April 28: Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort
Finding Jesus through Mary
Embracing the fruits of Baptism he discovered the simplest, shortest and safest path to Jesus, that is, through devotion to the Virgin Mary. Thus Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort proposed to the faithful the consecration to Jesus by the hand of Mary the Mother of God. He wrote in his famous Treatise on True Devotion: “It is through the Most Holy Virgin Mary that Jesus Christ came into the world, and it is also through her that he must reign in the world”.
Born on January 31, 1673, in Montfort-sur-Meu, a small village west of Rennes in Brittany, with the name of Louis in honor of Saint Louis, King of France, and in devotion to the Virgin, at his Confirmation he added the name Mary to his own.
Having entered the Seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris in 1695, he was ordained a priest on June 5, 1700. He began his priestly ministry in Nantes and then in Poitiers, as a hospital chaplain where he proclaimed the Gospel among the beggars and common people. Full of missionary zeal, he devoted himself to the service of spreading the Kingdom of God, especially among the most needy in whom he saw the face of Christ. It is said that one evening in Dinan he met a leper on his way and took him upon on his shoulders. When he reached the door of his house he exclaimed: “Open to Jesus Christ!” and laid him in his own bed. Because of his charity towards the poor he was called “the good Father of Montfort”. After visiting the Holy House of Loreto, on June 6, 1706 he was received in audience by Pope Clement XI, with the hope of being sent abroad as a missionary. The Pope, however, asked him to remain in Brittany as an apostolic missionary to bring the population back to the true faith to fight against the heresy of Jansenism. His motto became “God Alone”, willingly embodied in his life of silence and prayer. Renowned as a great preacher he also wrote hymns and books on spirituality. He spent his energies so that the faithful would truly love Christ, imitating him by carrying a cross: “The cross is wisdom and wisdom is the cross”. In his sermons he emphasized that the purpose of all devotions is to be with Jesus Christ: “If, then, we establish the solid devotion to our Blessed Lady, it is only to establish more perfectly the devotion to Jesus Christ, and to put forward an easy and secure means for finding Jesus Christ. If devotion to our Lady removed us from Jesus Christ, we should have to reject it as an illusion of the devil; but on the contrary, so far from this being the case, there is nothing which makes devotion to our Lady more necessary for us, as I have already shown, and will show still further hereafter, than that it is the means of finding Jesus Christ perfectly, of loving Him tenderly, and of serving Him faithfully.” (Treatise on True Devotion to Mary, 62).
He founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Wisdom, the Company of Mary (Montfort Missionaries), and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel.