spiritual life and for the apostolate.
If Saint Louis de Montfort teaches this, it is Church teaching. And if everything that the Church teaches is true, it becomes very clear that God’s action in us, our sanctification and our own salvation, will become more guaranteed if united to Our Lady.
If we know that the Eternal Father wants to multiply His children forever in Our Lady, then the more we have Our Lady inside us, the more we will be His children.
We are sure that Our Lord Jesus Christ wants to be in all Christians. He has them born in Our Lady, like Himself. And we can be all the more sure that Christ is formed in us, that is, that we sanctify ourselves and progress in the spiritual life, the more we are sure that Our Lady is present in us by the action of the grace.
Our Lady is the inseparable spouse of the Holy Ghost. If He sees Our Lady in a soul, that is, if He sees devotion to Our Lady in a soul, He runs immediately to her and produces His fruits of grace in it. Thus, the more intimate our devotion to Our Lady, the more guaranteed we are to have the Holy Ghost come to our soul, illuminate it, and fructify it with His action.
If this is so, we should have the greatest devotion conceivable to Mary Most Holy. We should frequently examine our conscience and ask how this devotion is doing. This is a true thermometer of our sanctification and union with God. This is how absolutely exact is the relationship between devotion to Our Lady and our sanctification and salvation.
However, not all souls feel a spontaneous, so to speak, or natural devotion to Our Lady. A Protestant lady who converted to Catholicism said she understood completely all the arguments for which a person should have devotion to Our Lady according to Catholic doctrine. But even so, this devotion didn’t touch her. Out of pure subjection to the Catholic Church, she did whatever she was told to do for Our Lady, but without any resonance with it. She spent about ten years practicing that veneration to Our Lady, a certain synthetic, manufactured, artificial, intentional devotion. At the end of those ten years Our Lady rewarded her, and she became a great devotee of Mary Most Holy. The action of the grace came and fructified that effort, even in the sensitive terrain. The difficulty she had practicing this devotion was a type of barrier that Our Lady wanted her to overcome, to unite herself more particularly to her.
We should not be discouraged, therefore, when we don’t notice in ourselves a special propensity for this devotion. As long as we have enough spirit of faith to submit to Catholic doctrine and rules, devotion to Our Lady, even if practiced in this spirit, will produce its fruits in us. But this supposes the deliberate intention of developing the devotion to Our Lady within us, to the extreme point that Catholic doctrine allows.
Devotion to Our Lady and the apostolate
If this is true, the real Catholic should consider the progress of the Church above all to be the development of devotion to Our Lady among the faithful. For example, when Catolicismo insists emphatically on devotion to Our Lady, it doesn’t do it merely out of devotion. It does this because it knows that really, to the Catholic Church, this is an absolutely fundamental point. If there is a certain region where Our Lady is venerated little, faith and customs in this region run dangers. If there is a region where Our Lady is very venerated, the conditions are in place for faith and customs to flourish.
In another sense, veneration to Our Lady obtains from God the greatest graces. And this veneration, attracting the largest graces from God, is evidently capable of promoting the salvation of the greatest number of souls.
Since the conversion and sanctification of a soul is so related to devotion to Our Lady, since this was the order of things God Himself established, we should ask her to work in this direction, because her intercession and patronage are absolutely necessary for this. If we want a person to progress and be sanctified, we cannot do better than to ask Our Lady’s graces for that soul. If we want a person to convert, we cannot do better than to ask Our Lady to produce her fruit in that soul, and make Our Lord Jesus Christ be born in it. True devotion to Our Lady is the fundamental element for the fecundity of the apostolate.
(Note: Without date, but published on “Circulares aos sócios e militantes da TFP”, n. 706)