Sympathy between De Montfort’s True Devotion and the Little Flower’s Holocaust

These first days of August are often a time for many people of preparation for total consecration to Mary. For some people, it may be that they are preparing to make this consecration for the first time, for others is may be that they are renewing their consecration.

Sometimes people wonder how the devotion of total consecration to Mary fits with Saint Thérèse’s little way and her holocaust to Merciful Love.

Saint Thérèse’s Offering to Merciful Love

The pinnacle realisation of Saint Thérèse’s spiritual life occurred on 9 June, 1895, during the Mass of Trinity Sunday. So visibly moved was Saint Thérèse by the interior inspiration for the act of oblation to Merciful Love that her sister Céline noticed her visibly moved — even before Saint Thérèse gestured her to follow her. The Saint went immediately to her superior, her blood sister Pauline, and asked for a blessing to offer herself together with Céline as victims of holocaust to Merciful Love. As soon as she received the desired permission, her face was transfigured. She wrote her offering and on 11 June she made it on behalf of herself and Céline as they knelt together.

What was this offering?

It was a total offering of herself and all she possessed, including all her spiritual treasures, to the Merciful Love of Jesus. By offering it to the Merciful Love, she believed it would be acceptable, even though it was small in itself. She offered it not to God’s Justice, as if to suffer justly all that was necessary to merit God’s good things and repair for sin, but to His Mercy. And, because her offering was so little, she offered God His Own merits, the merits of Jesus Christ, as well as the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints in heaven and on earth. She intended the offering to be so complete that, at the end of her life, when she appeared before God, she knew she would appear with empty hands, without a single good work or spiritual treasure. But she was sure that she, who would appear without any justice of her own, would be clothed in Jesus’ own Justice, for she had given away everything for love alone.

So certain was she that she kept nothing for herself, but gave everything — no matter how small — for love, that she was able to say on the 12 of July before she died: “I hold nothing in my hands. Everything I have, everything I merit is for the Church and for souls. If I were to live to eighty, I will always be as poor as I am now.”

A Striking Similarity with Total Consecration

Those familiar with the devotion of total consecration to Jesus through Mary will be familiar with all these ideas. Saint Louis de Montfort says that, through Mary, every little work becomes acceptable, and even its imperfections are entirely cleansed. He recommends Mary as merciful. He states that those who take other ways have more (not less) “obscure nights, combats, strange agonies, craggy mountains, cruel thorns, and frightful deserts.” But he affirms that “by the path of Mary, we pass more gently and more tranquilly.” And because the offering of ourselves is so little, he states that we do well to offer ourselves through Mary so that Mary will offer herself with us.

Perhaps the most remarkable similarity, though, is the way that both the Oblation to Merciful Love and Total Consecration to Mary involve the handing over of everything: all we are, have, and possess, such that we die and show up at the judgment seat with empty hands, without a single good work or spiritual treasure. And yet in the case of both, this engenders confidence. We are freed to do everything and give everything — no matter how small or imperfect — for love alone with confidence that, if we truly keep nothing for ourselves, neither farthing or penny, we will be clothed with riches that are not our own, the riches of Jesus Christ and His Holy Mother. With such similarities, the question naturally arises about the compatibility of the two. Is it merely the case that some are attracted to offering themselves to Merciful Love and others to Mary, or is there, perhaps, a way in which the two fit together into a single whole? This is the question we hope to explore over the coming days.

But first, let us take a closer look at true devotion and total consecration to Mary.

What Is Total Consecration?

What it is Not: False Devotions

In the book True Devotion to Mary — recommended by numerous Popes and Saints and especially Pope Saint John Paul II — Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort discusses those who appear to be devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary but follow false ways of honouring her. These people may have the appearance of being truly devoted, but they are actually false devotees. The Saint says that there are:

1. The critical devotees who are, for the most part, proud scholars, rash and self-sufficient spirits, who have at bottom some devotion to the holy Virgin, but who criticise nearly all the practices of devotion to her.
2. The scrupulous devotees who fear to dishonour the Son by honouring the Mother.
3. The external devotees who make all their devotions to our Blessed Lady consist of outward practices.
4. The presumptuous devotees who are sinners abandoned to their passions, or lovers of the world, who, terming themselves Christians and people devoted to our Blessed Lady, conceal pride, avarice, impurity, drunkenness, anger, swearing, detraction, injustice, or some other sin.
5. The inconstant devotees who are ready to do anything for her; and then, a little later, they’re not the same.
6. The hypocritical devotees who cloak their sins and sinful habits under her mantle, in order to pass in the eyes of men for what they are not.
7. The self-interested devotees who have recourse to our Lady only to gain some lawsuit, to avoid some danger, to be cured of some illness, or for some other similar necessity. If something like this does not come their way, they forget her altogether!

