Article II — Discernment of True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin

Having spoken until now of the necessity of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, I must now explain what this devotion consists of. This I shall do, God willing, after laying down some fundamental truths that will cast light upon this great and solid devotion which I wish to make known.

First Truth. Jesus Christ our Savior, true God and true man, must be the ultimate end of all our other devotions; otherwise they would be false and misleading. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of all things. We labor, as the Apostle says, only to make every man perfect in Jesus Christ, because it is in him alone that the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells, and all other fullness of graces, virtues, and perfections; because it is in him alone that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing; because he is our only Master who must teach us, our only Lord upon whom we must depend, our only Head to whom we must be united, our only Model to whom we must conform, our only Physician who must heal us, our only Shepherd who must feed us, our only Way who must lead us, our only Truth whom we must believe, our only Life who must give us life, and our only All in all things who must be sufficient for us. No other name under heaven has been given to us by which we must be saved, save the name of Jesus. God has laid no other foundation for our salvation, our perfection, and our glory than Jesus Christ: every building that is not set upon this firm stone is founded upon shifting sand, and will infallibly fall sooner or later. Every one of the faithful who is not united to him, as a branch to the vine, will fall, will dry up, and will be fit only to be cast into the fire. If we are in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ in us, we have no condemnation to fear. Neither the angels of heaven, nor the men of earth, nor the devils of hell, nor any other creature can harm us, because none can separate us from the charity of God which is in Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, we can do all things: render all honor and glory to the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit; make ourselves perfect; and be to our neighbor a sweet fragrance of eternal life.

If, therefore, we establish the solid devotion to the Blessed Virgin, it is only to establish more perfectly the devotion to Jesus Christ; it is only to provide an easy and sure means of finding Jesus Christ. If devotion to the Blessed Virgin drew us away from Jesus Christ, we would have to reject it as an illusion of the devil. But far from it — on the contrary, as I have already shown and shall show again further on, this devotion is necessary to us only in order to find Jesus Christ perfectly, to love him tenderly, and to serve him faithfully.

I turn here for a moment to you, O my lovable Jesus, to make a loving complaint to your divine Majesty, that most Christians, even the most learned, do not know the necessary bond that exists between you and your holy Mother. You, Lord, are always with Mary, and Mary is always with you and cannot be without you; otherwise she would cease to be what she is. She is so transformed into you by grace that she no longer lives, she no longer is; it is you alone, my Jesus, who live and reign in her, more perfectly than in all the angels and the blessed. Ah, if we knew the glory and the love you receive in this admirable creature, we would have very different sentiments of you and of her than we do now! She is so intimately united to you that one could sooner separate the light from the sun, the heat from the fire — I say even more, one could sooner separate all the angels and saints from you than the divine Mary; because she loves you more ardently and glorifies you more perfectly than all your other creatures together.

After all this, my lovable Master, is it not astonishing and pitiful to see the ignorance and the darkness of all men here below with regard to your holy Mother? I speak not so much of idolaters and pagans who, not knowing you, have no thought of knowing her. I speak not even of heretics and schismatics, who care nothing about being devoted to your holy Mother, having separated themselves from you and from your holy Church. But I speak of Catholic Christians, and even of doctors among the Catholics, who, professing to teach others the truths of faith, know neither you nor your holy Mother, except in a speculative, dry, barren, and indifferent way. These gentlemen speak but rarely of your holy Mother and of the devotion we should have for her, because they are afraid, they say, that we might abuse it, that we might dishonor you by honoring your holy Mother too much. If they see or hear some devotee of the Blessed Virgin speaking often of devotion to this good Mother, in a tender, strong, and persuasive manner, as of a sure means without illusion, a short road without danger, an immaculate way without imperfection, and a wonderful secret for finding and loving you perfectly, they cry out against him and give him a thousand false reasons to prove that he should not speak so much about the Blessed Virgin; that there are great abuses in this devotion; and that we ought to work to destroy them, and to speak of you rather than lead people to devotion to the Blessed Virgin, whom they already love enough.

We sometimes hear them speak of devotion to your holy Mother, not to establish and promote it, but to destroy the abuses that are made of it — while these same gentlemen are without piety and without tender devotion to you, because they have none for Mary. They look upon the Rosary, the scapular, and the chaplet as devotions fit for weak and ignorant minds, without which one can be saved. And if there falls into their hands some devotee of the Blessed Virgin who says his chaplet or has some other practice of devotion to her, they will soon change his spirit and his heart. Instead of the chaplet, they will counsel him to say the seven penitential psalms. Instead of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, they will counsel devotion to Jesus Christ.

