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Devotion to Mary
Right and Useful

THE PAULIST PRESS
401 West 59th Street New York 19, N. Y.



Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2016

https://archive.org/details/devotiontomaryriOOpaul



DEVOTION TO MARY
RIGHT AND USEFUL

By

A PAULIST FATHER

New York

THE PAULIST PRESS
401 West 59th Streei



of the nature and advantages of a warm devotion to

the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In the first place let us understand what is meant

by the expression, “Devotion to the Blessed Virgin

Mary.” By devotion in general, we understand a

warm and ardent love and affection. This manifests

itself in outward acts when opportunity offers, and

in a constant attention to find opportunity to show it-

self in such actions.

A son, for example, who is devoted to his mother,

is constantly on the lookout to contribute to her com-

fort and happiness. His devotion shows itself in a

certain tender tone of voice and affectionate ex-

pressions; in his self-denial and the pains he takes

to render her some service
;
in his respect and rever-

ence for her on all occasions
;
in short, in a variety

of ways, which we feel better than we can describe.

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary means noth-

ing different from this. It is a love of her express-

ing itself in appropriate ways. It is to think of her

with pleasure, and of what relates to her. It is to

love to consider the beauty of her character and all

her virtues, or to reflect upon those principal events

of her life which gave joy or sorrow to her heart.

It is to raise the soul to a holy interchange and com-

munion of thought with her. It is to rely on her

love for us, to count upon her good will, and to ex-

pect great help and comfort from her prayers and

intercession with God.

4



It is to behave toward her very much as though

we saw her, and were filled with respect, admiration,

and love for her, and realized that she is all gracious-

ness and benignity on her part, and able to do won-

ders for us in all our wants and needs.

This expresses itself, the Blessed Virgin not be-

ing here, but in heaven, in various acts of prayer

directed to her; for example, in reciting the “Salve

Regina,” the “Ave Maria,” the “Rosary,” the “Little

Office of the Blessed Virgin,” or what is sometimes

quite as good or better, loving and fervent little

prayers and ejaculations out of the heart. For

what are any prayers, unless they do come from the

heart, but empty words, a breath of wind, the talk

of a parrot, which can have no value in the eyes of

God Who looks at the heart, and only values the ac-

tions of men according to the intentions which

prompt them.

This is devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

But why is it a good thing? Is it not rather evil?

Is it not putting love and affection and prayer to a

creature, in place of that love and affection and

prayer which is due to God alone? Is it not giving

that glory and honor which belong alone to the Al-

mighty, to one of His creatures?

The Love of Christ for His Mother

In order to answer these objections, we must

form a true idea, as near may be, of the state of

things in heaven at this moment, and of the relations

6



which exist now between the members of that happy

home. Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has redeemed

us by His death on the Cross, is, as we all know,

both God and man. He was God from all eternity,

but at a certain period of time became a man “for us

and our salvation.” As a man He is a creature with

a perfect, entire human nature, in all respects like

ours, sin only excepted. This human nature once

joined to the divine nature, can never be again sepa-

rated from it, not for all eternity. Our Lord as man,

with His entire body, eyes, ears, hands, feet, and

with His human soul, sits at the right hand of His

Father, and shall come again as man to judge the

living and the dead.

We ought to bear this perpetual Humanity in

mind, and never lose sight of it, if we would have

a true idea of the real position of the Blessed Virgin

Mary to our Lord Jesus Christ. He is really a son,

and she is really His mother. It is as a real man

that He takes an interest in all that relates to man

—to us. It is as a man that He makes intercession
for us. It is as a man that He loves and pities us.

It is in the same way as true man that He loves His

own Mother. He had but one Mother, and He has

that Mother yet. Every good son loves his mother,

and loves her as he loves no one else; for God has

planted that instinct to love her in his heart, and if

he did not love and prize her far beyond others, he

would not be a man, but a monster.

