True Devotion and the Offering to Merciful Love Have a Lot in Common

We have been speaking in the last two posts here and here about a path of Marian Spiritual Childhood, a Total Consecration for little souls, an approach to Total Consecration to Mary through the ideas of Saint Thérèse.

The way of Total Consecration of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort and the offering to Merciful Love of Saint Thérèse bear remarkable similarities and have great sympathy with one another. De Montfort’s Marian consecration does, quite naturally, more explicitly approach Jesus through Mary, yet both of them offer everything. And also — a great consolation for us who are little and frail! — both of them are ways in which the weak and the imperfect can approach God with confidence and so reach great sanctity! They are both ways for those of us who would, at the best of times, aspire to be martyrs and saints, only to discover,  mere moments later, that we can scarcely struggle through. They are both “short cuts”, so to speak: Saint Thérèse’s path taking the shortcut of God’s Merciful Goodness, a Love which must stoop all the way down to nothingness, Saint Louis’ path going through the Woman who can almost be called God’s Merciful Love enfleshed. Both of them spur on the soul to generosity, self-forgetfulness, and zeal.

They Also Have Differences

But what Saint Louis Marie de Montfort and Saint Thérèse are offering us is obviously not the same thing. Saint Thérèse speaks of an offering of holocaust as a victim to the Trinity — in other words, a form of latria, that worship due only to God; Saint Louis de Montfort speaks of a Total Consecration to Mary. Saint Thérèse was certainly familiar with the idea of consecration to Mary: she says that, on the day of her first Communion, she was asked to make such a consecration, on her own behalf and on behalf of her companions.

In the afternoon, it was I who made the Act of Consecration to the Blessed Virgin. It was only right that I speak in the name of my companions to my Mother in heaven, I who had been deprived at such an early age of my earthly Mother. I put all my heart into speaking to her, into consecrating myself to her as a child throwing itself into the arms of its mother, asking her to watch over her. It seems to me the Blessed Virgin must have looked upon her little flower and smiled at her, for wasn’t it she who cured her with a visible smile?

Moreover, according to Father John Hardon, citing her sister Mother Agnes, Thérèse frequently read and meditated upon Saint Louis de Montfort’s book True Devotion. Since she had also participated in other acts of consecration, such as when consecrated herself to the Sacred Heart at Montmartre during her trip Rome, there can be no doubt that she was familiar with consecrations. Yet her act of holocaust is something more than a consecration, or, at least, it is a very special type of consecration, namely a victimal consecration.

Saint Louis’ consecration is also special, in that it is total, including the body with all its members, the soul with all its senses, all exterior possessions, and (most uniquely), all spiritual possessions, such as the satisfactory and impetratory value of good works. It is in the completeness and totality of the offering that it has its likeness to the offering of Saint Thérèse, although they are different sorts of offerings, for the offering of Saint Thérèse is an offering as a victim, a term Saint Louis de Montfort nowhere uses in his treatise, and, indeed, could hardly properly use for the Blessed Virgin Mary, insofar as victims can only be offered to God.

In a future post, we’ll consider whether Saint Thérèse’s offering can also be made through Mary, but for right now it is enough to acknowledge that, despite their similarities, they are a different sort of offering.

Two differences, then, are, first, that Saint Thérèse’s offering is an offering to Jesus, albeit entrusted to Mary, whereas Saint Louis de Montfort’s offering is an offering to Mary, albeit one ultimately to Jesus through Mary, and, second, that Saint Thérèse’s offering is an offering of herself as a victim, but Saint Louis de Montfort’s offering is an offering of consecration that is not expressely intended to be victimal.

The Preferred Images of Saint Thérèse and of Saint Louis de Montfort

There is a third difference, and this difference is sometimes disturbing to people. It is that, while Saint Thérèse uses sacrificial language to express the totality of the offering, Saint Louis de Montfort speaks of holy slavery. This theme of slavery is so pervasive in his treatise that he speaks of it over a hundred times, from beginning to end.

It must be frankly admitted that the idea of slavery has very little positive attraction to modern man. The attitude that many have can be summed up by two reactions that the monks have encountered to this idea. First, a non-Catholic woman, on being told that someone had offered himself as a slave, gasped in horror. Second, another woman, this time an admirable Catholic, replied simply: “I do not want to be Mary’s slave. I want to be her daughter.” A similar sentiment — albeit without the negative judgement — is found in a prayer that Saint Thérèse made to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Formerly, in your humility, you wanted one day to be the little servant of the happy Virgin who would have the honor of being the Mother of God, and here I am, a poor little creature, and I am not your servant but your child. You are the Mother of Jesus, and you are my Mother.”

