I'm reading this pdf file online you can open it up in iBooks as well. What I've read answers a lot for me about our lady it's after giving me back the love of our lady which in the last few months I started to lose. I don't know what happened and why I started to think it would be easier to go straight to Jesus then to ask his mother for directions! During my fasting today I prayed and read this book and my heart opened up. I can see today was ment to happen the way it did. http://www.basilica.org/pages/ebooks/St. Louis de Montfort-True Devotion to Mary.pdf
I am glad you are getting so much from St. Louis. He is truly magnificent when it comes to Our Lady. I highly encourage doing the consecration formula in it if you haven't already. I did it a year ago and even though I have responded very poorly to the graces I have been given, I have been helped along very, very much in my spiritual life. God bless you Oakline
I'm going to start it on the 19 Oct because you will finish on Presentation of the blessed Virgin Mary on the 21st of Nov
deesbee, I did grow up Catholic but was lead away for some years and on return also had some suspicion about devotion to Our Lady. But no, ultimately this is all about Christ and leads to a truer more humble devotion to Christ and a closer sense of his life, death and resurrection. Some excerpts form TRUE DEVOTION St. Louis de Montfort 75. Following therefore the teaching of the saints and of many great men we can call ourselves, and become, the loving slaves of our Blessed Lady in order to become more perfect slaves of Jesus. Mary is the means our Lord chose to come to us and she is also the means we should choose to go to him, for she is not like other creatures who tend rather to lead us away from God than towards him, if we are over-attached to them. Mary's strongest inclination is to unite us to Jesus, her Son, and her Son's strongest wish is that we come to him through his Blessed Mother. He is pleased and honoured just as a king would be pleased and honoured if a citizen, wanting to become a better subject and slave of the king, made himself the slave of the queen. That is why the Fathers of the Church, and St. Bonaventure after them, assert that the Blessed Virgin is the way which leads to our Lord. 94. Scrupulous devotees are those who imagine they are slighting the Son by honouring the Mother. They fear that by exalting Mary they are belittling Jesus. They cannot bear to see people giving to our Lady the praises due to her and which the Fathers of the Church have lavished upon her. It annoys them to see more people kneeling before Mary's altar than before the Blessed Sacrament, as if these acts were at variance with each other, or as if those who were praying to our Lady were not praying through her to Jesus. They do not want us to speak too often of her or to pray so often to her. Here are some of the things they say: "What is the good of all these rosaries, confraternities and exterior devotions to our Lady? There is a great deal of ignorance in all this. It is making a mockery of religion. Tell us about those who are devoted to Jesus (and they often pronounce his name without uncovering their heads). We should go directly to Jesus, since he is our sole Mediator. We must preach Jesus; that is sound devotion." There is some truth in what they say, but the inference they draw to prevent devotion to our Lady is very insidious. It is a subtle snare of the evil one under the pretext of promoting a greater good. For we never give more honour to Jesus than when we honour his Mother, and we honour her simply and solely to honour him all the more perfectly. We go to her only as a way leading to the goal we seek - Jesus, her Son.
I just read the first few paragraphs from the St. Louis de Montfort - True Devotion pdf and He calls Mary our Alma Mater. I took latin in high school many years ago but never knew that Alma Mater means "nourishing/kind", mater "mother." How beautiful!
"Chosen soul, provided you thus carefully cultivate the Tree of Life, which has been freshly planted in your soul by the Holy Spirit, I can assure you that in a short time it will grow so tall that the birds of the air will make their home in it. It will become such a good tree that it will yield in due season the sweet and adorable Fruit of honor and grace, which is Jesus, who has always been and will always be the only fruit of Mary." "Happy is that soul in which Mary, the tree of life, is planted." (St. Louis Marie de Montfort - "God Alone", Secret of Mary)