O my lovable Jesus, do these people have your spirit? Do they please you by acting in this way? Is it pleasing to you when one does not make every effort to please your Mother, for fear of displeasing you? Does devotion to your holy Mother hinder devotion to you? Does she claim for herself the honor paid to her? Does she form a separate party? Is she a stranger who has no bond with you? Does it displease you when we seek to please her? Does one separate or distance oneself from your love by giving oneself to her and loving her? Yet, my lovable Master, most of the learned would discourage devotion to your holy Mother, and would inspire nothing more than indifference for her, as if all that I have just said were true. Lord, keep me, keep me from their sentiments and their practices. Give me some share in the sentiments of gratitude, esteem, respect, and love that you have for your holy Mother, so that I may love and glorify you all the more by imitating and following you more closely.

As if until now I had said nothing in honor of your holy Mother, "grant me the grace to praise her worthily" — Fac me digne tuam Matrem collaudare — in spite of all her enemies, who are yours; and let me say to them boldly with the saints: Non praesumat aliquis Deum se habere propitium qui benedictam Matrem offensam habuerit — "Let no one presume to expect God's mercy who offends his holy Mother." To obtain from your mercy a true devotion to your holy Mother, and to inspire it throughout the whole earth, grant that I may love you ardently; and accept for this end the burning prayer I make to you with St. Augustine and your true friends:

Tu es Christus, pater meus sanctus, Deus meus pius, rex meus magnus, pastor meus bonus, magister meus unus, adjutor meus optimus, dilectus meus pulcherrimus, panis meus vivus, sacerdos meus in aeternum, dux meus ad patriam, lux mea vera, dulcedo mea sancta, via mea recta, sapientia mea praeclara, simplicitas mea pura, concordia mea pacifica, custodia mea tota, portio mea bona, salus mea sempiterna...

Christe Jesu, amabilis Domine, cur amavi, quare concupivi in omni vita mea quidquam praeter te Jesum Deum meum! Ubi eram quando tecum mente non eram? Jam ex hoc nunc, omnia desideria mea, incalescite et effluite in Dominum Jesum; currite, satis hactenus tardastis; properate quo pergitis; quaerite quem quaeritis. Jesu, qui non amat te, anathema sit; qui te non amat, amaritudinibus repleatur... O dulcis Jesu, te amet, in te delectetur, te admiretur omnis sensus bonus tuae conveniens laudi. Deus cordis mei et pars mea, Christe Jesu, deficiat cor meum spiritu suo, et vivas tu in me, et concalescat spiritu meo vivus carbo amoris tui, et excrescat in ignem perfectum, ardeat jugiter in ara cordis mei, ferveat in medullis meis, flagret in absconditis animae meae; in die consummationis meae consummatus inveniar apud te. Amen. ¹

I have wished to reproduce this admirable prayer attributed to St. Augustine in its Latin text, so that those who understand Latin may say it every day to ask for the love of Jesus, which we seek through the divine Mary.

Second Truth. We must conclude from what Jesus Christ is to us that we do not belong to ourselves, as the Apostle says, but are entirely his — as his members and his slaves, whom he has redeemed at an infinite price, by the cost of all his Blood. Before baptism, we belonged to the devil as his slaves; and baptism has made us true slaves of Jesus Christ, who ought to live, labor, and die only to bear fruit for this God-Man, to glorify him in our bodies and to make him reign in our souls, because we are his conquest, his purchased people, and his heritage. It is for the same reason that the Holy Spirit compares us: first, to trees planted along the waters of grace in the field of the Church, which must bear their fruit in due season; second, to the branches of a vine of which Jesus Christ is the stock, which must bear good grapes; third, to a flock of which Jesus Christ is the shepherd, which must multiply and yield milk; fourth, to good soil of which God is the husbandman, and in which the seed multiplies and produces thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. Jesus Christ cursed the barren fig tree and pronounced condemnation against the useless servant who had not made his talent yield a profit. All of this proves to us that Jesus Christ wishes to receive some fruit from our poor persons — namely, our good works — because these good works belong to him alone: Creati in operibus bonis in Christo Jesu — "Created for good works in Jesus Christ." These words show both that Jesus Christ is the sole principle and must be the sole end of all our good works, and that we must serve him not merely as hired servants, but as slaves of love. Let me explain.

There are two ways here below of belonging to another and of depending on his authority: simple service and slavery. This is what makes us speak of a servant and a slave.

By the kind of service common among Christians, a man engages himself to serve another for a certain time, in exchange for a wage or a set recompense.

By slavery, a man is entirely dependent on another for his whole life, and must serve his master without claiming any wage or reward, like one of his beasts of burden over which the master has the right of life and death.

There are three kinds of slavery: a slavery of nature, a slavery of constraint, and a slavery of will. All creatures are slaves of God in the first manner: Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus — "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." The demons and the damned are slaves in the second manner. The just and the saints are slaves in the third. The slavery of will is the most glorious to God, who looks upon the heart, who asks for the heart, and who calls himself the God of the heart, or of the loving will; because by this slavery one chooses God and his service above all things, even when nature does not oblige one to do so.