How surprising it is, then, to discover Saint Louis Marie speaking of slavery in such positive terms, and even treating slavery and childhood as if they were two sides of the same coin. “Who,” he asks, “shall be those [blessed] servants, slaves, and children of Mary?” He states his own desire: “I feel myself more than ever animated to believe and to hope all, which I have had deeply engraved upon my heart, and have asked of God these many years, namely, sooner or later the Blessed Virgin shall have more children, servants, and slaves of love than ever.” Finally, in the very Act of Total Consecration to Mary, he has the person consecrating himself say to the Blessed Virgin: “put me in the number of those whom thou lovest, whom thou teachest, whom thou conductest, and whom thou nourishest and protectest, as thy children and thy slaves.”

But how is being a little child of loving mother compatible with being a slave? They seem so different that we could hardly be surprised to see, turning to a popular guide to making Total Consecration published a few decades ago, that, except in the very words de Montfort’s prayer of Consecration, the word slave appears nowhere in the book. It is entirely de-emphasised, entirely set aside. Could it, after all, speak to a modern person for whom slavery is a horror? Yes, indeed, slavery is a horror, if it is human slavery, men compelled to be slaves to their fellow weak and mortal men; yet Saint Louis uses the language of love, and this language of love is not for a mortal and selfish human, but for the Queen of Love. Give me the person who loves, and he will understand.

The Image of the Toy

Saint Thérèse also has a similar image. She writes:

I had offered myself, for some time now, to the Child Jesus as His little plaything. I told Him not to use me as a valuable toy children are content to look at but dare not touch, but to use me like a little ball of no value which He could throw on the ground, push with His foot, pierce, leave in a corner, or press to His heart if it pleased Him; in a word, I wanted to amuse little Jesus, to give Him pleasure; I wanted to give myself up to His childish whims. He heard my prayer. At Rome, Jesus pierced His little plaything; He wanted to see what there was inside it and having seen, content with His discovery, He let His little ball fall to the ground and He went off to sleep.

Beneath the charm of the image is the notion of making oneself another’s toy. Surely the thought of being a plaything for another to use, to break, and to abandon rightly rings wrongly to our ears. And so it should, were Jesus not Love Itself, infinitely incapable of doing anything to us that is not infinitely loving. This language of Saint Thérèse is the language of love: give me a lover, and he will understand.

The Image of Property

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast we recently celebrated, gives yet another image. In his act of consecration, he offers himself to the Blessed Virgin Mary as property.

O Immaculata, Queen of heaven and earth, refuge of sinners and our most loving Mother, God has willed to entrust the entire order of mercy to you. I, (name), a repentant sinner, cast myself at your feet humbly imploring you to take me with all that I am and have, wholly to yourself as your possession and property. Please make of me, of all my powers of soul and body, of my whole life, death and eternity, whatever most pleases you.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe explains that by using the word property, he means also to include the idea of slave of love. 

By these words we beg, we beseech the Immaculata to accept us. We offer ourselves to her entirely, in every respect, as her children, as slaves of love, as servants, as instruments, and under every single aspect, under every title that anyone at any time might be able to express. We offer ourselves as her possession and property at her complete disposal, so that she may use us, and even use us up completely.

In offering himself as property, he seems to go beyond slave in a certain way. A slave still has his own will — property does not. The rights of disposal of property are basically absolute. Yet the modern mind would also rebel against the concept of becoming another’s property. Here too our Saint is using the language of love, a love that would be excessive were it not love for the most divinised human person  that creation could ever know, the human person that is lovable and worthy of love above all, that is loving and incapable of not loving. Give me someone with an excess of love, and he will understand.

In Defence of Holy Slavery

We have said about the three images — the willing slave of love of Saint Louis de Montfort, the inexpensive toy of Saint Thérèse, and the property of Saint Maximillian Kolbe — that all three are expressing the language of love, that it takes a lover to understand.

Saint Louis de Montfort would not be shocked at the modern repulsion to slavery. In his days, as in ours, slavery was not at all seen as something good. Saint Louis Marie states blandly that “there was nothing more ignominious among the ancients; nothing more shameful even now among the heathen” than the chains of slavery, but he goes on to say that, as with the Cross itself, the image of chains has been forever altered by Jesus.

