THE NECESSITY OF SANCTIFYING
OURSELVES
The Will of God
3. Faithful soul, living image of God,
redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, it is the will of God that you
be holy like Him in this life and glorious like Him in the next. 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. Oh, what an admirable work! To change that which
is dust into light, to make pure that which is unclean, holy that which is
sinful, to make the creature like its Creator, man like God! Admirable work, I
repeat, but difficult in itself, and impossible to mere nature; only God by His
grace, by His abundant and extraordinary grace, can accomplish it. Even the
creation of the whole world is not so great a masterpiece as this.
Means of Sanctification
4. Predestinate soul, how are you to do
it? What means will you choose to reach the height to which God calls you? The
means of salvation and sanctification are known to all; they are laid down in
the Gospel, explained by the masters of the spiritual life, practiced by the
Saints, and necessary to all who wish to be saved and to attain perfection.
They are humility of heart, continual prayer, mortification in all things,
abandonment to Divine Providence and conformity to the will of God.
5. To practice all these means of
salvation and sanctification, the grace of God is absolutely necessary. No one
can doubt that God gives His grace to all, in a more or less abundant measure.
I say in a more or less abundant measure, for God, although infinitely good,
does not give equal grace to all, yet to each soul He gives sufficient grace.
The faithful soul will, with great grace,
perform a great action, and with less grace a lesser action. It is the value
and the excellence of the grace bestowed by God and corresponded to by the soul
that gives to our actions their value and their excellence. These principles
are certain.
An Easy Means
6. It all comes to this, then: that you
should find an easy means for obtaining from God the grace necessary to make
you holy; and this means I wish to make known to you. Now, I say that to find
this grace of God, we must find Mary.
OUR SANCTIFICATION THROUGH MARY A NECESSARY MEANS
Mary Alone Has Found Grace with God
7. Mary alone has found grace with God,
both for herself and for every man in particular. The patriarchs and prophets
and all the Saints of the Old Law were not able to find that grace.
Mother of Grace
8. Mary gave being and life to the Author
of all grace, and that is why she is called the Mother of Grace.
Mary Has Received the Plenitude of Grace
9. God the Father, from Whom every
perfect gift and all grace come, as from its essential source, has given all
graces to Mary by giving her His Son, so that, as St. Bernard says, "With
His Son and in Him, God has given His Will to Mary."
Universal Treasurer of God's Graces
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. Such is the power she has received
over them that according to St. Bernardine, Mary gives to whom she wills, the
way she wills, when she wills and as much as she wills, the graces of the
Eternal Father, the virtues of Jesus Christ and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Mother of God's Children
11. As in the order of nature a child
must have a father and a mother, so likewise in the order of grace, a true
child of the Church must have God for his Father and Mary for his Mother; and
if anyone should glory in having God for his Father and yet has not the love of
a true child for Mary, he is a deceiver, and the only father he has is the
devil.
Mary Forms the Members of Jesus
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; for a mother does not form the head
without the members, nor the members without the head. Whoever, therefore,
wishes to be a member of Jesus Christ, full of grace and truth, must be formed
in Mary by means of the grace of Jesus Christ, which she possesses in its
fullness, in order to communicate it fully to her children, the true members of
Jesus Christ.
Through Her the Holy Spirit Produces the Elect
13. As the Holy Spirit has espoused Mary
and has produced in her, by her and from her, His masterpiece, Jesus Christ,
the Word Incarnate, and has never repudiated His spouse, so He now continues to
produce the elect, in her and by her, in a mysterious but real manner.
Mary Nourishes Souls and Gives Them Growth in God
14. Mary has received a special office
and power over our souls in order to nourish them and give them growth in God.
St. Augustine even says that, during their present life, all the elect are
hidden in Mary's womb and that they are not truly born until the Blessed Mother
brings them forth to life eternal. Consequently, just as the child draws all
its nourishment from the mother, who gives it in proportion to the child's
weakness, in like manner do the elect draw all their spiritual nourishment and
strength from Mary.
Mary Dwells in the Elect
15. It is to Mary that God the Father
said: "My daughter, let your dwelling be in Jacob," that is, in My
elect, prefigured by Jacob. It is to Mary that God the Son said: "My dear
Mother, in Israel is thine inheritance," that is, in the elect. And it is
to Mary that the Holy Spirit said: "Take root, My faithful spouse, in My
elect." Whoever, then, is elect and predestinate has the Blessed Virgin
with him, dwelling in his soul, and he will allow her to plant there the roots
of profound humility, of ardent charity and of every virtue.
Mary, A Living Mold of God, Forms Jesus in Us
16. St. Augustine calls Mary the living
"mold of God," and that indeed she is; for it was in her alone that
God was made a true man without losing any feature of the Godhead, and it is
also in her alone that man can be truly formed Into God, in so far as that is
possible for human nature, by the grace of Jesus Christ.
