3) Mary's tender, noble and ardent charity

Renewal of Consecration to Jesus through Mary

There now remain six days before the great feast of the Annunciation, postponed this year because Easter came early. St Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort recommends the Annunciation as being a fitting day for consecration to Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary (or renewal of consecrations). He mentions this in his work True Devotion to Mary (1712) where he also refers approvingly to La triple couronne de la bien-heureuse Vierge Mère de Dieu (The Triple Crown of the Blessed Virgin Mother of God), by Fr F Poiré, published in 1634

In the days remaining before the Annunciation, I am posting excerpts taken from chapter 11 of the  of fourth treatise  in The Triple Crown of the Blessed Virgin. This chapter addresses eight great qualities of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. The third excerpt concerns her charity.

3) Mary's tender, noble and ardent charity

The love in the Blessed Virgin's heart was...

... the tenderest, the noblest and the most ardent of all God's created beings. This tenderness showed in the intimacy of her colloquies with God, in the intense pleasure of her innocent caresses; in her loving exchanges, embraces and spiritual ecstasies; in her moments of fainting away and in the union with her sacred Spouse. Her love was so noble that she paid no heed to any created thing whatsoever, even unto proclaiming her own lowliness; so noble that she freely surrendered her control over all the powers in her soul, being obedient to all the commandments of God and seeking to do His will in all things. Her love was ardent, burning with a desire to offer up all her works, setbacks and sufferings to the Lord; to seek out ways of pleasing her Beloved and of being in His company; disliking anything that could prevent her from giving herself wholly to Him.

 The author then apostrophizes the love that is in Mary's heart:

O thou love  which art more tender than the earliest fruit, nobler than Royalty, more ardent than fire itself, stronger than death, more enduring than diamond, more precious than the whole world!  O thou love which burnest always and art never consumed; which placeth everything before thee and bringeth to fulfilment all thy plans; which bringeth joy to them that seek thee and contentment to them that find thee; which maketh happy them who possess thee and art the rule of good works and the form, the value, the source, the life and the being of all the virtues; which art the death of vices, the victory over temptations and the ruin of disordered affections. When wilt thou lead our hearts into the state God desireth? When wilt thou free us from our attachment to ephemeral things so as to savour those which are eternal? When wilt thou crush beneath thy feet all sensual and profane love so as to possess our souls in peace? Our prayer is for thee to unite us to the Sovereign Good so that we may follow the example of the Mother of Love; then we may say in truth with the Apostle: we live no more in ourselves nor for ourselves, but He alone lives in us and we are totally transformed in Him. [1]   

[1]  For none of us liveth to himself; and no man dieth to himself.  For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore, whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord's. [Rom. xiv. 7-8.]

And Christ died for all; that they also who live, may not now live to themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again. [2 Cor. v. 15]

And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me. [Gal. ii. 20]

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >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.