What are some great Marian books? What are the errors regarding True Devotion to Mary? Why Mary will bring us closer to Jesus. Let’s discuss!
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A true devotion is defined as a “promptness of the will in the service of God” – Aquinas
Errors of a True Devotion:
1. In wishing to go to our Lord without passing through Mary. Some Catholics do not see clearly enough how expedient it is to have recourse to the Blessed Virgin in order to enter the intimacy of Christ.
2. They fear that devotion toward her is abused and that injury is done to our Lord by paying excessive honor to BVM.
3. Seems to consider Mary a hindrance in reaching divine union, whereas all her influence is exercised in order to lead us to it.
“To neglect the mediators whom God has given us because of our weakness, shows a lack of humility. Intimacy with our Lord in prayer will be greatly facilitated by frequent recourse to Mary.”
EX: Asking Mary to help make a good examination of conscience and confession.
“There are Catholics who do not see clearly enough the necessity of having recourse to Mary that they may attain to intimacy with the Savior” – Fr. RGL
Degrees of the Devotion:
1. Consists in praying to the BVM from time to time, honoring her as the Mother of God, saying, for example, the Angelus with true recollection every time it rings.
2. Having more perfect sentiments of vereration, confidence, and love for Mary. Lead us to the daily recitation of at least one of the three parts of the Rosary while we meditate on the joyful, sorrowful, or glorious mysteries, which are for us the road of eternal life.
Page 27 in Secrets of the Rosary on why the rosary is more efficacious than reading the psalms.
3. True devotion to Mary, that proper to proficients, consists in consecrating oneself entirely to our Lord through her. “This devotion consists in giving oneself entirely to the BVM in order to belong entirely to Jesus Christ through her.”
CCC 964: Mary’s role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it. “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception up to his death”;504 it is made manifest above all at the hour of his Passion
Fruits of the Devotion:
St. Louis de Montfort says that this road to God is easier, and nevertheless more meritorious, and consequently a more perfect, short, and sure road.
“But thanks to Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort,” he wrote in 2004 in the Letter to the Religious of the Montfortian Families, “I understood that authentic devotion to the Mother of God is truly Christocentric (…). Reading True Devotion marked a turning point in my life. I say a ‘turning point’ although it is a long inner journey that coincided with my clandestine preparation for the priesthood. I realized (…) something fundamental. It happened that the devotion of my childhood and even my adolescence to the Mother of Christ gave way to a new attitude, a devotion coming from the depths of my faith, as from the very heart of the Trinitarian and Christological reality.” -JP2
1 Cor. 4:16, “I urge you, then, be imitators of me.” The saints show us how to imitate Christ.
“Everyone should have a genuine devotion to Mary and entrust his life to her motherly care.” Vatican II document Decree of the apostolate of lay people
