Article IV — Marvelous Effects of This Devotion

My dear brother, be persuaded that if you are faithful to the interior and exterior practices of this devotion, which I shall describe further on:

First, by the light that the Holy Spirit will give you through Mary, his dear spouse, you will come to know your evil nature, your corruption, and your incapacity for every good unless God is its source, as author of nature or of grace. As a consequence of this knowledge, you will despise yourself; you will think of yourself only with horror; you will regard yourself as a snail that spoils everything with its slime, or as a toad that poisons everything with its venom, or as a malicious serpent that seeks only to deceive. Finally, the humble Mary will share with you her profound humility, which will make you despise yourself, despise no one else, and love to be despised.

Second, the Blessed Virgin will give you a share in her faith, which was greater on earth than the faith of all the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and all the saints. Now that she reigns in heaven, she no longer has this faith because she sees all things clearly in God by the light of glory. Yet, with the consent of the Most High, she did not lose it on entering glory; she has kept it to keep it in the Church Militant for her most faithful servants. The more, therefore, you gain the good will of this august princess and faithful Virgin, the more pure faith you will have in all your conduct: a pure faith, which will cause you to care little for the sensible and the extraordinary; a lively faith, animated by charity, which will cause you to act only from the motive of pure love; a firm and unshakable faith, like a rock, which will keep you steadfast and constant in the midst of storms and torments; an active and penetrating faith, which, like a mysterious master key, will give you entrance into all the mysteries of Jesus Christ, into the last ends of man, and into the heart of God himself; a courageous faith, which will enable you to undertake and carry through great things for God and the salvation of souls without hesitation; finally, a faith which will be your flaming torch, your divine life, your hidden treasure of divine Wisdom, and your all-powerful weapon, which you will use to enlighten those who are in darkness and in the shadow of death, to inflame those who are lukewarm and in need of the burning gold of charity, to give life to those who are dead in sin, to touch and overthrow by your gentle and powerful words hearts of marble and the cedars of Lebanon, and finally to resist the devil and all the enemies of salvation.

Third, this Mother of fair love will take from your heart all scruple and all disordered servile fear. She will open and enlarge it to run in the commandments of her Son with the holy freedom of the children of God, and to introduce into it the pure love of which she has the treasure; so that you will no longer be guided, as you may have been, by fear before the God of charity, but by pure love. You will look upon him as your good Father, whom you will unceasingly strive to please, with whom you will converse confidently, as a child with his good father. If you should have the misfortune of offending him, you will at once humble yourself before him; you will humbly ask his pardon; you will extend your hand simply to him and raise yourself up lovingly, without trouble or anxiety; and you will continue to walk toward him without discouragement.

Fourth, the Blessed Virgin will fill you with great confidence in God and in herself: first, because you will no longer approach Jesus Christ by yourself, but always through this good Mother; second, because, having given her all your merits, graces, and satisfactions to dispose of at her will, she will communicate her virtues to you and clothe you with her merits, so that you will be able to say to God with confidence: "Behold Mary, your handmaid; let it be done to me according to your word" — Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. Third, because, having given yourself entirely to her, body and soul, she who is generous with the generous — and more generous than the generous themselves — will give herself to you in return, in a marvelous but real manner, so that you will be able to say boldly to her:

Tuus sum ego, salvum me fac — "I am yours, holy Virgin; save me."

Or, as I have already said, with the beloved disciple: Accepi te in mea — "I have taken you, holy Mother, for all my goods."

You may also say with St. Bonaventure: Ecce Domina salvatrix mea, fiducialiter agam et non timebo, quia fortitudo mea et laus mea in Domino es tu... Tuus totus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt, o Virgo gloriosa, super omnia benedicta; ponam te ut signaculum super cor meum, quia fortis est ut mors dilectio tua! — "My dear Mistress and salvation, I shall act with confidence and shall not fear, because you are my strength and my praise in the Lord. I am all yours, and all that I have belongs to you, O glorious Virgin, blessed above all created things! Let me place you as a seal upon my heart, because your love is strong as death."

You may say to God, in the words of the Prophet: Domine, non est exaltatum cor meum neque elati sunt oculi mei; neque ambulavi in magnis neque in mirabilibus super me; si non humiliter sentiebam sed exaltavi animam meam; sicut ablactatus est super matre sua, ita retributio in anima mea. — "Lord, my heart and my eyes have no reason to be proud and haughty, nor to seek after great and wonderful things; and yet I am not humble; but I have raised up and encouraged my soul by confidence. I am like a child weaned from the pleasures of the earth and resting on its mother's breast; and it is on this breast that I am laden with blessings."

What will still further increase your confidence in her is that, having given her in trust all that you have of good, to give or to keep, you will have less confidence in yourself and far more in her, who is your treasure. Oh, what confidence and what consolation for a soul that can say that the treasury of God, where he has placed all that is most precious, is also its own! Ipsa est thesaurus Domini — "She is," says a saint, "the treasury of the Lord."

Fifth, the soul of the Blessed Virgin will communicate itself to you, to glorify the Lord. Her spirit will enter in the place of yours, to rejoice in God her Savior, provided you are faithful to the practices of this devotion. Sit in singulis anima Mariae, ut magnificet Dominum; sit in singulis spiritus Mariae, ut exultet in Deo. (St. Ambrose) — "Let the soul of Mary be in each one to magnify the Lord; let the spirit of Mary be in each one to rejoice in God."

