St. Louis de Montfort on the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Eucharist

Last week, I posted some meditations I had concerning approaching the Mass with the Blessed Virgin Mary.  I thought I would post a practical method of doing so, that of St. Louis de Montfort in his True Devotion to Mary.

If you have not read True Devotion to Mary, you have missed a spiritual treasure by a spiritual giant.  If you have not gone through the 33 day preparation for consecration to Jesus through Mary, you are depriving yourself of great spiritual fruit.  I made my consecration to Mary on the Solemnity of the Assumption using the  formula prescribed by another giant of Marian spirituality, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and can honestly say it has been a spiritual booster shot for me.  Already in the 10 days since consecrating myself to the Blessed Virgin, I have been more resolute in my prayer life and more at peace in the face of some pretty bad situations.  So, I can recommend it wholeheartedly.

As an appendix to True Devotion, St. de Montfort produced a method for receiving the Holy Eucharist in communion with Mary.  I reproduce it here for your edification. (Note:  The numbers correspond to paragraphs in True Devotion).

Before Holy Communion

266. 1) Place yourself humbly in the presence of God.

  2) Renounce your corrupt nature and dispositions, no matter how good self-love makes them appear to you.

  3) Renew your consecration saying, "I belong entirely to you, dear Mother, and all that I have is yours."

  4) Implore Mary to lend you her heart so that you may receive her Son with her dispositions. Remind her that her Son's glory requires that he should not come into a heart so sullied and fickle as your own, which could not fail to diminish his glory and might cause him to leave. Tell her that if she will take up her abode in you to receive her Son - which she can do because of the sovereignty she has over all hearts - he will be received by her in a perfect manner without danger of being affronted or being forced to depart.  "God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved." 

Tell her with confidence that all you have given her of your possessions is little enough to honour her, but that in Holy Communion you wish to give her the same gifts as the eternal Father gave her. Thus she will feel more honoured than if you gave her all the wealth in the world. Tell her, finally, that Jesus, whose love for her is unique, still wishes to take his delight and his repose in her even in your soul, even though it is poorer and less clean than the stable which he readily entered because she was there. Beg her to lend you her heart, saying, "O Mary, I take you for my all; give me your heart."

During Holy Communion

267. After the Our Father, when you are about to receive our Lord, say to him three times the prayer, "Lord, I am not worthy." Say it the first time as if you were telling the eternal Father that because of your evil thoughts and your ingratitude to such a good Father, you are unworthy to receive his only-begotten Son, but that here is Mary, his handmaid, who acts for you and whose presence gives you a special confidence and hope in him.

268. Say to God the Son, "Lord, I am not worthy", meaning that you are not worthy to receive him because of your useless and evil words and your carelessness in his service, but nevertheless you ask him to have pity on you because you are going to usher him into the house of his Mother and yours, and you will not let him go until he has made it his home. Implore him to rise and come to the place of his repose and the ark of his sanctification. Tell him that you have no faith in your own merits, strength and preparedness, like Esau, but only in Mary, your Mother, just as Jacob had trust in Rebecca his mother. Tell him that although you are a great sinner you still presume to approach him, supported by his holy Mother and adorned with her merits and virtues.

269. Say to the Holy Spirit, "Lord, I am not worthy". Tell him that you are not worthy to receive the masterpiece of his love because of your luke-warmness, wickedness and resistance to his inspirations. But, nonetheless, you put all your confidence in Mary, his faithful Spouse, and say with St. Bernard, "She is my greatest safeguard, the whole foundation of my hope." Beg him to overshadow Mary, his inseparable Spouse, once again. Her womb is as pure and her heart as ardent as ever. Tell him that if he does not enter your soul neither Jesus nor Mary will be formed there nor will it be a worthy dwelling for them.

After Holy Communion

270. After Holy Communion, close your eyes and recollect yourself. Then usher Jesus into the heart of Mary: you are giving him to his Mother who will receive him with great love and give him the place of honour, adore him profoundly, show him perfect love, embrace him intimately in spirit and in truth, and perform many offices for him of which we, in our ignorance, would know nothing.

271. Or, maintain a profoundly humble heart in the presence of Jesus dwelling in Mary. Or be in attendance like a slave at the gate of the royal palace, where the King is speaking with the Queen. While they are talking to each other, with no need of you, go in spirit to heaven and to the whole world, and call upon all creatures to thank, adore and love Jesus and Mary for you. "Come, let us adore."

