St. Louis de Montfort Part Two - The Secret of Mary

"The Secret of Mary"

by

St. Louis de Montfort



I posted a blog on St. Louis de Montfort last week, and now I am following it up with my favorite quotes from the book. I've read a decent amount of stuff in my life, but this book might have been the most important one to date, besides maybe scripture reading.
Didn't read part one? Here is the link:
http://gottablogcatholic.blogspot.com/2012/07/st-louis-de-montfort.html

Opening Pages -
"God Alone"

Section 3 -
"Your sure vocation is the acquisition of the holiness of God, and unless all your thoughts and words and actions, all the sufferings and events of your life tend to that end, you are resisting God by not doing that for which He has created you and is now preserving you."

"Only God by His grace, by His abundant and extraordinary grace, can make man like God. Even the creation of the whole world is not so great a masterpiece as this."

Section 4 -
"What means will you choose to reach the height to which God calls you? They are humility of heart, continual prayer, mortification in all things, abandonment to Divine Providence and conformity to the will of God."

Section 5 -
"God does not give equal grace to all, yet to each soul He gives sufficient grace."

Section 6 -
"I say that to find this grace of God, we must find Mary."

Section 7 -
"Mary alone has found grace with God, both for herself and for every man in particular."

Section 8 -
"Mary gave being and life to the Author of all grace, and that is why she is called the Mother of Grace."

Section 10 -
"God has entrusted Mary with the keeping, the administration and distribution of all His graces, so that all His graces and gifts pass through her hands."

Section 12 -
"Since Mary has formed Jesus Christ, the Head of the elect, it is also her office to form the members of that Head, that is to say, all true Christians."

Section 16 -
"A sculptor has two ways of making a lifelike statue or figure... The second is short, easy and smooth; it requires little work and slight expense, provided the mold be perfect and made to reproduce the figure exactly; provided, moreover, the material used offer no resistance to the hand of the artist."

Section 17 -
Whoever is cast in it, and allows himself to be molded, receives all the features of Jesus Christ, true God."

Section 18 -
"Oh what a difference between a soul which has been formed in Christ by the ordinary ways of those who, like the sculptor, trust in their own skill and ingenuity."

Section 19 -
"There does not exist and never will exist a creature in whom God, either within of without himself, is so highly exalted as He is in the most Blessed Virgin Mary, no excepting the Saints or the Cherubim or the highest Seraphim in Paradise."

"God has made a world for wayfaring man, which is that world in which we dwell; He has made one for man in his glorified state, which is Heaven; and he made one for himself, which he has called Mary."

Section 21 -
"The Saints tell us that when we have once found Mary, and through Mary, Jesus, and through Jesus, God the Father, we have found all good."

Section 22 -
"Mary the Mother of the living, gives to all her children portions of the Tree of life, which is the Cross of Jesus. But along with their crosses she also imparts the grace to carry them patiently and even cheerfully."

Section 28 -
The Perfect Devotion
"It consists of giving oneself entirely and as a slave to Mary, and to Jesus through Mary; and after that to do all that we do, with Mary, in Mary, through Mary and for Mary."

Section 29 -
"By this devotion the soul sacrifices to Jesus, through Mary, all that it holds most dear... The soul leaves everything to be freely disposed of by Our Lady so that she may apply it all according to her own will for the greater glory of God, which she alone knows perfectly."

Section 30 -
"We leave to her disposal all the satisfactory and impetratory value of our good works - We are no longer the master of any good work we may do; but Our Lady may apply them, sometimes for the relief or the deliverance of a soul in Purgatory, sometimes for the conversion of a sinner, etc."

Section 32 -
"There are three types of slavery. The first is the slavery of nature; in this sense all men, good and bad alike, are slaves of God. The second is slavery of constraint; the devils and the damned are slaves of God in this second sense. The third is the slavery of love and free will; and this is one by which we must consecrate ourselves to God through Mary."

Section 33 -
"He who is a slave by constraint is rigorously dependent on his master. A man must be dependent in that sense only on his Creator."

Section 34 -
"Happy and a thousand times happy is the generous soul that consecrates itself entirely to Jesus through Mary as a slave of love after it has shaken off by Baptism the tyrannical slavery of the devil!"

Section 36 -
"To go to Jesus through Mary is truly to honor Jesus Christ."

Section 37 -
"To consecrate ourselves thus to Jesus through Mary is to place in Mary's hands our good actions."

Section 38 -
"How insignificant everything we do really is!"

"When we have given ourselves to Mary to the very utmost of our power, she will far outdo us in generosity and will repay us a hundredfold."

Section 39 -
"To give ourselves thus to Our Lady is to practice charity towards our neighbor in the highest possible degree, because we give her all that we hold most dear and her dispose of it at her will in favor of the living and the dead."

Section 40 -

"All I have I entrust to thee."

"Were there but this one motive to incite in me a desire for this devotion - namely, that it is a sure means of keeping me in the grace of God and even of increasing that grace in me, my heart ought to burn with longing for it."

Section 41 -
"This devotion truly frees the soul with the liberty of the children of God."

Section 43 -
"This devotion consists in doing all actions with Mary, in Mary through Mary and for Mary."

Section 45 -
"The essential practice of this devotion to do all our actions with Mary."

"We must place ourselves as instruments in the hands of Mary."

Section 47 -
"We must do all things in Mary."

Section 48 -
"We must never go to Our Lord except through Mary, through her intercession and her influence with Him. We must never be without Mary when we pray to Jesus."

Section 49 -
"We must do all our actions for Mary."

"In everything we do, we must renounce our self-love."

Section 53 -
"Experience will teach you much more about this devotion than I can tell you."

Section 55 -
"This devotion, faithfully practiced, produces many happy effects in the soul. The most important of them all is that it establishes Mary's life in the soul, so that it is no longer the soul that lives, but Mary living in it."

Section 56 -
"She will cause Jesus Christ to live in that soul, and the soul to live in constant union with Jesus Christ."

Section 57 -
"Mary becomes everything to that soul in the service of Jesus Christ."

Part IV - The Tree of Life -

Section 1 -
"You must make the sacrifice of yourself to the Blessed Mother, you must disappear in her, so that you may find God alone. If the Holy Ghost has planted in your soul the true Tree of Life, which is the devotion that I have just explained to you, you must do all that you can to cultivate it, in order that it may yield its fruit in due season."

"This Tree, once planted in a faithful heart, requires the open air and freedom from all human support, clear from any creatures that might prevent it... You must not rely on your own skill or natural talents... You must have recourse to Mary and rely on her help alone."

Section 3 -
"We must crucify the flesh, keep recollected and mortify our senses."

"Most happy is the soul which relishes and preserves Mary's fruit until death, and for ever and ever."

Well if you read all of this, congrats. This is what stood out to me in the book!

"He died for me, so I will live for him."