Ah! When will that happy time come, says a saintly man of our day who was wholly lost in Mary? Ah! When will that happy time come when the divine Mary will be established as Mistress and Sovereign in hearts, to subject them fully to the empire of her great and only Jesus? When will souls breathe Mary as bodies breathe the air? Then marvelous things will happen in these lowly places, where the Holy Spirit, finding his dear spouse as if reproduced in souls, will come upon them abundantly and fill them with his gifts, and particularly with the gift of his Wisdom, to work wonders of grace. My dear brother, when will this happy time come, this age of Mary, when souls, losing themselves in the abyss of her interior, will become living copies of Mary, to love and glorify Jesus Christ? This time will not come until we know and practice the devotion that I teach.

Ut adveniat regnum tuum, adveniat regnum Mariae — "That your kingdom may come, Lord, may the kingdom of Mary come."

Sixth, if Mary, who is the tree of life, is well cultivated in our soul by fidelity to the practices of this devotion, she will bear her fruit in due season, and her fruit is none other than Jesus Christ. I see many devout men and women who seek Jesus Christ — some by one way and practice, others by another — and after they have labored much during the night they can say: Per totam noctem laborantes nihil cepimus — "Though we have labored all night, we have taken nothing." And we can say to them: Laborastis multum, et intulistis parum — "You have labored much and gained little"; Jesus Christ is still very feeble in you. But by the immaculate way of Mary and this divine practice that I teach, one works by day, one works in a holy place, one works little. There is no night in Mary, since there has never been in her any sin or even the slightest shadow. Mary is a holy place, and the Holy of Holies, where saints are formed and molded. Note, if you please, that I say the saints are molded in Mary. There is a great difference between making a figure in relief by blows of hammer and chisel, and making a figure by casting it in a mold. Sculptors and statuaries work hard to make figures in the first manner, and it takes them a long time; but to make them in the second manner, they work little and make them in very little time. St. Augustine calls the Blessed Virgin forma Dei — "the mold of God": Si formam Dei te appellem, digna existis — "If I call you the mold of God, you are worthy of the name." Whoever is cast into this divine mold is soon formed and molded into Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ in him. At little cost and in little time, he will become godlike, since he is cast into the same mold that formed a God.

I think I may very well compare those directors and devout persons who wish to form Jesus Christ in themselves or in others by practices other than this one to sculptors who, placing their confidence in their own skill, industry, and art, give an infinity of blows of hammer and chisel to a hard stone or a rough piece of wood, in order to make from it the image of Jesus Christ. And sometimes they do not succeed in reproducing Jesus Christ to the life, either for want of knowledge or experience of the person of Jesus Christ, or because of some ill-directed blow that has spoiled the work. But those who embrace the secret of grace that I offer them, I justly compare to foundrymen and casters who, having found the beautiful mold of Mary in which Jesus was naturally and divinely formed, without trusting in their own skill but solely in the goodness of the mold, cast themselves and lose themselves in Mary, to become the living portrait of Jesus Christ.

Oh, what a beautiful and true comparison! But who will understand it? I desire that it may be you, my dear brother. But remember that only what is melted and liquid can be cast in a mold — that is, you must destroy and melt the old Adam in you, in order to become the new one in Mary.

Seventh, by this practice, faithfully observed, you will give Jesus Christ more glory in one month than by any other practice, however difficult, in many years. Here are the reasons for what I say.

First, because in doing your actions through the Blessed Virgin, as this practice teaches, you abandon your own intentions and operations, however good and known, to lose yourself, as it were, in those of the Blessed Virgin, though they are unknown to you. And by this means you enter into a participation of the sublimity of her intentions, which were so pure that she gave more glory to God by the least of her actions — for example, by spinning her distaff or making a stitch in her sewing — than St. Lawrence by his cruel martyrdom on the gridiron, or even than all the saints by their most heroic actions. And so, during her time on earth, she acquired an accumulation of grace and merit so ineffable that it would be easier to count the stars of the sky, the drops of the sea, and the sands of the shore, than her merits and her graces; and she gave more glory to God than all the angels and saints have given him or ever will give him. O wonder of Mary! You are capable of working nothing but wonders of grace in souls who wish to lose themselves in you.

Second, because a soul, by this practice, counting for nothing all that it thinks or does of itself, and placing its reliance and its delight only in the dispositions of Mary when approaching Jesus and even speaking to him, practices far more humility than souls who act on their own and have an imperceptible reliance on and delight in their own dispositions. And consequently it glorifies God more highly, for God is perfectly glorified only by the humble and the little of heart.

Third, because the Blessed Virgin, being pleased in her great charity to receive into her virginal hands the gift of our actions, gives them an admirable beauty and splendor, and offers them herself to Jesus Christ without difficulty; and Our Lord is more glorified by this than if we offered them with our criminal hands.

Fourth, because you never think of Mary without Mary, in your place, thinking of God. You never praise or honor Mary without Mary praising and honoring God. Mary is wholly relative to God, and I may well call her the relation of God, who exists only in reference to God — or the echo of God, who says and repeats nothing but God. If you say Mary, she says God. St. Elizabeth praised Mary and called her blessed because she had believed. Mary, the faithful echo of God, intoned: Magnificat anima mea Dominum — "My soul magnifies the Lord." What Mary did on that occasion, she does every day: when we praise her, when we love her, when we honor her, when we give to her, God is praised, God is loved, God is glorified. We give, therefore, to God through Mary and in Mary.