There is a total difference between a servant and a slave. First, a servant does not give all that he is, all that he possesses, and all that he can acquire through others or through himself, to his master, without exception. Second, a servant demands wages for the services he renders his master; but a slave can demand nothing, whatever his assiduity, his skill, or his strength in labor. Third, a servant can leave his master when he wishes, or at least when the time of his service has expired; but a slave has no right to leave his master when he wishes. Fourth, the master of a servant has no right of life and death over him, so that if he killed him, as he might kill one of his beasts of burden, he would commit unjust homicide; but the master of a slave has, by law, a right of life and death over him, so that he can sell him to whomever he wishes, or kill him, as — without any comparison — he might do with his horse. Fifth, a servant is only for a time in the service of a master, while a slave is so forever.

There is nothing among men that makes us belong more to another than slavery. So likewise among Christians, there is nothing that makes us belong more absolutely to Jesus Christ and to his holy Mother than the slavery of will, following the example of Jesus Christ himself, who "took the form of a slave" for our love — Formam servi accipiens — and of the Blessed Virgin, who called herself the servant and the slave of the Lord. The Apostle calls himself by way of honor servus Christi. Christians are called many times in Holy Scripture servi Christi; and this word servus, as a great man has truly observed, in former times meant nothing other than a slave, because there were then no servants such as we have today — masters being served only by slaves or freedmen. This is what the Catechism of the holy Council of Trent, in order to leave no doubt that we are slaves of Jesus Christ, expresses in an unmistakable term, calling us mancipia Christi — "slaves of Jesus Christ."

This being so, I say that we ought to belong to Jesus Christ and serve him, not merely as hired servants, but as loving slaves, who, out of great love, give and deliver themselves to serve him as slaves, for the sole honor of belonging to him. Before baptism, we were slaves of the devil; baptism has made us slaves of Jesus Christ. Yes, Christians must be either slaves of the devil or slaves of Jesus Christ.

What I say absolutely of Jesus Christ, I say relatively of the Blessed Virgin. Jesus Christ, having chosen her as the inseparable companion of his life, his death, his glory, and his power in heaven and on earth, gave her by grace, in relation to his Majesty, all the same rights and privileges that he possesses by nature. Quidquid Deo convenit per naturam, Mariae convenit per gratiam — "Whatever is fitting for God by nature is fitting for Mary by grace," say the saints. So that, according to them, both having the same will and the same power, they both have the same subjects, servants, and slaves.

We may, therefore, following the opinion of the saints and of many great men, call ourselves and make ourselves the loving slaves of the Blessed Virgin, in order thereby to be more perfectly the slaves of Jesus Christ. The Blessed Virgin is the means that Our Lord used to come to us; she is also the means we must use to go to him. For she is not like other creatures, to which, if we attached ourselves, they might rather draw us away from God than bring us to him. The strongest inclination of Mary is to unite us to Jesus Christ her Son, and the strongest inclination of the Son is that we come to him through his holy Mother. It is to honor and please him, just as it would honor and please a king if, to become more perfectly his subject and his slave, one made oneself a slave of the queen. This is why the holy Fathers, and St. Bonaventure after them, say that the Blessed Virgin is the way to go to Our Lord: Via veniendi ad Christum est appropinquare ad illam.

Moreover, if, as I have said, the Blessed Virgin is the queen and sovereign of heaven and earth — Imperio Dei omnia subjiciuntur et Virgo; ecce imperio Virginis omnia subjiciuntur et Deus, say St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St. Bernardine, and St. Bonaventure — has she not as many subjects and slaves as there are creatures? Is it not reasonable that among so many slaves of constraint, there should be some of love, who of their own free will choose Mary as their sovereign, in the quality of slaves? What! Men and demons shall have their voluntary slaves, and Mary shall have none? What! A king shall hold it an honor that the queen his companion should have slaves over whom she has the right of life and death, because the honor and power of the one is the honor and power of the other — and shall we believe that Our Lord, who, as the best of all sons, has shared all his power with his holy Mother, takes it amiss that she should have slaves? Has he less respect and love for his Mother than Ahasuerus for Esther, or than Solomon for Bathsheba? Who would dare to say so, or even to think it?

But where is my pen leading me? Why do I stop here to prove something so evident? If one does not wish to call oneself a slave of the Blessed Virgin, what does it matter? Let one make oneself and call oneself a slave of Jesus Christ — that is to be a slave of the Blessed Virgin, since Jesus is the fruit and the glory of Mary. This is what is perfectly done by the devotion I shall describe later on.

Third Truth. Our best actions are ordinarily tainted and corrupted by the evil that is at the bottom of our nature. When you put clean, clear water into a vessel that smells bad, or good wine into a cask whose interior has been spoiled by another wine that was in it, the clear water and the good wine are spoiled and easily take on the bad odor. So likewise, when God puts into the vessel of our soul — spoiled by original and actual sin — his graces and heavenly dews, or the delicious wine of his love, his gifts are ordinarily spoiled and tainted by the bad leaven and the evil residue that sin has left in us. Even our most sublime virtues are affected by it. It is therefore of great importance, in order to acquire the perfection that can only be attained through union with Jesus Christ, to empty ourselves of whatever is evil in us. Otherwise Our Lord, who is infinitely pure and infinitely hates the least stain upon the soul, will cast us from before his eyes and will not unite himself to us.

