5. According to the words of the Second Vatican Council, Mary “is hailed as pre-eminent and as a wholly unique member of the Church, and as her type and outstanding model in faith and charity” (Lumen Gentium, n. 53). The Mother of the Redeemer is also uniquely redeemed by him in her Immaculate Conception and has preceded us in that perseverance in faithful and loving attention to the Word of God that leads to blessedness (cf. ibid., n. 58). For this reason too, Mary “is also intimately united to the Church. As St Ambrose taught, the Mother of God is a type (typus) of the Church in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ. For in the mystery of the Church, which is herself rightly called mother and virgin, the Blessed Virgin stands out in eminent and singular fashion as exemplar both of virgin and mother” (ibid., n. 63). The Council itself contemplates Mary as “the Mother of the members of Christ” (cf. ibid., nn. 53, 62), and consequently, Paul VI proclaimed her as Mother of the Church. The doctrine of the Mystical Body that most forcefully expresses Christ’s union with the Church is also the biblical foundation of this affirmation. “The head and the members are born of one and the same Mother” (Treatise on True Devotion, n. 32), as St Louis Marie reminds us. In this sense, we can say that, through the work of the Holy Spirit, the members are united and conformed to Christ the Head, the Son of the Father and of Mary, in such a way that “a true child of the Church must have God for his Father and Mary for his Mother” (The Secret of Mary, n. 11).
In Christ, the Only-Begotten Son of the Father, we are truly children of the Father, and at the same time, sons and daughters of Mary and of the Church. In a certain way, it is the whole of humanity that is reborn in the virgin birth of Jesus. “These words can be attributed better to the Mother of the Lord than to St Paul of himself: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!’ (Gal 4: 19). Every day I give birth to the children of God until Jesus Christ my Son be formed in them in the fullness of his age” (Treatise on True Devotion, n. 33). This doctrine is expressed most beautifully in the prayer: “O Holy Spirit, give me great devotion to Mary, your faithful spouse; give me great confidence in her maternal heart and an abiding refuge in her mercy, so that by her you may truly form in me Jesus Christ” (The Secret of Mary, p. 81).
One of the loftiest expressions of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort’s spirituality refers to the identification of the faithful with Mary in her love for Jesus and in her service to Jesus. Meditating on St Ambrose’s well-known text: “Let the soul of Mary be in each of us to magnify the Lord, and the spirit of Mary be in each of us to rejoice in God” (Expos. in Luc., 12, 26: PL 15, 1561), he writes: “A soul is happy indeed when… it is all possessed and overruled by the spirit of Mary, a spirit meek and strong, zealous and prudent, humble and courageous, pure and fruitful” (Treatise on True Devotion, n. 258). Mystical identification with Mary is fully directed to Jesus, as he says in the prayer: “Finally, dearly beloved Mother, grant, if it be possible, that I may have no other spirit but yours, to know Jesus and his divine will; that I may have no other soul but yours, to praise and glorify the Lord; that I may have no other heart but yours, to love God with a love as pure and ardent as yours” (The Secret of Mary, pp. 71-72).
Pope John Paul II
To the Men and Women Religious of the Montfort Families