In essence, we should avoid all hubris and scrupulosity in our devotion. Our devotion should not be merely external, or presumptuous, or inconstant devotion! Saint Louis de Montfort urges us:

Let us, then, take great care not to be of the number of the critical devotees, who believe nothing and criticise everything; nor of the scrupulous devotees, who are afraid of being too devout to our Lady, out of respect to our Lord; nor of the exterior devotees, who make all their devotion consist in outward practices; nor of the presumptuous devotees, who, under the pretext of their false devotion to the Blessed Virgin, wallow in their sins; nor of the inconstant devotees, who by levity change their practices of devotion, or throw them up altogether on the least temptation; nor of the hypocritical devotees, who put themselves into confraternities, and wear the liveries of the Blessed Virgin, in order to pass for good people; nor, finally, of the interested devotees, who only have recourse to our Lady to be delivered from bodily evils, or to obtain temporal goods.

What it is: True Devotion

Instead, he says, we should embrace the qualities of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin. True devotion, he says, is:

1. Interior, flowing from our esteem for Mary, our very high opinion of her greatness and her love.
2. Tender, with confidence in a loving Mother whom we implore in our doubts, wanderings, temptations, weaknesses, falls, discouragements, scruples, crosses, and disappointments, as well as in all our ills of body and soul, without importuning her or displeasing Jesus.
3. Holy, leading us to avoid sin and to imitate her virtues.
4. Constant, making us courageous in opposing the world, the flesh (with its vexations and passions), and the devil (with his temptations) so that one is less changeable, fretful, scrupulous, and timid.
5. Disinterested, seeking not self but God alone and His Blessed Mother, and not for gain, health, or any good, but rather because she deserves to be served, and God alone in her, not because of what she does so much as because she is worthy. We should love her as much on Calvary as at the marriage of Cana.

Total Consecration Is the Best of the True Devotions

These then, in short, are the marks of false and true devotions to Mary. But, Saint Louis-Marie states, there are a number of possible true devotions to Mary. He lists, in fact, eight interior practices and a much greater number of exterior practices. He says the interior practices of true devotion are:

1. To honour her with hyperdulia, this is to say, to esteem her and honour her above all the other Saints, as the masterpiece of grace, and the first after Jesus Christ, true God and true Man;
2. To meditate on her virtues, privileges, and actions.
3. To contemplate her greatness.
4. To offer her acts of love, praise, and thanksgiving.
5. To invoke her with our whole heart.
6. To offer ourselves to her and unite ourselves to her.
7. To do all with the intention of pleasing her.
8. To begin, continue, and complete all actions through, in, and with her so as to do them through, with, and for Jesus Christ, our last end.

Among the exterior practices, he mentions joining confraternities in her honour, spreading her praises, giving alms, wearing the scapular or a rosary or little chains in her honour, the rosary and other devotions, singing Marian hymns, decorating her altars, joining in processions for her, etc.

After finishing this lengthy list, he states that there is a best and most perfect way:

But after all, I loudly protest that, having read nearly all the books which profess to treat the devotion to our Lady, and having conversed familiarly and holily with the best and wisest of men of these latter times, I have never known nor heard of any practice of devotion towards her at all equal to the one which I wish now to unfold; exacting from the soul, as it does, more sacrifices for God, emptying the soul more of itself and of its self-love, keeping it more faithful in grace, and grace more faithfully in it, uniting it more perfectly and more easily to Jesus Christ; and finally, being more glorious to God, more sanctifying to the soul, and more useful to our neighbour, than any other of the devotions to her.

A Hidden Thing and a Holy Secret

Before he tells us what this most perfect devotion is, he warns us that, not only is not widely known, but even those who know of it do not practise it very well. How do we go deeper into it? By not stopping at what is external, but making it an habitual state of life.

