St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort
Posted on April 28, 2020 by admin No comments
Born: 31 January 1673 at Montfort-La-Cane, Brittany, France
Died: 28 April 1716 at Saint-Laurent-sur-Sovre, France of natural causes
Venerated: in Roman Catholic Church
Beatified: 1888 by Pope Leo XIII
Canonized: 20 July 1947 by Pope Pius XII
Patronage: preachers, Brothers of Saint Gabriel, Company of Mary, Daughters of Divine Wisdom
Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (31 January 1673 – 28 April 1716) was a French Roman Catholic priest and Confessor. He was known in his time as a preacher and was made a missionary apostolic by Pope Clement XI.
As well as preaching, Montfort found time to write a number of books which went on to become classic Catholic titles and influenced several popes. Montfort is known for his particular devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the practice of praying the Rosary.
Montfort is considered as one of the early writers in the field of Mariology. His most notable works regarding Marian devotions are contained in Secret of the Rosary and True Devotion to Mary.
The Roman Catholic Church, under the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, canonized Montfort on July 20, 1947.[1] A “founders statue” created by Giacomo Parisini is located in an upper niche of the south nave of St. Peter’s Basilica.
He was born in 1673 in Montfort-sur-Meu, the eldest surviving child of eighteen born to Jean-Baptiste and Jeanne Robert Grignion. His father was a notary. Louis-Marie passed most of his infancy and early childhood in Iffendic, a few kilometers from Montfort, where his father had bought a farm. At the age of 12, he entered the Jesuit College of St Thomas Becket in Rennes, where his uncle was a parish priest.
At the end of his ordinary schooling, he began his studies of philosophy and theology, still at St Thomas in Rennes. Listening to the stories of a local priest, the Abbé Julien Bellier, about his life as an itinerant missionary, he was inspired to preach missions among the very poor. And, under the guidance of some other priests he began to develop his strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He was then given the opportunity, through a benefactor, to go to Paris to study at the renowned Seminary of Saint-Sulpice towards the end of 1693. When he arrived in Paris, it was to find that his benefactor had not provided enough money for him, so he lodged in a succession of boarding houses, living among the very poor, in the meantime attending the Sorbonne University for lectures in theology. After less than two years, he became very ill and had to be hospitalized, but survived his hospitalization and the blood letting that was part of his treatment at the time.
Upon his release from the hospital, to his surprise he found himself with a place reserved at the Little Saint-Sulpice, which he entered in July 1695. Saint-Sulpice had been founded by Jean-Jacques Olier, one of the leading exponents of what came to be known as the French school of spirituality. Given that he was appointed the librarian, his time at Saint-Sulpice gave him the opportunity to study most of the available works on spirituality and, in particular, on the Virgin Mary’s place in the Christian life. This later led to his focus on the Holy Rosary and his acclaimed book the Secret of the Rosary.
Devotion to the angels
Even as a seminarian in Paris, Montfort was known for the veneration he had toward the angels: he “urged his confreres to show marks of respect and tenderness to their guardian angels.” He often ended his letters with a salutation to the guardian angel of the person to whom he was writing: “I salute your guardian angel”. He also saluted all the angels in the city of Nantes, a custom that, it appears, he repeated when he entered a new village or city.
One of the reasons why Montfort had such devotion to the angels is that veneration of the pure spirits was an integral part of his training and also of his culture. His college teachers, the Jesuits, were known for their zeal in propagating devotion to the angels. Montfort’s seminary training under the Sulpicians brought him into contact with the thought of Cardinal de Bérulle and Olier, both of whom had deep veneration for the angels. Furthermore, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, manuals of piety and treatises on the pure spirits were numerous.
From priest to preacher
He was ordained a priest in June 1700, and assigned to Nantes. His great desire was to go to the foreign missions, preferably to the new French colony of Canada, but his spiritual director advised against it. His letters of this period show that he felt frustrated from the lack of opportunity to preach as he felt he was called to do.
In November 1700 he joined the Third Order of the Dominicans and asked permission not only to preach the rosary, but also to form rosary confraternities. He began to consider the formation of a small company of priests to preach missions and retreats under the standard and protection of the Blessed Virgin. This eventually led to the formation of the Company of Mary. At around this time, when he was appointed the chaplain of the hospital of Poitiers, he first met Marie Louise Trichet. That meeting became the beginning of Marie Louise’s 34 years of service to the poor.
Montfort set off to make a pilgrimage to Rome, to ask Pope Clement XI what he should do. The Pope recognized his real vocation and, telling him there was plenty of scope for its exercise in France, sent him back with the title of Apostolic Missionary. On his return from his long pilgrimage to Rome, Montfort made a retreat at Mont Saint Michel “to pray to this archangel to obtain from him the grace to win souls for God, to confirm those already in God’s grace, and to fight Satan and sin”. These occasions gave him time to think, contemplate and write.
For several years he preached in missions from Brittany to Nantes. As his reputation as a missioner grew, he became known as “the good Father from Montfort”. At Pontchateau he attracted hundreds of people to help him in the construction of a huge Calvary. However, on the very eve of its blessing, the Bishop, having heard it was to be destroyed on the orders of the King of France under the influence of members of the Jansenist school, forbade its benediction. It is reported that upon receiving this news, he simply said, “Blessed be God.”