To empty ourselves of ourselves, we must: first, thoroughly know, by the light of the Holy Spirit, the evil that is at the bottom of our nature — our incapacity for every good that is useful to salvation, our weakness in all things, our inconstancy at all times, our unworthiness of every grace, and our iniquity in every place. The sin of our first father has spoiled, embittered, puffed up, and corrupted us all, just as leaven sours, puffs up, and corrupts the dough in which it is placed. The actual sins we have committed, whether mortal or venial, however forgiven they may be, have increased our concupiscence, our weakness, our inconstancy, and our corruption, and have left evil remains in our souls. Our bodies are so corrupted that they are called by the Holy Spirit bodies of sin, conceived in sin, nourished in sin, and capable of every sin — bodies subject to thousands upon thousands of diseases, which grow more corrupt from day to day and breed nothing but disease, vermin, and corruption.

Our soul, united to our body, has become so carnal that it is called flesh: "All flesh having corrupted its way." We have nothing for our portion but pride and blindness of mind, hardness of heart, weakness and inconstancy of soul, concupiscence, rebellious passions, and diseases of the body. We are by nature prouder than peacocks, more clinging to the earth than toads, more vile than goats, more envious than serpents, more gluttonous than swine, more wrathful than tigers, lazier than tortoises, weaker than reeds, and more changeable than weathervanes. We have in us nothing but nothingness and sin, and we deserve nothing but the wrath of God and eternal hell.

After all this, should we be surprised that Our Lord said that whoever wished to follow him must renounce himself and hate his own soul; that whoever loved his soul would lose it, and whoever hated it would save it? This infinite Wisdom, who gives no commandments without reason, commands us to hate ourselves only because we are so greatly worthy of hatred. Nothing is so worthy of love as God; nothing so worthy of hatred as ourselves.

Second, to empty ourselves of ourselves, we must die daily to ourselves. That is, we must renounce the operations of the powers of our soul and of the senses of our body. We must see as if we did not see, hear as if we did not hear, use the things of this world as if we did not use them. This is what St. Paul calls "dying every day": Quotidie morior. "Unless the grain of wheat falling into the earth dies, it remains earth and brings forth no good fruit": Nisi granum frumenti cadens in terram mortuum fuerit, ipsum solum manet. If we do not die to ourselves, and if our holiest devotions do not lead us to this necessary and fruitful death, we shall bring forth no fruit that is worth anything, and our devotions will become useless to us. All our acts of justice will be stained by our self-love and our self-will, so that God will hold in abomination the greatest sacrifices and the best actions we can perform. At our death, we shall find our hands empty of virtues and merits, and we shall not have one spark of that pure love which is communicated only to souls dead to themselves, whose life is hidden with Jesus Christ in God.

Third, we must choose, among all the devotions to the Blessed Virgin, the one that draws us most to this death to self, as being the best and the most sanctifying. For we must not believe that all that glitters is gold, that all that is sweet is honey, or that all that is easy to do and practiced by the greatest number is the most sanctifying. Just as there are secrets of nature for performing natural operations in a short time, at little cost, and with facility, so there are secrets in the order of grace for performing supernatural operations in a short time, with ease and sweetness — emptying ourselves of self, filling ourselves with God, and becoming perfect.

The practice that I wish to make known is one of these secrets of grace, unknown to the great number of Christians, known to few of the devout, and practiced and relished by a still smaller number. To begin to make this practice known, here is a fourth truth that follows from the third.

Fourth Truth. It is more perfect, because it is more humble, not to approach God by ourselves without taking a mediator. Our nature, as I have just shown, being so corrupted, if we rely on our own works, efforts, and preparations to reach God and to please him, it is certain that all our acts of justice will be defiled or of little weight before God to engage him to unite himself to us and to hear us. For it is not without reason that God has given us mediators before his Majesty. He saw our unworthiness and incapacity; he had pity on us, and to give us access to his mercies, he provided us with powerful intercessors before his greatness. So that to neglect these mediators and to approach his holiness directly, without any recommendation, is to lack humility; it is to lack respect for a God so high and so holy. It is to make less of this King of kings than one would of a king or prince of earth, whom one would not wish to approach without some friend to speak on one's behalf.

Our Lord is our advocate and our mediator of redemption with God the Father. It is through him that we must pray with the whole Church, triumphant and militant. It is through him that we have access to his Majesty; and we must never appear before him unless supported and clothed with his merits, as little Jacob was clothed in goatskins before his father Isaac, to receive his blessing.

