Whether it be the task of the active worker to rescue souls from sin or to make virtues put forth flowers in their souls, his first objective must always be, as was St. Paul’s, to bring forth Our Lord in them. Now Bossuet says that God, having once willed to give us Jesus through the Most Blessed Virgin, there is no further change in that order. It was she who brought forth the Head, and so it is she too who is to bring forth the members.
To isolate Mary from the apostolate would be to misconstrue one of the most vital parts of the divine Plan. “All the elect,” says St. Augustine, “are, in this world, hidden in the womb of the Most Blessed Virgin, where they are cherished and nourished and fostered and reared by this good Mother until such time as she brings them forth to glory after their death.”
And St. Bernardine of Siena justly concludes that, since the Incarnation, Mary has acquired a sort of jurisdiction over every temporal mission of the Holy Ghost, in such a way that no creature receives any graces but through her hands.
But the man with true devotion to Mary becomes all-powerful over the Heart of his Mother. And so, what apostle can doubt the efficacy of his Apostolate when, by his devotions, he can control the all-powerful mediation of Mary in the distribution of the merits of the Precious Blood?
Hence we observe that all great converters of souls are filled with an unusually powerful devotion for the Blessed Virgin. Are they out to free a soul from sin? What persuasive warmth is theirs, identified as they are by their horror for evil and their love of purity, with her who has applied to herself the name of the Immaculate Conception!
It was by the voice of Mary that the Precursor recognized the presence of Jesus, and leaped in the womb of his mother. What persuasive accents will Mary give to her true children, that they may open to Jesus hearts hitherto locked!
What words come to the minds of those who are intimately united to the Mother of Mercies when they want to prevent souls that have long abused grace, from falling into despair!
Some unfortunate man does not know Mary. The assurance with which the apostle shows her to be a true Mother and Refuge of sinners will open out new horizons to such a one!
The Holy Curé of Ars sometimes ran across sinners, blinded by delusions, who relied on some external practice of devotion to the Blessed Virgin to quiet their consciences, and let them sin with greater freedom, without fear of the everlasting flames of Hell. In such cases, his words were of tremendous effect, both in bringing the guilty one to realize the monstrosity of this presumption, so insulting to the Mother of Mercy, and to make him use that act of devotion to implore the grace to get free from the crushing coils of the infernal snake.
But in a similar situation an apostle without much devotion to Mary will only succeed, by his wounding, frigid words, in making the poor drowning wretch let go of the last straw that might have turned into a force strong enough to keep him afloat until he reached safety.
When Mary is living in the heart of her apostle, he will be guaranteed the use of the persuasive eloquence of Our Blessed Mother herself, speaking in him, and moving souls with whom all else has failed. It is apparent that Our Lord, in a most beautiful delicacy of feeling, has left to the mediation of His Mother the most difficult conquests of the apostolate desiring that they should be accorded to no one but those who live in intimate union with her. “Through thee He has reduced our enemies to nought”: Per te ad nihilum redegit inimicos nostros.
Never will the true son of Mary run out of arguments, of means or even of expedients when it becomes necessary, in almost hopeless cases, to strengthen the helpless and give consolation to those who cannot be consoled.
The Decree that added the invocation Mater Boni Consilii (Mother of Good Counsel) to Our Lady’s Litany, goes back to the titles of “Treasuress of Heavenly Graces,” and “Universal Consoler” (Coelestium gratiarum Thesauraria, Consolatrix universalis), which are Mary’s due. “Mother of Good Counsel,” she only gives to those who are truly devoted to her, as she did at Cana, the secret of obtaining from God the wine of strength and of joy to distribute to men.
But it is above all when the time comes to speak to souls of the love of God that this Ravisher of Hearts, Raptrix Cordium, as St. Bernard called her, the Spouse of Substantial Love, places upon the lips of her intimates the words of fire that enkindle love of Christ, and bring into being, through that love every other virtue.
We apostles are bound to have a passionate love for her whom Pius IX calls Virgo Sacerdos, the Priestly Virgin, and whose dignity, in every respect, outstrips that of any priest or pontiff. And this love gives us the right never to give up any work as fruitless if we have once begun it with Mary, and are ready to keep on going, in it, with her. For Mary, as a matter of fact, is at the base and at the final peak of perfection of all things that have to do with the Kingdom of God through her Son.
But let us be careful never to delude ourselves that we are working with her if all we do is to erect altars and have a few hymns sung in her honor. What she is looking for, from us, is a devotion that will allow us to affirm, in all sincerity, that we live habitually united to her, that we have recourse to her counsel, that our affections pass through her Heart and that our petitions are frequently made through her. But the thing that Mary most of all expects of our devotion is the imitation of all the virtues that we admire in her and the unreserved abandonment of ourselves into her hands that she may clothe us with her Divine Son.
On this condition of habitual recourse to Mary, we will imitate that general of the army of the people of God, who, before marching against the enemy told Deborah: “If thou wilt come with me, I will go; if thou wilt not come with me, I will not go.” Not only will she be concerned in the principal decisions of our lives, but also with every detail of their execution, even the most unforeseen.
United with her whose invocation Our Lady of the Sacred Heart sums up all her titles, we will never run the risk of ruining our works by allowing them to obstruct our interior life, to become a danger to our souls, and serve more for our own glory than for that of our God. On the contrary, we will go through our works to the interior life, and hence to an ever more and more intimate union with her who will guarantee us the possession of her Son for all eternity.
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