Final years
He left Nantes and the next several years were extraordinarily busy for him. He was constantly occupied in preaching missions, always walking between one and another. Yet he found time also to write: his True Devotion to Mary, The Secret of Mary and the Secret of the Rosary, rules for the Company of Mary and the Daughters of Wisdom, and many hymns. His missions made a great impact, especially in the Vendée.
The heated style of his preaching was regarded by some people as somewhat strange and he was poisoned once. Although it did not prove fatal, it caused his health to deteriorate. Yet he continued, undeterred. He went on preaching and established free schools for the poor boys and girls.
Daughters of Wisdom
The bishop of La Rochelle had been impressed with Montfort for some time and invited him to open a school there. Montfort enlisted the help of his follower Marie Louise Trichet, who was then running the General Hospital in Poitiers. In 1715 Marie Louise and Catherine Brunet left Poitiers for La Rochelle to open the school there and in a short time it had 400 students.
On August 22, 1715, Trichet and Brunet, along with Marie Valleau and Marie Régnier from La Rochelle, received the approbation of Bishop de Champflour of La Rochelle to make their religious profession under the direction of Montfort. At the ceremony Montfort told them: “Call yourselves the Daughters of Wisdom, for the teaching of children and the care of the poor.” The Daughters of Wisdom grew into an international organization and the placing of Montfort’s founders statue in Saint Peter’s Basilica was based on that organization.
Death and burial
Montfort’s 16 years of priesthood include many months of solitude, perhaps as many as a total of four years; at the cave of Mervent, amidst the beauty of the forest, at the hermitage of Saint Lazarus near the village of Montfort, and at the hermitage of Saint Eloi in La Rochelle.
Worn out by hard work and sickness, he finally came in April 1716 to Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre to begin the mission which was to be his last. During it, he fell ill and died on 28 April of that year. He was 43 years old, and had been a priest for only 16 years. His last sermon was on the tenderness of Jesus and the Incarnate Wisdom of the Father. Thousands gathered for his burial in the parish church, and very quickly there were stories of miracles performed at his tomb.
Exactly 43 years later, on April 28, 1759, Marie Louise Trichet also died in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre and was buried next to Montfort. On September 19, 1996, Pope John Paul II (who beatified Trichet) came to the same site to meditate and pray at their adjacent tombs.
Total Consecration to Mary
In Montfort’s approach to Marian consecration, Jesus and Mary are inseparable. He views “consecration to Jesus in Mary” as a special path to being conformed to, united and consecrated to Christ, given that
” …of all creatures the one most conformed to Jesus Christ, it follows that among all devotions that which most consecrates and conforms a soul to our Lord is devotion to Mary, his Holy Mother, and that the more a soul is consecrated to her the more will it be consecrated to Jesus Christ.”
“God the Father made an assemblage of all the waters, and He named it the sea (mare). He has made an assemblage of all His graces, and He has called it Mary (Maria).”
Louis de Montfort influenced a number of popes.
In the 19th century, Pope Pius IX considered it the best and most acceptable form of Marian devotion, while Pope Leo XIII granted indulgences for practicing Montfort’s method of Marian consecration. Leo beatified Montfort in 1888, selecting for Montfort’s beatification the day of his own Golden Jubilee as a priest.
In the 20th century Pope Pius X acknowledged the influence of Montfort’s writings in the composition of his encyclical Ad diem illum.
Pope Pius XI stated that he had practiced Montfort’s devotional methods since his early youth. Pope Pius XII declared Montfort a saint and stated that Montfort is the guide “who leads you to Mary and from Mary to Jesus.”
Pope John Paul II once recalled how as a young seminarian he “read and reread many times and with great spiritual profit” a work of de Montfort and that: “Then I understood that I could not exclude the Lord’s Mother from my life without neglecting the will of God-Trinity.” According to his Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, the pontiff’s personal motto was “Totus Tuus.” The thoughts, writings, and example of St. Louis de Montfort were also singled out by Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptoris Mater as a distinctive witness of Marian spirituality in the Roman Catholic tradition.
Prayer of St. Louis De Montfort
O Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom! O sweetest and most adorable Jesus! True God and True Man, only Son of the Eternal Father, and of Mary ever Virgin! I adore Thee profoundly in the bosom and glory of Thy Father during eternity; and I adore Thee also in the virginal bosom of Mary, Thy most worthy Mother, in the time of Thine Incarnation.
