DAY 7

A Quick, Easy, and Secure Way to Holiness

For the last two days, we've learned about some beautiful benefits of being consecrated to Jesus through Mary, benefits both to ourselves and to those who are closest to us. Today, on this final day of meditation on the teaching of St. Louis, we're going to focus on other benefits of Marian consecration. Specifically, we're going to learn about how Marian consecration is a quick, easy, and secure way to holiness. As we read about this, we should keep in mind that the gift of these benefits doesn't entitle us to just kick back and take it easy. (This would be the self-love that St. Louis rebuked during yesterday's reading.) Rather, when we see God's generosity in giving us such a great gift as Marian consecration, we should strive all the more ardently to live it out and grow in holiness.

Let's start with the quick and easy part: The way of consecration to Jesus through Mary is a quick and easy way to holiness. And what is holiness? Dying to self. And this definitely is not easy. Still, Marian consecration is a relatively quick and easy way along a path that by its very nature isn't easy and often takes a long time. Saint Louis introduces this way as follows:

As there are secrets of nature by which natural operations are performed more easily, in a short time and at little cost, so also are there secrets in the order of grace by which supernatural operations, such as ridding ourselves of self, filling ourselves with God, and becoming perfect, are performed more easily.²¹

So how do we follow this quick and easy way? By giving ourselves to Jesus through Mary. Mary leads us to Jesus and makes the road to holiness quick and easy, even though she doesn't take away our crosses. In fact, those who are particularly beloved by Mary often have more crosses than others, but Mary makes the crosses sweet and light:

[It] is quite true that the most faithful servants of the Blessed Virgin, being also her greatest favorites, receive from her the greatest graces and favors of Heaven, which are crosses. But I maintain that it is also the servants of Mary who carry these crosses with more ease, more merit, and more glory. That which would stay the progress of another a thousand times over, or perhaps would make him fall, does not once stop their steps, but rather enables them to advance; because that good Mother, all full of grace and of the unction of the Holy Spirit, prepares her servants' crosses with so much maternal sweetness and pure love as to make them gladly acceptable, no matter how bitter they may be in themselves; ... [it's] just as a person would not be able to eat unripe fruits without a great effort which he could hardly keep up, unless they had been preserved in sugar.²²

We make more progress in a brief period of submission to and dependence on Mary than in whole years of following our own will and relying upon ourselves.²³

By this practice, faithfully observed, you will give Jesus more glory in a month than by any other practice, however difficult, in many years.²⁴

[True devotees of Mary] have such facility in carrying the yoke of Jesus Christ that they feel almost nothing of its weight.²⁵

So, the way of Marian consecration truly is quick and easy, relatively speaking. As St. Louis says elsewhere, it's like the difference between a sculptor who makes a statue through long weeks of hard labor, hammering away with a chisel and another artist who makes the same statue quickly and easily by using a mold. Mary is the mold that forms us most perfectly, quickly, and easily into other images of Christ.²⁶

We'll now close these reflections on the wonderful benefits of Marian consecration by letting St. Louis describe how this way is also a secure path, meaning that, as we walk it, we're particularly protected from and defended against evil:

[Mary] puts herself around [her true children], and accompanies them "like an army in battle array" (Cant 6:3). Shall a man who has an army of a hundred thousand soldiers around him fear his enemies? A faithful servant of Mary, surrounded by her protection ... has still less to fear. This good Mother ... would rather dispatch battalions of millions of angels to assist one of her servants than that it should ever be said that a faithful servant of Mary, who trusted in her, had had to succumb to the malice, the number, and the vehemence of his enemies.²⁷

Today's Prayer:
Come, Holy Spirit, living in Mary. Help me to praise you for such a quick, easy, and secure path to holiness!