272. Or, ask Jesus living in Mary that his kingdom may come upon earth through his holy Mother. Ask for divine Wisdom, divine love, the forgiveness of your sins, or any other grace, but always through Mary and in Mary. Cast a look of reproach upon yourself and say, "Lord, do not look at my sins, let your eyes see nothing in me but the virtues and merits of Mary.  "Remembering your sins, you may add, "I am my own worst enemy and I am guilty of all these sins." Or, "Deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man." Or again, "Dear Jesus, you must increase in my soul and I must decrease." "Mary, you must increase in me and I must always go on decreasing."  "O Jesus and Mary, increase in me and increase in others around me."

273. There are innumerable other thoughts with which the Holy Spirit will inspire you, which he will make yours if you are thoroughly recollected and mortified, and constantly faithful to the great and sublime devotion which I have been teaching you. But remember, the more you let Mary act in your Communion the more Jesus will be glorified. The more you humble yourself and listen to Jesus and Mary in peace and silence - with no desire to see, taste or feel - then the more freedom you will give to Mary to act in Jesus' name and the more Jesus will act in Mary. For the just man lives everywhere by faith, but especially in Holy Communion, which is an action of faith.

With Mary at Mass

Sunday morning I was serving at the altar, something I have the opportunity to do all too infrequently.  It’s one of my favorite things to do; my prayer life and spirituality have for the last several years been centered around the liturgy, even before I returned to the Catholic Church.  The Anglican liturgy is beautiful, with prayers and praises made in the language of Shakespeare.  It is a liturgy that is preserved in the Anglican Use service at my parish, St. Luke’s in Bladensburg, Maryland.  The cadences and movements of the service are second nature to me, and sometimes I must say I find myself “going through the motions” as my mind wanders from what’s going on in the service to what the afternoon will bring—often, a relaxing afternoon watching NASCAR.

This Sunday was different.  I was paying closer attention to the service, but mainly out of necessity; as I said, I hadn’t served in a while and was a little rusty.  I didn’t want to miss my cue, particularly during the elevations as I had responsibility for ringing the bells.  As I knelt on the epistle side of the altar and waited for Father to get to the point of the service when I needed to ring the first bell, something occurred to me that I hadn’t thought of before.  Not in all the times I had served.

I’m waiting for Jesus to be sacrificed.  Just like Mary did.

Almost as soon as the thought went through my head, Father said the words:

Vouchsafe, O God, we beseech thee, in all things to make this oblation blessed, approved and accepted, a perfect and worthy offering: that it may become for us the body and blood of thy dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. 

I rang the bell to signal the beginning of the holiest part of the Mass, when the bread and wine would become Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity.  Father recited the familiar words of Jesus from the Last Supper (“this is my body…this is my blood”); with each elevation I rang the bell, signaling to the congregation in prayer to look towards the altar and behold the body and blood of our Savior.  This is what they called in medieval times “the gaze that saves.”  It’s the same every Sunday.  But this Sunday as I looked at the host, I heard the words of Jesus from the cross:

Woman, behold your Son…Son, behold your mother.

I knew that every Sunday in the Mass Jesus offers Himself to the Father as he did on the Cross.  When the Priest elevates the Host, Jesus is raised on the Cross again; when he elevates the Chalice, the blood and water from His side pours forth from His Sacred Heart.  But I now knew something deeper.  It’s not just the consecration of the bread and wine that reenact the Crucifixion.  The entire Mass recreates Calvary.  When we are waiting for the bread to be consecrated, we are like Mary waiting at the foot of the cross, alone but for John the beloved.

Woman, behold your Son…We are with Mary, and Mary is with us.  Our Lady is standing before the Cross on Calvary; she is in the Holy of Holies in Heaven; and she is kneeling right next to us, worshiping with us every Sunday at every Mass.  Every Sunday at every Mass throughout the whole world, she joins her sacrifice with that of her Son's, as she did that Friday 2000 years ago.  And every Sunday, she again experiences the sword piercing her own Immaculate Heart.  

Son, behold your mother…As she was Jesus’ mother, she is our mother.  His mother is our mother; her son is our brother, our Lord, and our Savior.  We approach her Son with her, through her, in her, and for her. We join our sufferings, our pain, our struggles, and our fears to her's as she joins her's with those of her Son.  The sword that pierces our mother’s heart pierces our own heart, also.

With this in mind, we should approach every Mass with the intention of presenting ourselves, with our Blessed Mother, to our crucified and risen Lord.  We love Jesus in Mary, through Mary, with Mary, and for Mary; and Jesus loves us in His Mother, through His Mother, with His Mother, and for His Mother.  To Him, we need to bring all of our cares and concerns, all of our sufferings and pain, and that of those we love.  Our sufferings are meaningless without the Cross, just as Mary's would have been.