The Crown of Excellence : Chapter 7 : § 2. 5-6

Chapter 7 : The Sixth Star or Splendour in the Crown of Excellence of the Mother of God

Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré's Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).

Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac.(Poggi, 2020)

That she is peerless in her graces and merits

§ 2.  The increase of grace in the Holy Virgin

Only a courageous soul can make progress

 5   Finally, I am going to draw together what has been said so far. There are four things which when joined together are able to produce a great increase in the wealth of a man namely: 

    1. a sizeable sum of money, 

    2. hard work, 

    3. adequate time for doing business and 

    4. several good opportunities. 

In a similar way, four things bring great merit and elevated grace to a soul, namely: 

1. to start with, sanctifying grace which is of a price far above the ordinary, 
2. an ever-present desire to progress, 
3. a long life spent in the practice of holiness and 
4. the happy lot of being offered several good opportunities by God to do His work, i.e., by doing and suffering great things for Him.

 6   In the light of this doctrine, let us now move on to consider the most Holy Virgin. We find in fact that she made remarkable progress in virtue and acquired a marvellous increase in holiness by means of the four qualities or conditions that I have just mentioned. It is indeed true that two of these can be covered quickly enough, for her starting fund is nothing other than the grace of her first sanctification and I have spoken sufficiently of this earlier. As for the time available to her, the most probable figure is that she had at least seventy-two years, without counting the nine months she spent in the womb of St Anne. This is enough for us to conjecture that she would have acquired a store of merits after so many years. All that remains is to consider the care and effort that she brought to her undertakings and the opportunities she had to make us of the grace she had received.

👑       👑       👑

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. 

© Peter Bloor 2024