But have we not need of a mediator with the Mediator himself? Is our purity great enough for us to unite ourselves directly to him and by ourselves? Is he not God, in all things equal to his Father, and consequently the Holy of Holies, as worthy of respect as his Father? If through his infinite charity he has made himself our surety and our mediator with God his Father, to appease him and to pay him what we owed, should we for that have less respect and less awe for his Majesty and his holiness?

Let us say boldly, then, with St. Bernard, that we need a mediator with the Mediator himself, and that the divine Mary is the one most capable of fulfilling this charitable office. It is through her that Jesus Christ came to us, and it is through her that we must go to him. If we are afraid to go directly to Jesus Christ, our God, whether because of his infinite greatness, or because of our lowliness, or because of our sins, let us boldly implore the aid and the intercession of Mary, our Mother. She is good, she is tender; there is nothing in her that is austere or forbidding, nothing too sublime or too brilliant. In seeing her, we see our own pure nature. She is not the sun, which, by the intensity of its rays, could blind us because of our weakness; but she is beautiful and gentle as the moon, which receives its light from the sun and tempers it to suit our small capacity. She is so charitable that she repels no one who asks her intercession, however great a sinner he may be. For, as the saints say, it has never been heard, since the world began, that anyone had recourse to the Blessed Virgin with confidence and perseverance, and was rejected. She is so powerful that she has never been refused in her requests. She has only to appear before her Son to pray to him: at once he grants, at once he receives. He is always lovingly overcome by the breasts, the womb, and the prayers of his most dear Mother.

All of this is drawn from St. Bernard and St. Bonaventure, so that, according to them, we have three steps to climb to go to God: the first, which is nearest to us and most suited to our capacity, is Mary; the second is Jesus Christ; and the third is God the Father. To go to Jesus, we must go to Mary — she is our mediatrix of intercession. To go to the Eternal Father, we must go to Jesus — he is our mediator of redemption. Now, by the devotion I shall describe later on, this order is perfectly kept.

Fifth Truth. It is very difficult, given our weakness and frailty, to preserve in ourselves the graces and treasures we have received from God. First, because "we have this treasure" — which is worth more than heaven and earth — "in fragile vessels": Habemus thesaurum istum in vasis fictilibus — in a corruptible body, in a weak and inconstant soul that the slightest thing can trouble and cast down. Second, because the devils, who are cunning thieves, want to take us by surprise to rob us and plunder us. They watch day and night for the favorable moment. They prowl unceasingly to devour us and to snatch from us in an instant, by a single sin, all that we may have gained in graces and merits over many years. Their malice, their experience, their cunning, and their number should make us infinitely fearful of this misfortune, seeing that persons more full of grace, richer in virtue, more grounded in experience, and higher in holiness than we, have been surprised, robbed, and plundered. Ah, how many cedars of Lebanon and stars of the firmament have we seen fall miserably, and lose all their height and their splendor in a short time! Whence came this strange change? Not from lack of grace, which is wanting to no one, but from lack of humility. They thought themselves stronger and more self-sufficient than they were; they thought themselves capable of guarding their treasures; they trusted and leaned upon themselves; they believed their house was safe enough and their coffers strong enough to guard the precious treasure of grace. And it was because of this imperceptible self-reliance — though they seemed to themselves to lean entirely on the grace of God — that the most just Lord permitted them to be robbed, by abandoning them to themselves. Alas! Had they known the admirable devotion I shall describe further on, they would have entrusted their treasure to a powerful and faithful Virgin, who would have guarded it for them as her own property, and would even have considered it a duty of justice to do so. Third, it is difficult to persevere in justice because of the fearful corruption of the world. The world is now so corrupt that it seems almost inevitable that religious hearts be soiled by it — if not by its mud, at least by its dust — so that it is a kind of miracle when a person remains firm in the midst of this torrent without being swept away, in the midst of this stormy sea without being drowned or plundered by the pirates, in the midst of this pestilent air without being harmed. It is the uniquely faithful Virgin, in whom the serpent has never had any part, who works this miracle for those who serve her in the right way.

These five truths being presupposed, it is now more than ever necessary to make a good choice of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin. For there are now, more than ever, false devotions to the Blessed Virgin that can easily be mistaken for true ones. The devil, as a counterfeiter and a subtle and experienced deceiver, has already deceived and damned so many souls by a false devotion to the Blessed Virgin that he makes daily use of his diabolical experience to damn many more, lulling them and putting them to sleep in sin, under the pretext of a few poorly said prayers and a few outward practices that he inspires in them. Just as a counterfeiter does not ordinarily counterfeit anything but gold and silver, and very rarely other metals because they are not worth the trouble, so the evil spirit does not counterfeit other devotions so much as those of Jesus and of Mary — devotion to Holy Communion and to the Blessed Virgin — because these are, among all other devotions, what gold and silver are among the metals.