A sculptor has two ways of making a
lifelike statue or figure: He may carve the figure out of some hard, shapeless
material, using for this purpose his professional skill and knowledge, his
strength and the necessary instruments, or he may cast it in a mold. The first
manner is long and difficult and subject to many mishaps; a single blow of the
hammer or the chisel, awkwardly given, may spoil the whole work. The second is
short, easy and smooth; it requires but 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.
A Perfect Mold
17. Mary is the great mold of God, made
by the Holy Spirit to form a true God-Man by the Hypostatic Union and to form
also a man-God by grace. In that mold none of the features of the Godhead is
wanting. Whoever is cast in it, and allows himself to be molded, receives all
the features of Jesus Christ, true God. The work is done gently, in a manner
proportioned to human weakness, without much pain or labor, in a sure manner,
free from all illusion, for where Mary is the devil has never had and never
will have access; finally, it is done in a holy and spotless manner, without a
shadow of the least stain of sin.
Well-Molten Souls
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, and a soul thoroughly
tractable, entirely detached and well-molten, which, without trusting to its
own skill, casts itself into Mary, there to be molded by the Holy Spirit. How
many stains and defects and illusions, how much darkness and how much human
nature is there in the former; and oh how pure, how Heavenly and how Christlike
is the latter!
Paradise and World of God
19. There does not exist and never will
exist a creature in whom God, either within or without Himself, is so highly
exalted as He is in the most Blessed Virgin Mary, not excepting the Saints or
the Cherubim or the highest Seraphim in Paradise. Mary is the paradise of God
and His unspeakable world, into which the Son of God has come to work His
wonders, to watch over it and to take His delight in it. 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 has made one for Himself,
which He has called Mary. It is a world unknown to most mortals here below and
incomprehensible even to the Angels and Blessed in Heaven above, who, seeing
God so highly exalted above them all and so deeply hidden in Mary, His world,
are filled with admiration and unceasingly exclaim: "Holy, Holy,
Holy."
God Alone in Her
20. Happy, a thousand times happy, is the
soul here below to which the Holy Spirit reveals the Secret of Mary in order
that it may come to know her; to which He opens the "Garden Enclosed"
[Cant. 4: 12], that it may enter into it; to which He gives access to that
"Fountain Sealed," that it may draw from it and drink deep draughts
of the living waters of grace! That soul will find God alone in His most amiable
creature. It will find God infinitely holy and exalted, yet at the same time
adapting Himself to its own weakness. Since God is present everywhere, He may
be found everywhere, even in Hell, but nowhere do we creatures find Him nearer
to us and more adapted to our weakness than in Mary, since it was for that end
that He came and dwelt in her. Everywhere else He is the Bread of the strong,
the Bread of the Angels, but in Mary He is the Bread of children.
No Hindrance to Our Union with God
21. Let us not imagine, then, as some do
who are misled by erroneous teachings, that Mary, being a creature, is a
hindrance to our union with the Creator. It is no longer Mary who lives, it is
Jesus Christ, it is God alone who lives in her. Her transformation into God
surpasses that of St. Paul [Gal. 2: 20] and of the other Saints more than the
heavens surpass the earth by their height. Mary is made for God alone, and far
from ever detaining a soul in herself, she casts the soul upon God and unites
it with Him so much the more perfectly as the soul is more perfectly united to
her. Mary is the admirable echo of God. When we say, "Mary," she
answers, "God." When, with St. Elizabeth, we call her
"Blessed," she glorifies God. If the falsely enlightened, whom the devil
has so miserably disillusioned, even in prayer, had known how to find Mary, and
through her to find Jesus, and through Jesus, God the Father, they would not
have had such terrible falls. 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. He who says all excepts nothing: all grace and all friendship with
God, all safety from God's enemies, all truth to crush falsehoods, all facility
to overcome difficulties in the way of salvation, all comfort and all joy
amidst the bitterness of life.
She Imparts the Grace to Carry Crosses
22. This does not mean that he who has
found Mary by a true devotion will be exempt from crosses and sufferings. Far
from it; he is more besieged by them than others are, because 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; and thus it is that the crosses which
she lays upon those who belong to her are rather steeped in sweetness than
filled with bitterness. If for a while her children feel the bitterness of the
cup which one must needs drink in order to be the friend of God, the
consolation and joy which this good Mother sends after the trial encourage them
exceedingly to carry still heavier and more painful crosses.
Conclusion
23. The difficulty, then, is to find
really and truly the most Blessed Virgin Mary in order to find all abundant
grace. God, being the absolute Master, can confer directly by Himself that
which He usually grants only through Mary. It would even be rash to deny that
sometimes He does so.
Nevertheless, St. Thomas teaches that in
the order of grace, established by Divine Wisdom, God ordinarily communicates
Himself to men only through Mary. Therefore, if we would go up to Him and be
united with Him, we must use the same means He used to come down to us, to be
made man and to impart His graces to us. That means is a true devotion [perfect
devotion] to our Blessed Lady.
