Picture of St. Louis Marie De Montfort
Introduction
According to the Liturgical calendar, St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s day falls on 28th April every year. St. Louis had been adopted as a patron saint of Balaka Parish for roughly half a century ago.
The impact of St. Louis De Montfort’s life has had a significant influence in the lives of Christians of the parish, such as being prayerful, giving alms to the poor, doing penance, suffering persecution, working seriously for the salvation of souls and mostly clinging to the cross of the ressurected Christ.
Commemorating this day Mrs. Bwezani, amassed his biography and devotion into a summarized article below.
Biography of St. Louis of Montfort
His first name was Louis Grignion. He was born at Montfort, France, on 31st January in 1673. He was coming from a well to do family. His father was old, austere patriarchal type, whose word was absolute law. He inherited a stubborn determination, which however he used entirely to advance the reign of Jesus and many. He spurned the comforts and advantages of his inherited station in life, and offered himself completely in the priesthood. He was ordained in 1690. It is when he changed and dropped his family name and called himself “Louis of Montfort”.
St. Louis De Montfort
All the days of his priesthood were going rough. At the age of showing much care to his body, he ignored it at the point that those who knew him could lose interest in him. His contemporaries lauded the saints for the similar lives but when the reality was brought before their very eyes, it was a different matter. He was despised, rejected contemned and condemned with insistence that would have broken a lesser spirit. St. Louis was one of those that St. Paul speaks “those who were… in want, distressed, afflicted of whom the world was not worthy… (Heb 11:37-38). Louis of Montfort was one of these.
His devotion
He bequeathed to the word of treasury of gold and jewels, set in the casket of his treatise true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. St Louis did not consider himself the originator of the doctrine he proposed and preached with all his soul. He expressly disclaims that honour.
Essence of his devotion
He expressed the essence of his devotion in the following words, “All our preparation consists inbeing conformed, united and consecrated to Jesus Christ, and most perfect of all devotions is without any doubt that which the most perfectly conforms, unites and consecrates us to Jesus Christ”. Now, Mary being the most conformed of all creatures to Jesus Christ, it follows that all devotions that which most consecrated and conforms the soul to our Lord is devotion to his holy mother, and that the more of a soul is consecrated to Mary, the more it is consecrated to Jesus or in other words, a perfect renewal of the vows and promises of the holy baptism.
Conformity of the divine will
This is the highest perfection that man can ever attain. It simply means being conformed to the divine mold. Clinging to our own will in anything at all means that union with the divinity is excepted to occur by the molds of changing to fit the base metal poured into it. The result would be distortion and ugliness but the conformity that holds back nothing at all, not even the disposition of our prayers or disposable merits. This is what the consecration of St. Louis of Montfort fully lived, achieves. He did not look upon the will to make this complete sacrifice of self as the ultimate goal something to be attained only after endeavor.
Boldly and unhesitatingly he establishes this as the very gateway to the practice of his devotion. True, he prescribes a three-week preparation for the solemn event, a vigil liege Lord and to the mistress of all. But as the knight he proved his loyalty so much and kept an act of consecration itself as by his subsequent loyal living of it until death.
St Louis died at St. Laurent-sur-sevre on April 28, 1716. On May 12, 1853 his doctrines were pronounced free from error. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1888, and canonized by Pope Pius XII on a sublime formula for making this initial consecration. He entitled it “Consecration to Jesus Christ, the incarnate wisdom, through the Blessed Virgin Mary”. The part of the prayer is addressed to Jesus and the remainder, including the actual words of oblation, to Mary. Our Lady is the proximate and immediate object of devotion. But the ultimate and final one is Jesus. The saint esteemed consecration to Mary as the surest and best way of being truly consecrated to her Divine son.
By Mrs. Bwezani