It is therefore very important, first, to know the false devotions to the Blessed Virgin in order to avoid them; and second, to know the true one in order to embrace it. Then, among the many different practices of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, I shall explain more fully, in the second part of this writing, which is the most perfect, the most pleasing to the Blessed Virgin, the most glorious to God, and the most sanctifying for us, in order that we may attach ourselves to it.

False Devotions to the Blessed Virgin

I find seven kinds of false devotees and false devotions to the Blessed Virgin: first, the critical devotees; second, the scrupulous devotees; third, the exterior devotees; fourth, the presumptuous devotees; fifth, the inconstant devotees; sixth, the hypocritical devotees; seventh, the self-interested devotees.

The critical devotees are generally proud scholars, people of strong and self-sufficient minds, who have at bottom some devotion to the Blessed Virgin, but who criticize nearly all the practices of devotion to the Blessed Virgin that simple people render simply and holily to this good Mother, because these practices do not suit their taste. They call into doubt all the miracles and stories reported by trustworthy authors, or drawn from the chronicles of religious orders, which testify to the mercies and the power of the Blessed Virgin. They cannot see without unease simple and humble folk on their knees before an altar or an image of the Blessed Virgin, sometimes at a street corner, praying to God; and they even accuse them of idolatry, as if they were worshipping the wood or stone. They say that, for their part, they do not care for such exterior devotions, and that their minds are not so weak as to give credence to all the tales and stories told about the Blessed Virgin. When the admirable praises that the holy Fathers have given to the Blessed Virgin are pointed out to them, they either reply that the Fathers spoke as orators, with exaggeration, or they give a bad interpretation to their words. These sorts of false devotees and proud, worldly people are greatly to be feared. They do infinite harm to devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and they effectively turn people away from it under the pretext of destroying its abuses.

The scrupulous devotees are those who fear to dishonor the Son by honoring the Mother, to lower the one by exalting the other. They cannot bear anyone giving the Blessed Virgin the most just praises given her by the holy Fathers. They can scarcely endure more people before an altar of the Blessed Virgin than before the Blessed Sacrament, as if one were contrary to the other, as if those who pray to the Blessed Virgin do not pray to Jesus Christ through her. They do not want people to speak so often of the Blessed Virgin, or to have recourse to her so often. Here are some of their common sayings: "Why so many rosaries, so many confraternities and exterior devotions to the Blessed Virgin? There is a great deal of ignorance in all this. It makes a mockery of our religion. Tell me about those who are devoted to Jesus Christ — (they often name him without uncovering their heads, I say this in passing) — We must have recourse to Jesus Christ; he is our only mediator. We must preach Jesus Christ; that is what is solid!" What they say is true in one sense; but, in the application they make of it to hinder devotion to the Blessed Virgin, it is very dangerous and a subtle snare of the evil one — under the pretext of a greater good. For we never honor Jesus Christ more than when we honor the Blessed Virgin more, since we honor her only in order to honor Jesus Christ more perfectly, since we go to her only as the way to reach the end to which we are going, which is Jesus.

The holy Church, with the Holy Spirit, blesses the Blessed Virgin first and Jesus Christ second: Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus. Not that the Blessed Virgin is more than Jesus Christ, or equal to him — that would be an intolerable heresy — but rather because, to bless Jesus Christ more perfectly, we must first bless Mary. Let us say, then, with all true devotees of the Blessed Virgin, against her false, scrupulous devotees: "O Mary, you are blessed among all women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus."

The exterior devotees are persons who make all devotion to the Blessed Virgin consist in outward practices. They relish only the exterior of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, because they have no interior spirit. They will say many rosaries in haste, hear several Masses without attention, take part in processions without devotion, join all her confraternities without amending their lives, without doing violence to their passions, and without imitating the virtues of this most holy Virgin. They love only the sensible part of devotion, without relishing what is solid. If they have no sensible consolation in their practices, they think they are doing nothing; they become unsettled; they give everything up, or they do everything by fits and starts. The world is full of these exterior devotees; and there are none more critical of persons of prayer who devote themselves to the interior as the essential thing, while not despising the outward modesty that always accompanies true devotion.

