Chapter 7 : The Sixth Star or Splendour of the Crown of Goodness of the MOTHER OF GOD
She is a true model of generosity towards her children
Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré’s Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).
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| Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac (Poggi, 2020) |
§ 6. On God’s Gratitude towards certain Prelates and other persons
Fr Francis Coster S.J.
16 Francis Coster was a member of the same Society and had an outstanding devotion towards the MOTHER OF GOD. He laboured in a most praiseworthy manner to make her known and honoured throughout the whole of Germany by means of his preaching and his writings. He was happy to reveal that he had received from her two special favours, the first of which concerned his health. He had always been busy reading, writing and preaching; as Provincial, he made nearly all his journeys on foot and it was his custom to wear a cilice. Despite all this, he was never troubled by a single illness or injury even though he had reached the age of eighty-eight. The second favour she granted him was to give her special protection to his chastity, with the result that he could not remember ever having experienced any irregular movement of the flesh or of the imagination in this connection. Would even the Angels in Heaven have been any more privileged than that?
A converted Turk
17 But why should we find it so wondrous that the Virgin shows herself so grateful towards her own children when her gentle nature is such that she is willing to embrace foreigners outside the Faith?
About thirty-eight or forty years ago[1], a gentleman in the city of Braga in Portugal had been forced to take to his bed because of an illness. He had a Turkish slave in his household and, having set up an altar in his bed chamber, he ordered this slave to place on the altar an image he had of Our Lady in bas-relief, to make a garland of flowers and to place this around the image. He did this with a willing heart, glad to have found an opportunity to perform this little service for the Virgin. This is when a miracle happened. The Turk had over many years resisted all his master’s attempts to persuade him to become a Christian but now, without having been summoned, he went to see his master and told him that he wished to be baptized. He explained that the MOTHER OF GOD had, in gratitude for the service he had performed for her on the previous day, graced him with her presence during the night and had told him to become a Christian. Events were to prove the truth of these words, for the Turk went on to receive Baptism with such interior recollection and with so many tears that no one present could fail to be moved at the sight thereof.
Footnotes
[1] Franciscus Bencius, in Annalibus.
18 What we have been considering are in fact no more than tiny samples of the favours, visible and invisible, that she grants to her children every day. How can we even begin to imagine what it will be like at that moment when she opens up the treasures of her munificence to reward all the services rendered to her during this life? Dearest Lord, what joy, what happiness and what bliss await her faithful servants!
I would really like to have explored this further, providing a foretaste of the sweet delights she has in store, but I feel the counterweight of those misfortunes in this valley of tears impelling me to speak of ways in which the Mother of mercy brings comfort to the afflicted.
[End of Chapter 7]
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| The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century. |
SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.
Totus tuus ego sum
Et omnia mea tua sunt;
Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
© Peter Bloor
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