Preliminaries — Interior and Exterior Practices

There are several interior practices of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, of which the following are the principal ones in brief: first, to honor her as the worthy Mother of God, with the cult of hyperdulia — that is, to esteem and honor her above all the other saints, as the masterpiece of grace and the first after Jesus Christ, true God and true man; second, to meditate on her virtues, her privileges, and her actions; third, to contemplate her grandeurs; fourth, to make acts of love, praise, and gratitude to her; fifth, to invoke her cordially; sixth, to offer and unite ourselves to her; seventh, to do all our actions with a view to pleasing her; eighth, to begin, continue, and finish all our actions through her, in her, with her, and for her, in order to do them through Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ, our last end. We shall explain this last practice further on.

True devotion to the Blessed Virgin also has several exterior practices, of which the following are the principal ones: first, to enroll in her confraternities and enter her congregations; second, to enter the religious orders instituted in her honor; third, to proclaim her praises; fourth, to give alms, fast, and practice mortifications of mind or body in her honor; fifth, to wear her liveries, such as the holy Rosary or the chaplet, the scapular, or the little chain; sixth, to recite with attention, devotion, and modesty either the holy Rosary, composed of fifteen decades of Hail Marys in honor of the fifteen principal mysteries of Jesus Christ, or the chaplet of five decades, which is a third of the Rosary, either in honor of the five Joyful Mysteries — the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Jesus Christ, the Purification, and the Finding of Jesus Christ in the Temple — or in honor of the five Sorrowful Mysteries — the Agony of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives, his Scourging, his Crowning with Thorns, his Carrying of the Cross, and his Crucifixion — or in honor of the five Glorious Mysteries — the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, his Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin in body and soul into heaven, and her Crowning by the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. One may also say a chaplet of six or seven decades, in honor of the years that the Blessed Virgin is believed to have lived on earth; or the little crown of the Blessed Virgin, composed of three Our Fathers and twelve Hail Marys, in honor of her crown of twelve stars or privileges; or the Office of the Blessed Virgin, so universally received and recited in the Church; or the little Psalter of the Blessed Virgin, composed by St. Bonaventure in her honor, which is so tender and so devout that one cannot recite it without being moved; or fourteen Our Fathers and Hail Marys in honor of her fourteen joys; or some other prayers, hymns, and canticles of the Church, such as the Salve Regina, the Alma, the Ave Regina Coelorum, or the Regina Coeli, according to the different seasons; or the Ave Maris Stella, the O Gloriosa Domina; or the Magnificat, or some other practices of devotion, of which books are full; seventh, to sing or have sung in her honor spiritual canticles; eighth, to make a certain number of genuflections or bows to her, saying, for example, every morning sixty or a hundred times: Ave Maria, Virgo fidelis — "Hail Mary, faithful Virgin" — to obtain from God through her the grace of being faithful to the graces of God during the day; and in the evening: Ave Maria, Mater misericordiae — "Hail Mary, Mother of mercy" — to ask pardon of God through her for the sins one has committed during the day; ninth, to care for her confraternities, adorn her altars, crown and embellish her images; tenth, to carry or have carried her images in procession, and to carry one on one's person as a powerful weapon against the evil one; eleventh, to have her images or her name made, and to place them in churches, in houses, or on the gates and entrances of cities, churches, and homes; twelfth, to consecrate oneself to her in a special and solemn manner.

There are a great number of other practices of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin that the Holy Spirit has inspired in holy souls, which are very sanctifying. They may be read at length in the Paradise Opened to Philagia, composed by Rev. Fr. Paul Barry of the Society of Jesus, where he has gathered a great number of devotions that the saints have practiced in honor of the Blessed Virgin. These devotions serve wonderfully to sanctify souls, provided they are performed as they should be — that is: first, with a good and upright intention to please God alone, to unite oneself to Jesus Christ as our last end, and to edify our neighbor; second, with attention, without voluntary distraction; third, with devotion, without haste or negligence; fourth, with modesty and a respectful and edifying bearing of the body.

After all that I have just said, I declare solemnly that, having read nearly all the books that treat of devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and having conversed familiarly with the holiest and most learned persons of these latter times, I have neither known nor learned any practice of devotion to the Blessed Virgin comparable to the one I am about to describe — one that demands more sacrifices for God from a soul, that empties a soul more of itself and of its self-love, that keeps it more faithfully in grace and grace in it, that unites it more perfectly and more easily to Jesus Christ, and that, finally, is more glorious to God, more sanctifying for the soul, and more useful to the neighbor.

Since the essential part of this devotion consists in the interior life it must form, it will not be equally understood by everyone. Some will stop at what is exterior in it and will go no further — and these will be the greatest number. Some few will enter into its interior, but they will ascend only one step. Who will ascend to the second? Who will reach the third? Who, finally, will make it his habitual state? Only the one to whom the Spirit of Jesus Christ reveals this secret — the truly faithful soul whom he himself will lead, to advance from virtue to virtue, from grace to grace, from light to light, until it arrives at the transformation of itself into Jesus Christ and the fullness of his age on earth and of his glory in heaven.