Pope John Paul II on Entrustment to Mary in the encyclical Redemptoris Mater, Paragraphs #44-48.
St. Louis de Montfort on the Hail Mary (True Devotion #249-253)
Adaptation of St. Louis de Montfort’s Prayer to Mary
St. Louis de Montfort on Mary and the Holy Angels
“With maternal love, [Mary] cooperates in the birth and development of the sons and daughters of the Church”(Lumen Gentium #63), not just at birth (baptism), but throughout our growth. Mary stays with us even after our baptism, continuing to care for and participate in our spiritual lives. In the words of Pope Saint John Paul II, “In her new motherhood in the Spirit, Mary embraces everyone in the Church, and embraces each one through the Church.”… “[She]… helps all her children, wherever they may be and whatever their condition, to find in Christ the path to the Father’s house.” (Redemptoris Mater #47).
Mary’s spiritual motherhood is a gift from God, which Christ personally bestows on each of His followers through the beloved disciple John (John 19:26). It is an inheritance given to everyone as a final offering from the Cross. (RM #45).
We are to imitate John by welcoming Mary into “our own home” (John 19:27), a phrase that signifies more than just a physical shelter. It implies that we should invite her into our very lives. We are to entrust her with our whole selves, relating to her as true sons or daughters to a beloved Mother. In this way, we share in her maternal charity as her other children (RM #45), as other christs.
When we entrust ourselves to Mary, we imitate Jesus, who entrusted himself to her at the Annunciation. Jesus came to us through Mary, and we are to go to Him by the same way: To Jesus through Mary! According to Pope Saint John Paul II, Mary wants us to make this entrustment. “As Mother, she desires to influence all those who entrust themselves to her as her children. And it is well known that the more her children persevere and grow in this attitude, the closer Mary brings them to the ‘unsearchable riches of Christ’” (RM #46)
This is the spirituality that the Council encourages and which John Paul himself practiced, and he “officially” recommends the saint from whom he learned it: “I want to highlight, among the many teachers and witnesses of this spirituality, the figure of Saint Louis de Montfort” (RM #48).
In recalling Montfort’s Marian spirituality, Pope Saint John Paul II reveals, along with the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, the source of his relationship with and understanding of Our Mother Mary. Besides Montfort’s official endorsement in the encyclical Redemptoris Mater, Pope Saint John Paul II also adopted his papal motto – “Totus Tuus” – “I am all thine… Mary” – from Montfort’s work True Devotion to Mary. He shared a personal testimony about how Montfort’s teachings influenced him through this book during an interview with Andre Frossard in 1982:
The reading of this book was a decisive turning point in my life. I say ‘turning point,’ But in fact it was a long inner journey that coincided with my clandestine preparation for the priesthood…. The Treatise is one of those books that it is not enough to ‘have read.’ I remember carrying it with me for a long time, even at the sodium factory, with the result that its handsome binding became spotted with lime…. I soon saw that in spite of the book’s baroque style, it dealt with something fundamental. As a result, my devotion to the Mother of Christ in my childhood and adolescence yielded to a new attitude springing from the depths of my faith, as though from the very heart of the Trinity and Jesus Christ.
Whereas originally I held back for fear that devotion to Mary should mask Christ instead of giving him precedence, I realized in the light of Grignion de Montfort’s book that the situation was really quite different. Our inner relation to the Mother of God derives from our connection with the mystery of Christ. There is therefore no question of the one preventing us from seeing the other…. One can even say that just as Christ on Calvary indicated his mother to the disciple John, so he points her out to anyone who strives to know and love him. (Be Not Afraid! p. 122.)
The Vatican II document, “Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People,” summarizes our relationship with Mary: “All should devoutly venerate her and commend [entrust] their life and apostolate to her maternal care.” (Chapter 1, #4). In all obedience, this is what we should do. I would venture to say that Pope Saint John Paul II, in all his “greatness,” owes his spiritual success largely to his devotion and entrustment to Mary. We would do well to learn from and imitate him!
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