He gives four steps:

1. Practising what is exterior.
2. Entering into the interior spirit of it.
3. Ascending the steps of interior devotion.
4. Making it an habitual state of life.

He writes:

As the essential of this devotion consists in the interior which it ought to form, it will not be equally comprehended by everybody. Some will stop at what is exterior in it, and will go no further, and these will be the greatest number. Some, in small number, will enter into its inward spirit; but they will only mount one step. Who will mount to the second step? Who will get as far as the third? Lastly, who will so advance as to make this devotion his habitual state? He alone to whom the spirit of Jesus Christ shall have revealed the secret, the faultlessly faithful soul, whom He shall conduct Himself, to advance from virtue to virtue, from grace to grace, from light to light, until he arrives at the transformation of himself into Jesus Christ, and to the plenitude of His age on earth, and of His glory in heaven.

Total Consecration and Garrigou-Lagrange’s Three Degrees

In The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange says that Marian devotion has three degrees.

The three degrees are:

1. Praying from time to time. Garrigou-Lagrange writes:
   

   The first degree consists in praying to the Blessed Virgin from time to time, honouring her as the Mother of God, saying, for example, the Angelus with true recollection every time it rings.

2. More perfect sentiments of devotion. Garrigou-Lagrange explains:
   

   The second degree consists in having more perfect sentiments of veneration, confidence, and love for Mary. They 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.

3. Consecration to Jesus through Mary. This, according to Garrigou-Lagrange, is the most perfect devotion:

The third degree of the true devotion to Mary, that proper to proficients, consists in consecrating oneself entirely to our Lord through her.

The Essence of This Devotion

So in what does this best devotion to Mary consist according to Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort? He explains:

All our perfection consists of being conformed, united, and consecrated to Jesus Christ. The most complete consecration to Jesus Christ is nothing else than perfect and entire consecration of oneself to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a perfect renewal of the vows and promises of Baptism.

This devotion consists of giving ourselves entirely and altogether to our Lady, in order to belong entirely and altogether to Jesus by her. We must give her:

1. Our body with all its senses and members.
2. Our soul with all its powers.
3. Our exterior possessions, present and future.
4. Our interior and spiritual possessions. Viz, merits, virtues, and good works, past, present, and future.

This, then, is true devotion: to give everything to Jesus through Mary, to consecrate ourselves in such a way that we ever honour, meditate upon, love, praise and thank, and invoke her; and, without stopping there, we also offer ourselves to her, living out this offering by entrusting to her ourselves and all we have — both interior and exterior — doing all with the intention of pleasing her, beginning, following through, and completing all our actions through, with, and in her, and giving her the fruits and merits of all that we do. Total consecration means Mary becomes our total reference point.

If this seems too much to ask at the start, fear not. Mary is the best and most gentle of mothers. She accepts what we give her, and she helps us to learn how to live out our offering in a way that pleases her and her Divine Son. She helps us to gradually ascend the steps from what is more external to the habitual state. Not only that, but she lavishes so many graces upon those that walk this way that it becomes for them a sweet and an easy way. Finally, she regards our failures and falls on this path with the same loving heart with which a mother regards the falls of her littlest children.

What Saint Thérèse did, but through Mary?

How easy it is to notice how a great similarity there is between Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort’s total consecration to Mary and Saint Thérèse’s offering of herself as a holocaust to Merciful Love! Both of them ascend beyond initial devotion and even more perfect and daily devotion to the third level of consecration. In both of them, everything is given, for we ourselves become a gift, whole and entire, along with everything we have and are.

Yet, on the surface, the obvious difference is Mary. Saint Thérèse addresses her offering to the Trinity, and then to the Father in particular, and finally to Christ Jesus. It is true that she “abandons” her offering to Mary, offering the Father her merits and asking her to present her offering to the Father. It is also true that Saint Louis de Montfort was clear that His devotion was truly and ultimately consecration to Jesus.

So how different are they really? After all, Saint Thérèse’s offering goes to Jesus, entrusting the offering to Mary, and Saint Louis de Montfort’s goes to Jesus through Mary, but both offer everything, and not trusting in their own perfection and acceptability, but on their goodness.

Questions for the Future

What shall we say are the similarities? What about the differences? Do the two compliment each other? Can we do both of them, and, if so, how do they fit together?

These are the questions we hope to examine in coming posts.