Tuesday, February 23, 2010

[MaryVitamin] sweatmeat

 
Mary Vitamin for February 23rd
 
Topic: The Sweetmeat of Trials and Penance
 
Quote:
St. Louis de Montfort
"Devotion to Our Lady is the sweetmeat and confection of crosses"
St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, (Tan Books), 98.
Paragraph 154
 
Meditation:
St. Louis explains that the servants of Mary will receive crosses to carry but her presence will teach her children to carry their cross with joy.
 
I reply that it is quite true that the most faithful servants of the Blessed Virgin, being her greatest favorites, receive from her the greatest graces and favors from heaven, which are crosses. But I maintain that it is also the servants of Mary who carry these crosses with more ease, more merit and more glory. That which would stay the progress of another a thousand times over, or perhaps would make him fall, does not once stop their steps, but rather enables them to advance; because that good Mother, all full of grace and of the unction of the Holy Ghost, prepares her 
servants' crosses with so much maternal sweetness and pure love as to make them gladly acceptable, no matter how bitter they may be in themselves; and I believe that a person who wishes to be devout, and to live piously in Jesus Christ, and consequently to suffer persecutions and carry his cross daily, either will never carry great crosses, or will not carry them joyously or perseveringly, without a tender devotion to Our Lady, which is the  sweetmeat and confection of crosses; just as  a person would not be able to eat unripe fruits without a great effort which he could hardly keep up, unless they had been preserved in sugar.
 St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, (Tan Books), 97-8
Paragraph 154
 
Resolution:
Today when enduring a trial (or offering a penance) I will keep in mind that Our Lady is the sweetmeat and confection of crosses. I will give my act over to her and remember that she is dispensing my crosses and making them palatable for me.
 
Marian Vow:
St. Louis de Montfort
We must pass through obscure nights, through combats, through strange agonies, over craggy mountains, through cruel thorns and over frightful deserts. But by the path of Mary we pass more gently and more tranquilly.
St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, (Tan Books), 96.
Paragraph 152
 
I give this resolution to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
 
Thanks be to God for graces received.
 

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