The presumptuous devotees are sinners abandoned to their passions, or lovers of the world, who, under the fine name of Christians and devotees of the Blessed Virgin, conceal either pride, or avarice, or impurity, or drunkenness, or anger, or swearing, or slander, or injustice, and so on. They sleep peacefully in their evil habits, without making much effort to correct themselves, under the pretext that they are devoted to the Blessed Virgin. They promise themselves that God will pardon them, that they will not die without confession, and that they will not be damned — because they fast on Saturdays, because they belong to the confraternity of the holy Rosary or the scapular, or to her congregations; because they wear the little habit or the little chain of the Blessed Virgin, and so on. When you tell them that their devotion is but an illusion of the devil and a pernicious presumption capable of ruining them, they refuse to believe it. They say that God is good and merciful; that he did not make us to damn us; that no man is without sin; that they will not die without confession; that a good peccavi — "I have sinned" — at the moment of death is enough; that they are devoted to the Blessed Virgin; that they wear the scapular; that they say every day, faithfully and humbly, seven Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys in her honor; that they sometimes even say the chaplet and the Office of the Blessed Virgin; that they fast, and so on. To confirm what they say and to blind themselves further, they bring up certain stories they have heard or read — whether true or false, it matters not — which relate that persons who died in mortal sin without confession, because they had during their lives said certain prayers or performed certain practices of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, were raised from the dead to confess, or had their souls miraculously kept in their bodies until they confessed, or through the mercy of the Blessed Virgin obtained from God at their death contrition and the pardon of their sins, and so were saved — and they hope the same for themselves. Nothing is so damnable in Christianity as this diabolical presumption. For can one truly say that one loves and honors the Blessed Virgin when, by one's sins, one pierces, wounds, crucifies, and outrages Jesus Christ, her Son, without pity? If Mary made it a law to save such people by her mercy, she would be authorizing crime and helping to crucify and outrage her Son. Who would ever dare to think such a thing?

I say that to abuse devotion to the Blessed Virgin in this way — which, after devotion to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, is the holiest and the most solid of all devotions — is to commit a horrible sacrilege, which, after the sacrilege of an unworthy communion, is the greatest and the least pardonable.

I admit that to be truly devoted to the Blessed Virgin, it is not absolutely necessary to be so holy as to avoid all sin, although that would be desirable. But it is necessary at least (let the reader note well what I am about to say): first, to have a sincere resolution to avoid at least every mortal sin, which outrages the Mother as well as the Son; second, to do violence to oneself in order to avoid sin. To join confraternities, to say the chaplet, the holy Rosary, or other prayers, to fast on Saturdays, and the like — this is wonderfully useful for the conversion of a sinner, even a hardened one. And if my reader is such, even with one foot in the abyss, I would advise him to do so — but on the condition that he practices these good works only with the intention of obtaining from God, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, the grace of contrition and the pardon of his sins, and of overcoming his evil habits; and not in order to remain peacefully in the state of sin, against the remorse of his conscience, the example of Jesus Christ and the saints, and the maxims of the holy Gospel.

The inconstant devotees are those who are devoted to the Blessed Virgin by fits and starts. Sometimes they are fervent and sometimes lukewarm. Sometimes they seem ready to do anything for her service, and then, shortly after, they are no longer the same. They will first embrace all the devotions of the Blessed Virgin, join her confraternities, and then fail to observe their rules with fidelity. They change like the moon, and Mary places them beneath her feet, with the crescent, because they are changeable and unworthy of being counted among the servants of this faithful Virgin, whose portion is fidelity and constancy. It is better not to burden oneself with so many prayers and practices of devotion, and to do a few with love and fidelity, in spite of the world, the devil, and the flesh.

There are also false devotees of the Blessed Virgin who are hypocritical devotees, who cover their sins and their evil habits under the mantle of this faithful Virgin, in order to pass in the eyes of men for what they are not.

There are also self-interested devotees, who have recourse to the Blessed Virgin only to win some lawsuit, to escape some danger, to be cured of some illness, or for some other need of the sort — without which they would forget her altogether. Both kinds are false devotees who have no value before God and his holy Mother.

Let us take great care, then, not to be numbered among the critical devotees, who believe nothing and criticize everything; among the scrupulous devotees, who fear to be too devoted to the Blessed Virgin out of respect for Jesus Christ; among the exterior devotees, who make all their devotion consist in outward practices; among the presumptuous devotees, who, under the pretext of their false devotion to the Blessed Virgin, wallow in their sins; among the inconstant devotees, who through fickleness change their practices of devotion, or abandon them altogether at the slightest temptation; among the hypocritical devotees, who join confraternities and wear the liveries of the Blessed Virgin in order to pass for good; and finally, among the self-interested devotees, who have recourse to the Blessed Virgin only to be delivered from the evils of the body or to obtain temporal goods.

True Devotion — Its Characteristics

Having uncovered and condemned the false devotions to the Blessed Virgin, we must now briefly set forth the true one, which is: first, interior; second, tender; third, holy; fourth, constant; fifth, disinterested.

First, true devotion to the Blessed Virgin is interior: that is, it comes from the mind and the heart. It springs from the esteem we have for the Blessed Virgin, from the high idea we have formed of her grandeurs, and from the love we bear her.

Second, it is tender: that is, full of confidence in the Blessed Virgin, as a child's confidence in his good mother. It leads a soul to have recourse to her in all its needs of body and mind, with great simplicity, trust, and tenderness. It implores the help of its good Mother at all times, in all places, and in all things: in its doubts, to be enlightened; in its wanderings, to be set right; in its temptations, to be sustained; in its weaknesses, to be strengthened; in its falls, to be raised up; in its discouragements, to be encouraged; in its scruples, to be freed from them; in its crosses, labors, and setbacks of life, to be consoled. In short, in all its ills of body and mind, Mary is its ordinary recourse, without fear of troubling this good Mother or of displeasing Jesus Christ.

