Part IV : How to give thanks to the Mother of God : Chapter 3 : § 1.14-16

Chapter 3 : Trust in the Mother of God – a second feature of the gratitude we owe

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

Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac (Poggi, 2020)

§ 1. The first sign of trust : not undertaking anything except with the Holy Mother’s help and guidance

St Hyacinth

 14   St Hyacinth, after receiving the religious habit from the hands of St Dominic, was sent by him into Poland which was the country of his birth. He set off on his journey with the blessing of Pope Honorius III and wise words of advice from St Dominic himself. 

What Dominic most wanted to instil in his heart was the importance of keeping very close to the Queen of Heaven, never undertaking anything except with her holy guidance and always considering her as his anchorage point and as the guiding star for all his journeys. The Saint profited so greatly from this advice that it is not possible to say how much he advanced the Glory of God in those lands. She promised him that there was nothing he might ask from her beloved Son that he would not obtain through her intercession. He would recall this promise in all his necessities and this enabled him to bring about so many conversions in the cities towns he visited that they almost ceased to be recognisable. He caused numerous Churches and Monasteries to be built; he established the Dominican Order at various places throughout Poland; and he worked more than eight hundred miracles which the Dominican Severin of Kraków recorded in four volumes used at his canonisation. In short, by working tirelessly night and day to rescue those who had gone astray and to fortify those who were on the right path, he won a multitude of souls for God and a crown of immortal glory for himself.     

St Francis Xavier

 15   St Francis Xavier, the Apostle of the East, took due account of the importance of what he had been called upon to do and placed himself entirely in the hands of the most sacred Virgin whom he loved with a tender affection. After God Himself, he offered her all his labours and implored her to accompany him with her favours and blessings.

He would frequently be seen in the Church of Our Lady in Goa, in Malacca or in Cochin, kneeling before the altar of the Holy Virgin and entrusting her with the affairs of this new Christendom. His greatest satisfaction was to go into Church and spend the night in loving colloquy with the Queen of Heaven. Whilst teaching Christian doctrine, whenever he had finished explaining one of the commandments of God or of the Church, he would tell his audience to kneel down so that they could obtain through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin the grace of being able to keep the Commandments. In short, she blessed his labours to such effect that in the space of the ten years he spent in this new world he baptised with his own hands more than six hundred thousand souls; he worked countless miracles; he restored faith and the practice of religion in many places where it had withered away; and he carried the faith into eight kingdoms where it had never been preached before. What I particularly want to mention is that it was through the special help of this incomparable Mother that, despite all the efforts of hell and the demons to thwart his plans, he made his entry into the great and beautiful kingdom of Japan on the very day of her triumphant Assumption and his labours had such a happy outcome that the Japanese Church became one of the most fervent in the whole of Christendom.

 

Gonçalo da Silveira

 16   When the Blessed Martyr Gonçalo da Silveira learned that he was to be sent on a mission to Ethiopia and that divine providence had chosen him to restore this vineyard which had once been watered with the blood of the Blessed Apostle St Matthew, he applied himself before anything else to win the favour and graces of the Empress of Heaven, convinced that with her help nothing would be impossible for him to achieve.

With this in mind, he started to meditate upon the qualities of her Greatness and he devoted one hour each day to this for the whole of the voyage. In order that the thoughts and feelings inspired in him by God during these prayers would not be restricted to himself alone, for the first thirteen days of the journey he assembled everyone on board the ship and spoke to them of her praiseworthy qualities and of the way she was to be honoured and served. He obtained permission from the ship’s captain for the Litany of Loreto to be sung solemnly every evening and he did everything he could to promote her honour amongst those on board. The Holy Virgin, wishing to show how pleased she was by his zeal, so arranged things that it was on the Purification that they saw land for the first time. After passing through a terrible storm which lasted several hours, they were finally able to make out on the coast of Mozambique the Church called Nossa Senhora de Baluarte[1] which served not only as a landmark for them but also as a favourable portent. As soon as they reached land, Gonçalo took off his shoes and walked barefoot to offer his prayers and devotions to the most sacred Virgin in Nossa Senhora de Baluarte. He was so transported in prayer and meditation that he remained several days in the Church without leaving and it required one of the officers from the crew to come and take him back on board the ship otherwise he would have stayed longer.

As soon as they reached the Kingdom of Monomotapa[2], his first concern was to invite a goodly number of people to petition the glorious Virgin to help facilitate their entry and dispose the heart of the King to receive and benefit from the good news of eternal salvation he was bringing. It was truly a pleasing sight for the Blessed Spirits and for all those who could see him near a little clump of palm trees beneath the royal city imploring the help of the Holy Mother, kneeling as he prayed the beads of his Rosary before an image of the Virgin he had hung from one of the trees. In the end, his heartfelt and earnest prayers together with the intercession of the Blessed Virgin culminated with the King receiving Holy Baptism along with three hundred of the chief men in his court, as I have explained elsewhere[3]. 

The supreme high point of his happiness came when he gained his martyr’s crown and by his merits paved the way for the Kaffir peoples to receive the Gospel by means of the care and toil of several labourers in the Lord’s vineyard who were later sent and for whom the gates of this kingdom had been opened by the shedding of Gonçalo’s blood.

Footnotes

[1] Nossa Senhora de Baluarte : Our Lady (of) the Rampart or Bulwark.

[2] The Monomotama Kingdom or Empire (15th-17th century). From Mwene meaning "Lord" and Mutapa meaning "conquered land". Located in what is modern-day Mozambique, Botswana, Malawi, and Zambia.

[3] Part III, ch. 6, § 4.

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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 2025