6



If our Lord Jesus Christ did not-love His Mother

beyond any other human being, He would not be a

true man. He would be a pretended man, as one

who had put on the appearance of a man; but His

assumption of manhood would not be true and real

;

it would be an unworthy deceit.

If we believe that He really was a man, and is

a man, why not believe all those things which grow

out of a real human nature? It seems to me that

those persons who deny the real relation which sub-

sists between Jesus Christ as a Son to His Mother

in heaven at this moment, cannot really and sin-

cerely believe that He is a man. They must be

Nestorians. The Nestorians held that the Second

Person of the Trinity, the Divine Word, came down

in the form of a dove and inhabited a human body

for a time, and then deserting it went back to heaven,

the same that He was before He came.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is, then, nearer to Jesus

Christ than any other creature. She has the position

of Mother in heaven, with the dignity and pre-

eminence and privileges belonging to this position.

To Honor His Mother Is to Please Christ

In order to comprehend this better, let us take

an example. When the first Napoleon became Em-

peror of France, one of his first duties was to place

his mother in a position suitable to her relationship

with him. She had a peculiar title to signify that

7



she was the mother of the emperor. She had a pal-

ace assigned her, and the first ladies of the court to

attend upon her.

Will our Lord Jesus Christ, the great King and

Emperor of the universe, the head of the human

race in His human nature, fail in any of those sacred

duties and obligations which devolve upon Him as

a Son to His Mother? Will He be less careful to ob-

serve that propriety which He as God, Himself,

planted in that human nature which He afterwards

so humbly took upon Himself?

Since, then, the Blessed Virgin enjoys the dig-

nity and pre-eminence of Mother in heaven, con-

ferred upon her through the exceeding love and re-

spect of her Divine Son, what harm can there be in

loving her? What harm in expressing that love in

suitable ways, in meditating on her virtues and life,

or in asking her prayers?

Can we believe that to love His Mother can be

displeasing to Jesus Christ? Can we suppose that a

great and tender love for her can be anything but

most pleasing to Him?

Would you not be highly gratified to hear anyone

who was acquainted with your mother, express a

great esteem for her? If your mother were a very

virtuous and good woman, would you not be glad

to have her virtue appreciated and made much of?

Is it likely that you would be much offended, if any-

8



one who wanted a favor from you, should enlist that

deeply-loved mother to urge his claim before you?

Why should human nature follow a different law

in the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ? Oh! but He

is God, and God is jealous of His own' worship and

honor. I know that He is a jealous God, and that

worship and honor which is due to Him alone, He

will not suffer to be given to any creature. But He

is not unwilling that our love and adoration of Him

should lead us to show esteem and devotion to His

dearest friends, remembering always that they are

creatures and not God.

Why should we try to divorce the human and

divine natures which are inseparably united? Jesus

was not only God, but also man, and as man He was

worshiped on earth and is now worshiped in heaven.

His divinity is not jealous of His humanity. The

Godhead and manhood united in His Person are not

at variance with one another, but inseparably and

forever united in the one Person of the Divine Word.

Jesus, as man, makes intercession for us with

the Father. As man He is not so far separated from

His fellowmen as some suppose, and does not wish

to be. He intercedes with the Father for us, and

we do not hesitate to intercede with Him, and make

known to Him our desires for the benefit of our

friends, who are His brethren.

The Holy Family in Heaven

There is a family in heaven. God is the Father

of it. Jesus is the elder brother. The Blessed Vir-

9



gin Mary is the Mother in that family, the saints

from the least to the greatest are members of it.

All have a mutual love and interest and interchange

of thought in it.

We, on the earth, are absent members of it, on

our way home, and exposed to the danger of losing

our way and never reaching it.

We are all, then, in heaven and on earth, from

our Lord Jesus down, one great family each and all

knit together in a common interest and a common

love: bound, all of us, to love one another and help

one another if we can.

The Father loves to see His family united, not

strangers to one another, not selfishly looking out

each one for himself, but ever mindful of one an-

other, ever keeping up an interchange of affection.