Third, true devotion to the Blessed Virgin is holy: that is, it leads a soul to avoid sin and to imitate the virtues of the Blessed Virgin, particularly her profound humility, her lively faith, her blind obedience, her continual prayer, her universal mortification, her divine purity, her ardent charity, her heroic patience, her angelic gentleness, and her divine wisdom. These are the ten principal virtues of the Blessed Virgin.

Fourth, true devotion to the Blessed Virgin is constant: it strengthens a soul in good, and leads it not to give up its practices of devotion easily. It makes the soul courageous in opposing the world with its fashions and its maxims, the flesh with its weariness and its passions, and the devil with his temptations. So that a person truly devoted to the Blessed Virgin is not changeable, peevish, scrupulous, or fearful. Not that such a person never falls, or never changes in the sensible feeling of devotion; but if she falls, she rises again by stretching out her hand to her good Mother. If she loses all taste or sensible devotion, she does not trouble herself about it; for the just and faithful devotee of Mary lives by the faith of Jesus and Mary, and not by the feelings of the body.

Fifth, true devotion to the Blessed Virgin is disinterested: that is, it inspires a soul not to seek itself but God alone in his holy Mother. A true devotee of Mary does not serve this august queen from a spirit of gain and self-interest, neither for temporal, bodily, nor spiritual good, but solely because she deserves to be served, and God alone in her. He does not love Mary precisely because she does him good, or because he hopes for good from her; but because she is lovable. This is why he loves her and serves her as faithfully in distaste and dryness as in sweetness and sensible fervor. He loves her as much on Calvary as at the wedding of Cana. Oh, how pleasing and precious in the eyes of God and of his holy Mother is such a devotee of the Blessed Virgin, who seeks himself in nothing in the service he renders her! But how rare such a one is now! It is in order that he may no longer be so rare that I have taken pen in hand to write down what I have taught publicly and privately in my missions, for many years.

I have already said many things about the Blessed Virgin; but I have still more to say, and I shall leave infinitely more unsaid, whether through ignorance, insufficiency, or lack of time, in the plan I have of forming a true devotee of Mary and a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

Oh, how well spent would be my labor if this little writing, falling into the hands of a soul well-born — born of God and of Mary, and not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man — should reveal and inspire in it, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the excellence and the value of the true and solid devotion to the Blessed Virgin, which I am now going to describe! If I knew that my guilty blood could serve to engrave in hearts the truths I write in honor of my dear Mother and sovereign Mistress, of whose children and slaves I am the least, I would use it instead of ink to form these words, in the hope I have of finding good souls who, by their fidelity to the practice I teach, will compensate my dear Mother and Mistress for the losses she has suffered through my ingratitude and infidelity. I feel more than ever moved to believe and to hope for all that I have deeply engraved in my heart, and that I have asked of God for many years — namely, that sooner or later the Blessed Virgin will have more children, servants, and slaves of love than ever; and that by this means, Jesus Christ, my dear Master, will reign in hearts more than ever.

I foresee many raging beasts who come in fury to tear apart with their diabolical teeth this little writing and the one whom the Holy Spirit has used to write it; or at least to wrap it in the silence of a chest, so that it may not appear. They will even attack and persecute those who read it and put it into practice. But no matter! So much the better! This prospect encourages me and makes me hope for great success — that is, a great squadron of brave and valiant soldiers of Jesus and Mary, of both sexes, to combat the world, the devil, and corrupt nature, in the perilous times that are coming more than ever! Qui legit, intelligat. Qui potest capere, capiat — "Let him who reads, understand. Let him who can comprehend, comprehend."

Footnotes

1. Translator's note: This prayer, attributed to St. Augustine, may be rendered: "You are the Christ, my holy father, my merciful God, my great king; you are my good shepherd, my one master, my best helper, my most beautiful beloved, my living bread, my priest forever; you are my guide to the homeland, my true light, my holy sweetness, my straight way, my brilliant wisdom, my pure simplicity, my peaceful harmony; you are my whole protection, my good portion, my everlasting salvation... O Christ Jesus, lovable Lord, why have I loved, why have I desired anything in all my life other than you, Jesus my God! Where was I when I was not with you in mind? Now from this moment, O all my desires, grow warm and flow forth to the Lord Jesus; run, you have delayed long enough; hasten to where you are going; seek him whom you seek. O Jesus, let him who does not love you be anathema; let him who does not love you be filled with bitterness... O sweet Jesus, may every good feeling, fitting for your praise, love you, delight in you, admire you. O God of my heart and my portion, Christ Jesus, let my heart faint away in spirit, and may you live in me; let the living coal of your love grow warm in my spirit and blaze into a perfect fire; let it burn continually on the altar of my heart, glow in the depths of my being, flame in the hidden places of my soul; and on the day of my death, may I be found wholly consumed in your love. Amen." ↩