8. The Holy Spirit invites Mary to reproduce her own virtues in the elect, extending in them the roots of her “invincible faith” and “firm hope” (cf. Treatise on True Devotion, n. 34). The Second Vatican Council recalled this: “The Mother of Jesus in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise, she shines forth on earth until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God” (Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, n. 68). This eschatological dimension is contemplated by St Louis Marie especially when he speaks of the “apostles of the latter times” formed by the Blessed Virgin to bring to the Church Christ’s victory over the forces of evil (cf. Treatise on True Devotion, nn. 49-59). This is in no way a form of “millenarianism”, but a deep sense of the eschatological character of the Church linked to the oneness and saving universality of Jesus Christ. The Church awaits the glorious coming of Jesus at the end of time. Like Mary and with Mary, the saints are in the Church and for the Church to make her holiness shine out and to extend to the very ends of the earth and the end of time the work of Christ, the one Saviour.
In the antiphon Salve Regina, the Church calls the Mother of God “our Hope”. The same term is used by St Louis Marie who took it from a text of St John Damascene, who applies to Mary the biblical symbol of the anchor (cf. Hom I in Dorm. B.V.M., 14: PG 96, 719): “”We fasten our souls'”, he says, “”to your hope, as to an abiding anchor’. It is to her that the saints who have saved themselves have been the most attached and have done their best to attach others, in order to persevere in virtue. Happy, then, a thousand times happy, are the Christians who are now fastened faithfully and entirely to her, as to a firm anchor!” (Treatise on True Devotion, n. 175). Through the devotion to Mary, Jesus himself “enlarges the heart with firm confidence in God, making it look upon him as a Father” (ibid., n. 169).
Together with the Blessed Virgin and with the same maternal heart, the Church prays, hopes and intercedes for the salvation of all men and women. The Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium concludes with these words: “The entire body of the faithful pours forth urgent supplications to the Mother of God and of men that she, who aided the beginnings of the Church by her prayers, may now, exalted as she is above all the angels and saints, intercede before her Son in the fellowship of all the saints, until all families of people, whether they are honoured with the title of Christian or whether they still do not know the Saviour, may be happily gathered together in peace and harmony into one People of God, for the glory of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity” (n. 69).
Pope John Paul II
To the Men and Women Religious of the Montfort Families