Hence it must be in the designs of God, that the

inhabitants of heaven should continually supplicate

Him in our behalf. And that we should continually

ask their help with Him and constantly love them,

meditate on their example, and congratulate them on

their happiness.

And especially proper is it that we should love

the Blessed Virgin Mary, and dwell upon her in our

thoughts, since she is the principal figure, after our

Lord Jesus Christ, in that blissful family in heaven.

She is the venerable matron of the household. She

is the benignant and most gracious mistress of the

heavenly palace, who is at her Son’s side to receive

10



His guests, and help to make them feel at home in

His house.

This is certainly a truer idea of heaven and of

our Lord, than the one which pictures Him all alone

in heaven, sitting on a throne of majesty, with all

the blessed spirits at a distance and awe-struck. He

alone knowing anything of our condition on earth,

because He is God, and all the saints ignorant of it,

thinking only of themselves and taking no interest

in us. This is what may be called forgetting and

diminishing the human nature of Jesus Christ, and

absorbing it all in His divinity.

There can be no question in a reasonable mind,

which realizes the Incarnation of our Lord, that the

Communion of the Saints in heaven and on earth

flows directly out of it.

A Great Help to Loving Our Lord

Why should our Lord be jealous of the love and

devotion we pay to His Mother? Does it hinder us

from loving Him? Not at all. It is a great help to

loving Him. Why do we meditate upon His life and

all His actions, unless it be to realize “that for us

men and for our salvation He became Incarnate,”

that is, took our nature upon Himself, to redeem

us, and to raise us to a share of His own glory and

happiness. WTien we endeavor to excite our love

for Him, we do not think of Him so much as God

before He came into the world, but as He moved

ll



about here, doing good as He talked and ate and

drank and suffered—in short, as a man.
Now, the devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary

helps us very much to realize this. The thought that

He had a real Mother of flesh and blood like our

own, brings home very forcibly to us the reality that

He was a true man. The thought of the message of

the Archangel Gabriel brings home the same idea.

“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the

fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” They are associated in

one blessedness, and that the greatest the human

race has ever received.

We cannot conceive of Jesus as a babe without

beholding the Mother holding Him in her arms and

nursing Him. We cannot picture to ourselves the

household of Nazareth, where Joseph, Mary, and

Jesus lived together so many years, without vividly

realizing all that the Saviour has done and suffered

for us.

And the thought of Mary in heaven, now at

Jesus’ right hand, reminds us, most forcibly, not to

forget, in any fear of the majesty of God, that He

is also a man, with the true heart of a man beating

in His bosom.

The Mother brings home to us this fact as no

other can. We certainly find it easier to love Jesus

Christ, when we reflect on this infancy, childhood,

and manhood, and similar mysteries which call His

Mother to mind, than apart from her, and all these

12



relations with her. We cannot reflect on His Mother

without being stirred up to love Him.

Besides: To reflect on her virtues and loveliness

of character assists us much to comprehend His

loveliness and goodness. We all know that the femi-

nine character has its own peculiar lovable traits.

Women, as a general thing, are more affectionate

and tender than men; they are more inclined to

gentleness and pity
;
they possess a grace and sweet-

ness of manner peculiar to themselves.

Take any woman of high station, who joins in

her character some of the best and noblest traits of

woman, and what do we see? Everybody is filled

with admiration of her
;
she wins at once the domin-

ion of all hearts. The same thing is true in humble

life. A truly good mother or sister or friend is held

in everlasting and tender remembrance by all who

have come to an acquaintance with her virtues.

All That Is Lovely in Woman

The Blessed Virgin Mary unites in herself all

that is lovely in woman. We imagine her most

beautiful, most noble, most benignant, and loving:

in short, it is hard to say to what height our idea of

her does not reach.