Among Christians there is nothing more illustrious than the chains of Jesus; for they unchain us, and preserve us from the infamous fetters of sin and the devil. They set us free, and chain us to Jesus and Mary; not by compulsion and constraint, like galley-slaves, but by charity and love, like children. Traham eos in vinculis caritatis—“I will draw them to Me,” said God by the mouth of the prophet, “by the chains of love.”

It is clear from this that Saint Louis de Montfort does not mean the ignominious slavery of compulsion, but a loving slavery that is in imitation of the loving chains of Jesus. The one who is fired with the love of Jesus does not mind resembling Him in His chains of love, even when they seem outwardly humiliating. Holy slavery is, for our Saint, imitation of Christ.

Slave and Servant

Saint Louis could have avoided all the discomfort we may feel if he had simply used the word servant instead of slave. To serve God is to reign, after all! Nor do we have the same visceral reaction to the word servant as to the word slave.

Why, then, did Saint Louis Marie not use the word servant? He explains what is meant by the word servant:

By common service amongst Christians a man engages himself to serve another, during a certain time, at a certain rate of wages or of recompense.

He contrasts this with slavery:

By slavery a man is entirely dependent on another for his whole life, and must serve his master without pretending to any wages or rewards, just as one of his beasts, over which he has the right of life and death.

It is precisely this that makes modern man — as also it did those in the time of Saint Louis de Montfort — uncomfortable with the word slave, and it is precisely for this reason that Saint Louis invokes it! By the word slave, he means a gift of self, of all one is, of all one has, of all one does — a gift that does not last merely for a time, but for one’s whole life; a gift that is not for a reward, but it made in an entirely disinterested fashion. What could produce such a voluntary gift except an excess of love?

The Voluntary Gift of Self

We have said voluntary gift, and these words are of special importance. De Montfort does not want us to imagine that there is anything compulsive in the slavery he is speaking of. He explains:

There are three sorts of slavery: a slavery of nature, a slavery of constraint, and a slavery of will. All creatures are slaves of God in the first sense: Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus—“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness of it.” The demons and the damned are slaves in the second sense; the just and the Saints in the third. The slavery of the will is the most glorious to God, who looks at the heart, claims the heart, and calls Himself the God of the heart, that is, of the loving will, because by that slavery we make choice of God and His service above all things, even [in matters] when nature does not oblige us to it.

We must remember that, for de Montfort, the difference between service and slavery is that service is temporary and for wages, but slavery is forever and without contract for payment. When he says that all things are naturally slaves of God, he means that all things serve God by their nature, not for a time but for as long as they exist, and this without entering into remunerative contract. When he says the devils and the damned serve under constraint, he means that, in spite of themselves, they, as creatures, must ultimately serve the glory of God.

The third category, the slavery of the will, is the category of lovers, those who make a complete and disinterested gift of self without contract. Love tends to urge one to such a total gift of self, but it is only in relation to God that such a gift of self is truly possible — even in marriage there are mutual rights and obligations. It is only possible to make such a total and radical gift of self to Mary because, as Saint Louis de Montfort says, she keeps nothing of what is given her for herself; she gives everything to God.

For every Christian, before his Baptism, was the slave of the devil, seeing that he belonged to him. He has in his Baptism, by his own mouth or by his sponsor’s, solemnly renounced Satan, his pomps and his works; and he has taken Jesus Christ for his Master and Sovereign Lord, to depend upon Him in the quality of a slave of love. This is what we do by the present devotion. We renounce, as is expressed in the formula of consecration, the devil, the world, sin, and self; and we give ourselves entirely to Jesus Christ by the hands of Mary.

It Is Scriptural

In defending Holy Slavery, Saint Louis de Montfort appeals to Sacred Scripture. Jesus, he notes, took on the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7). Mary calls herself the ancilla — handmaid — of the Lord. Paul and others call themselves the servi — slaves — of the Lord. It is true that these terms are often translated into English as servant, but Saint Louis de Montfort notes that the distinction between servant and slave is of later Christian origin, “the word servus, as a great man has truly remarked, signified in old times nothing but a slave, because there were no servants then like those of the present day. Masters were served either by slaves or by freedmen.” He then appeals to the Catechism of the Council of Trent to establish his point. “The Catechism of the Holy Council of Trent, in order to leave no doubt about our being slaves of Jesus Christ, expressed this by an unequivocal term, in calling us Mancipia Christi—’Slaves of Jesus Christ,'” for mancipia can only mean slaves.

