In the Footsteps of St. Louis Marie de Montfort

"Footsteps Online"

Easter 1997 (Volume 2, Issue 2)

The Incarnation

This year, the feast of the Annunciation of the Lord, in which we celebrate the Incarnation, was celebrated on April 7th, the Monday of the second week of Easter. St. Louis Marie de Montfort calls this mystery of the Incarnation, the "mystery proper to the devotion" he preaches, that is "Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary".

AS FOR most of the other members of the French School of Spirituality, the doctrine of the Incarnation holds a central place in the thinking of St. Louis Marie de Montfort. He does not, however, approach this doctrine simply from the angle of speculative theology, but rather he meditates, full of wonderment and love, on the mystery of Jesus, Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom of God. We see this especially in his book The Love of Eternal Wisdom (LEW).

The Annunciation For St. Louis Marie, the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, in the man Jesus Christ, is a manifestation of "the prodigious excess of the love of God" for men and women (LEW 108). He imagines a kind of discussion between the Persons of the Trinity: "I seem to see this loveable Sovereign convoking and assembling the most holy Trinity, a second time, so to speak, for the purpose of rehabilitating man in the state he formerly created him (cf. Gen. 1:26)." (LEW 42) "I seem to hear eternal Wisdom, in his plea on behalf of man, admit that because of his sin man and all his descendants deserve to be condemned and to spend all eternity with the rebel angels. Still, man should be pitied because he sinned more through ignorance and weakness than through malice" (LEW 43). "Eternal Wisdom seeing that nothing on earth can expiate man's sin, that nothing can satisfy divine justice and appease God's anger and still, wishing to save unfortunate man whom he cannot help loving, finds a wonderful way of accomplishing this. Wonder of wonders! With boundless and incomprehensible love, this tender-hearted Lord offers to comply with his justice, to calm the divine anger, to rescue us from the slavery of the devil and from the flames of hell, and to merit for us eternal happiness. His offer is accepted; a decision is reached and made. Eternal Wisdom, the Son of God, will become man at a suitable time and in determined circumstances" (LEW 45,46).

So the Incarnation is also the beginning of our salvation, since by it, God becomes man, so as to enable man to share once again in the Godhead, to become once again "the living image of the Godhead" (LEW 37). It is the beginning of the vast act of giving birth to the new humanity in Jesus Christ.

And as Mary, by God's choice, had an essential role to play in the giving of his individual humanity to the Word of God, so, in Montfort's thought, she has an essential role in bringing forth the whole Christ, Head and members: "God the Father imparted to Mary his fruitfulness as far as a mere creature was capable of receiving it, to enable her to bring forth his Son and all the members of his mystical body." "If Jesus Christ, the head of mankind, is born of her, the predestinate, who are members of this head, must also as a necessary consequence be born of her. One and the same mother does not give birth to the head without the members nor to the members without the head, for these would be monsters in the order of nature. In the order of grace likewise the head and the members are born of the same mother" (TD 17, 32).

St. Louis Marie also sees in the Incarnation, the supreme example of the attitude towards Mary that all Christians ought to make their own, namely one of filial "dependence" on her and obedience to her: "the wondrous dependence which God the Son chose to have on Mary, for the glory of his Father and for the redemption of man. This dependence is revealed especially in this mystery where Jesus becomes a captive and slave in the womb of his Blessed Mother, depending on her for everything" (TD 243). Not only was this the attitude which Jesus Christ chose to have towards her by becoming her son, an example which we ought to imitate; but it is the natural response to the fact that we too, through the Incarnation, are her children. This is the foundation of the form of devotion (called sometimes "Holy Slavery") to Mary which he recommends as being the best way to achieve union with Christ: "total consecration to Jesus Christ through Mary" as her children and servants.

St. Louis Marie, for this reason, sees the mystery of the Incarnation as the "mystery proper" to this perfect practice of devotion to Mary:

"Time does not permit me to linger here and elaborate on the perfections and wonders of the mystery of Jesus living and reigning in Mary, or the Incarnation of the Word. I shall confine myself to the following brief remarks. The Incarnation is the first mystery of Jesus Christ; it is the most hidden; and it is the most exalted and the least known.

It was in this mystery that Jesus, in the womb of Mary and with her co-operation, chose all the elect. For this reason the saints called her womb, the throne-room of God's mysteries.

It was in this mystery that Jesus anticipated all subsequent mysteries of his life by his willing acceptance of them. Consequently, this mystery is a summary of all his mysteries since it contains the intention and the grace of them all.

Lastly, this mystery is the seat of the mercy, the liberality, and the glory of God" (TD 248).

So, for St. Louis Marie, the Incarnation is not only an essential mystery; it is the fundamental mystery of the economy of salvation, and the one at the heart of his spirituality.

The Second Vatican Council speaks also of the Incarnation as the "supreme mystery" which will bring us, by our meditation on it, to become ever increasingly like Jesus Christ (Lumen Gentium 65). And Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater, follows fairly closely Montfort's way of approaching the mystery of the Incarnation. It is also a mystery which underlines the sense of the greatness of humanity, because adopted by God: a concept which could help us today in our struggle to counteract the flouting of the rights of the weakest members of human society. St. Louis Marie's insistence on the Incarnation is therefore highly relevant today.


The Teaching of the Church

"Christ's faithful... raise their eyes to Mary, who shines, as the exemplar of the virtues, on the whole community of the chosen. The Church dutifully reflects on her, contemplates her in the light of the Word made man, and so makes a reverent and more penetrating entry into the supreme mystery of the Incarnation, and increases her conformity with the bridegroom" (Lumen Gentium - the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of the Vatican Council II, no. 65).

"In the Incarnation (the Church) encounters Christ and Mary indissolubly joined: he who is the Church's Lord and Head and she who, uttering the first fiat of the New Covenant, prefigures the Church's condition as spouse and mother" (Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, 1).

"Only in the mystery of Christ is her (Mary's) mystery fully made clear. Thus has the Church sought to interpret it from the very beginning: the mystery of the Incarnation has enabled her to penetrate and to make even clearer the mystery of the Mother of the Incarnate Word" (Redemptoris Mater, 4).

"Here we speak ... of authentic "Marian spirituality," ... Furthermore, Marian spirituality, like its corresponding devotion, finds a very rich source in the historical experience of individuals and of the various Christian communities present among the different peoples and nations of the world. In this regard, I would like to recall, among the many witnesses and teachers of this spirituality, the figure of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, who proposes consecration to Christ through the hands of Mary as an effective means for Christians to live faithfully their baptismal commitments. I am pleased to note that in our own time too new manifestations of this spirituality and devotion are not lacking" (Redemptoris Mater, 48).