But it matters not how great our idea may be,

we know and understand that we must at once say

:

All this loveliness, all this graciousness in the Blessed

Virgin is as inferior to the same qualities in our

13



Lord Jesus Christ as her dignity is inferior to His:

all these qualities in her are only a reflection of the

same in Him. We rise, then, through her, to a most

sublime and charming idea of the extreme loveliness

and benignity of the Son of God made man for us.

It is sometimes said that Jesus is the King of

Justice and Mary the Mother of Mercy. We per-

haps gather from this that Jesus is hard to forgive,

stern, and unrelenting, and Mary is all benignity.

This would be an erroneous and very wrong concep-

tion. It arises from our feebleness of mind and in-

ability to grasp the whole truth at once.

The benignity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is not

in contrast with any quality of our Lord Jesus

Christ, but simply a means of rising to the thought

of His benignity. If we are so much afraid of the

justice of God as to lose sight of His infinite mercy,

the thought of the mildness of the Mother brings

back our souls to repose once more in His benignity.

The Mother is the chain which binds us to Him in a

union the very closest—that of a common nature
and common sympathies.

Sin drives us away from God, and makes us lose

sight of His goodness. We get afraid, though that

does not make Him in the least less good or compas-

sionate than He was before. We think of the Blessed

Virgin, and ask her prayers, and our confidence

comes back. The Blessed Virgin takes us as little

infants in her arms, and hands us over to Jesus

14



Christ. And when we get in His arms, and are taken

up by His love, we can, from time to time, cast a

grateful look at that sweet Mother, who has been

so good to us, and who is so dear to Him. And thus

in our devotion we live over again those blessed

days at Bethlehem, when Mary held Jesus in her

arms, and gave Him up for an embrace and kiss of

love, to the humble and simple shepherds, who

recognized in Him, a little child, their Lord and their

God, and in her the Mother of the Word made flesh.

As this devotion to the Mother of God has, so to

speak, a natural effect most beautiful and most

profitable to the soul of everyone who practices it,

so also has it a supernatural effect in drawing down

a powerful grace and the divine aid.

Let Us, Then, Go to Mary

God wills us to pray for one another. Abstractly

speaking and apart from His holy will, we might

reason that there is no need of it; that God hears

all and can attend to all
;
that we can go to Him di-

rectly and not employ the intervention of any crea-

ture: but such is not His will. He means us all to

be knit together in one great family, and that an

interchange of prayer and intercession shall take

place among all grades of His redeemed creatures,

from the highest to the lowest.

Every saint in heaven, even the lowest, can inter-

cede for us. But the higher his sanctity and the



nearer he is to God, the more powerful his prayers.

The Blessed Virgin is, beyond all comparison, the

holiest of the saints. She is nearer to God than any

of them, for she is the very Mother of the Son of

God. Blessed is she in that she has borne the Sav-

iour, and more blessed still in that she has heard the

Word of God, and kept it more faithfully and truly

than any other.

Let us, then, go to her with great confidence, and

beg her to procure for us the greatest and best of

all gifts—a great love for her Son, Jesus Christ, and
a complete and heartfelt conformity to His holy will,

that being united to God, heart and soul, here, we

may be united to the blessed company of heaven

hereafter.

16





A Irulv accurate life of Christ

THE SAVIOUR’S LIFE
In the Exact Words of the Four Gospels

With Discussion Club Outlines by

REV. GERALD C. TREACY, S.J.

Many lives of Christ have been written but

this book is the first volume in which the four

gospels have been arranged so as to tell a

continuous story of the years the Saviour

spent on earth.

For use as a text in classrooms and discussion

clubs it is excellent, for each chapter is fol-

lowed by a summary in narrative form and

then by questions on the chapter. This out-

line by Father Treacy, an interpretation of

the scriptural passages, will be of great value

to the reader in understanding the gospels

themselves.

Paper binding, 50 cents :: Cloth binding, $1.50

THE PAULIST PRESS

401 WEST 59th STREET - NEW YORK 19, N. Y.