If the early Christians thought it an honour to be slaves of the One Who took on the form of a slave for them and made Himself obedient to death, even to death on the Cross, should we really feel embarrassed to be the slaves of Jesus, or to voluntarily live this through giving ourselves to Mary in the devotion of Holy Slavery?

But if we are embarrassed, it is not the word, but the reality that is important. We could use the word servant or handmaid, and simply understand by that the total and disinterested gift of self that Saint Louis de Montfort speaks of, or, like Saint Thérèse, we could turn to another image, such as her own image of the toy, or Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s image of possessions.

Saint Thérèse Was Not Embarrased by the Word

In offering herself to Jesus as His plaything, Saint Thérèse did something similar to what Saint Louis de Montfort urges us in Holy Slavery. While she does not seem to have used the word in relation to the Blessed Virgin Mary — even though the book True Devotion was important to her — it is worth noting that she did use the word slave, although her use of it was in regard to fraternal charity. She thought our love for Jesus should be such that we are willing to think of ourselves as the slaves of those around us. She says:

To give up one’s cloak is, it seems to me, renouncing one’s ultimate rights; it is considering oneself as the servant and the slave of others.

And again, to her sister Céline:

“Whenever your bell is rung, or when you are called to perform some disagreeable task for the sick,” said Thérèse, “you should consider yourself as a little slave whom everybody has the right to order about. A little slave, you see, because one who is a slave never thinks she has any right to complain.”

If Saint Thérèse made herself the slave of her fellow creatures out of love for Jesus, how much more truly could she be said to be a slave of Jesus!

Why Child and Slave?

Going back to the objection at the beginning of the woman who said: “I want to be Mary’s daughter, not her slave,” why not simply consecrate oneself to Mary as her child? Why also make this consecration as willing slave of love?

Understood correctly, the notion of child can include all the disinterested and zealous love that Saint Louis de Montfort implies with the word slave. Yet, pondering it a bit, we might realise that a mother is often almost more a slave of love of her little child than the child is of the mother! The child cries, and the mother is there; he is hungry, and she is there. In every need, the mother is present. By combining child with slave Saint Louis de Montfort establishing the mutual relationship of love between Mary and her child. Mary gives herself to the child as mother, receiving also the love, honour, and devotion of her child. The child, in turn, makes a complete gift of self to Mary, giving up all expectation of reward, wanting to serve Mary — were it possible — without self-interest. We have to add were it possible, because Mary is the most gracious Mistress, as also she is the most tender Mother, and the truth is that the more we forsake reward, the more she gives. Saint Louis imagines, then, a wondrous game of love, where the child tries to love the Mother by giving her everything for nothing, and the Mother delights in heaping graces upon the child. The two outdo each other in generosity!

In short, child is not enough for Saint Louis de Montfort because love feels the need to love even without reward. We can appeal to the Saint Thérèse to verify the truth of this. She said: “I would be happy to bear the greatest sufferings—even without God’s knowing it, if this were possible—not for the purpose of giving Him a passing glory, but if only I knew that in this way a smile would rise to His lips.” Saint Louis de Montfort is motivated by such a love for the Blessed Virgin Mary that he wants to say something similar. This is why the image of child is not enough for him, and he must add to it the image of slave.

Zeal and Identification with Her Interests

Another reason for invoking the image of slave in addition to child is that the slave serves his mistress, doing his mistress’ work. The work of Mary is the work of her Son, the salvation of souls. Saint Louis de Montfort is fired with zeal for the salvation of souls and the liberation of the souls in purgatory. He knows that this is desired by the heart of His August Queen. He wishes to join in her work. He knows his efforts are very little, but he also knows that she can beautify them and make them worthy and fruitful. He calls himself her slave, because he wishes to think of her things. But he is also her child, and he knows she will be even more generous in thinking of his.

This motivation of zeal is behind the second part of Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s prayer of consecration:

If it pleases you, use all that I am and have without reserve, wholly to accomplish what was said of you: ‘She will crush your head,’ and, ‘You alone have destroyed all heresies in the world.’ Let me be a fit instrument in your immaculate and merciful hands for introducing and increasing your glory to the maximum in all the many strayed and indifferent souls, and thus help extend as far as possible the blessed kingdom of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus. For wherever you enter, you obtain the grace of conversion and growth in holiness, since it is through your hands that all graces come to us from the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In fact, Holy Slavery is about love of Mary and zeal for what is most dear to her: the salvation of souls and the triumph of the Holy Catholic Church and of her own Immaculate Heart.