I give Thee thanks, that Thou hast annihilated Thyself taking the form of a slave, in order to rescue me from the cruel slavery of the devil. I praise and glorify Thee, that Thou hast been pleased to submit Thyself to Mary, Thy holy Mother, in all things, in order to make me Thy faithful slave through her. But alas! Ungrateful and faithless as I have been, I have not kept the promises which I made so solemnly to Thee in my baptism; I have not fulfilled my obligations; I do not deserve to be called Thy child nor yet Thy slave; and as there is nothing in me which does not merit Thine anger and Thy repulse, I dare no more come by myself before Thy Most Holy and August Majesty. It is on this account that I have recourse to the Intercession of Thy most holy Mother, whom Thou hast given me for a Mediatrix with Thee. It is by her means that I hope to obtain of Thee contrition, and the pardon of my sins, the acquisition and the preservation of wisdom. I salute Thee, then, O Immaculate Mary living tabernacle of the Divinity, where the Eternal Wisdom willed to be hidden and to be adored by Angels and by men. I hail thee, O Queen of heaven and earth to whose empire everything is subject which is under God.
I salute Thee, O sure refuge of sinners, whose mercy fails no one. Hear the desires which I have of the Divine Wisdom; and for that end receive the vows and offerings which my lowness presents to thee.
I. N. [Name], a faithless sinner-I renew and ratify to-day in thy hands the vows of my Baptism; I renounce for ever Satan, his pomps and works; and I give myself entirely to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry my cross after Him all the days of my life, and to be more faithful to Him than I have ever been before.
In the presence of all the heavenly court I choose thee this day for my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and consecrate to thee as Thy slave, my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past present and future; leaving to you the entire and full right of disposing of me, and of all that belongs to me, without exception, according to Thy good pleasure to the greatest glory of God, in time and in eternity.
Receive O gracious Virgin, this little offering of my slavery, in honour of, and in union with, that subjection which the Eternal Wisdom deigned to have thy Maternity, in homage to the power which both of you have over this little worm and miserable sinner, and in thanksgiving for the privileges with which the Holy Trinity hath favoured thee. I protest, that I wish, henceforth, as thy true slave, to seek thy honour, and to obey thee in all things.
O admirable Mother, present me to thy Dear Son, as His eternal slave, so that as He hath redeemed me by thee, by thee He may receive me.
O Mother of mercy, get me the grace to obtain the true Wisdom of God, and for that end place me in the number of those whom thou lovest, whom thou teachest, whom thou leadest, and whom thou nourishest and protectest, as thy children and thy slaves. O Faithful Virgin, make me in all things so perfect a disciple, imitator and slave of the Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ thy Son, that I may attain, by thy intercession and by thy example, to the fullness of His age on earth, and of His glory in heaven. Amen.
Prayer of St. Louis De Montfort
Our Father who art in heaven, you completely fill heaven and earth with the immensity of your being; you are present everywhere; you are in the saints by your glory, in the damned by your justice, in the good by your grace, even in sinners by your patience, tolerating them. Grant that we may always remember that we come from you and that we may live as your true children. Grant that we may set our true course according to your will and never swerve from you. Grant that we may use our every power, our hearts and souls and strength to tend toward you, and you alone.
Novena to St. Louis De Montfort
(Please recite this novena for 9 consecutive days)
Great Apostle and son of Our Lady, Saint Lous de Montfort, thy only desire was to set aflame the world with the love of Jesus, through Mary. Obtain for us then a perfect and constant devotion to Mary, that we may participate in the faith, hope and charity of Our Lady, and that we may receive the favor we ask of thee during this Novena, if they be beneficial to our immortal soul, and the souls for whom we pray (Here make your intentions in silence).
Litany
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Ghost, Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God, Have mercy on us.
Holy Mary, Pray for us.
Saint Louis-Marie de Montfort, *
Ardent disciple of Jesus Christ the Incarnate Wisdom, *
Eloquent preacher of the Cross, *
Singer of the praises of the Sacred Heart, *
Loving slave of Jesus in Mary, *
Faithful son of the handmaid of the Lord, *
Apostle of the Most Holy Rosary, *
Preacher of the Mother of the Redeemer, *
Servant of the poor and the afflicted, *
Man of solitude and prayer, *
Wonder of mortification, *
Model of priests and missionaries, *
Fervent minister of the Holy Eucharist, *
Fearless champion of truth, *
Restorer of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, *
Marvel of poverty and abandonment to Divine Providence, *
Teacher of the people of God, *
Founder of Religious congregations, *
Apostle of the end times, *
Obedient collaborator with the Pope and Bishops, * * Pray for us.
Thou seest the Face of God: obtain for us perseverance in the faith.
Thou shinest within Infinite Charity: obtain for us the gift of pure love.
Thou livest in the New Jerusalem: obtain for us the spirit of prayer.
Thou standest before the throne of the Lamb: obtain for us the wisdom of the Cross.
Thou contemplate the Mother of the Lord: obtain for us true devotion to Mary.
Thou dwellest with the Apostles of Christ: obtain for us missionary zeal.
Thou sharest in the communion of Saints: obtain for us love for the Church.
Thou art seated at the Table of the Kingdom: obtain for us the crown of glory.
Thou art a powerful intercessor before the Throne of God: hear our prayers.
(Here make your intentions in silence.)
Let us pray.
O God, Who in the power of the Holy Spirit hast made Saint Louis-Marie an ardent apostle of Christ Crucified and a faithful son of the Virgin Mary; Grant that through his example and intercession we may be renewed in the spirit of our baptism and be always faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit. One God, forever and ever. Amen.