Adoration

JESUS LIVING IN MARY:
HANDBOOK OF THE SPIRITUALITY
OF ST. LOUIS DE MONTFORT

ADORATION

Summary

I. Adoration in the Experience of Montfort II. Adoration in French Spirituality of the Seventeenth Century. III. Montfort’s Illumination on the Subject of Adoration: 1. The attitude of adoration; 2. Recipients of adoration: a. An absolute "no" to idolatry, b. Adoration of God, c. "Adorable Jesus." IV. Adoration of God in Our Times: 1. Idolatry or adoration?: a. Liberation from modern idolatries, b. Adoration in spirit and truth; 2. Return to the Trinitarian legacy.

"Let us adore forever / The Lord in his good things made. / Let us adore for-ever / The Lord in all that is." (H 50,1). Adoration of God is a constant refrain in Montfort; he invites the Christian community to adore the Lord always because He is God and reveals Himself in His gifts. Montfort reunites profound elements of adoration that aid in the discovery of an authentic spirituality.

I. ADORATION IN THE EXPERIENCE OF MONTFORT

A sense of God and God’s presence was present in Montfort from his childhood. Blain, who remembers being shown his young friend’s places for retreat and prayer, says, "He seemed to me to be so filled with God, so preoccupied with Him, that I was both confused and enlightened."1 The search for silent and solitary places in which to make a retreat was constant in every stage of Montfort’s life. But his rapport with God grew all along his journey, thanks to his own spiritual experiences and to his contacts with devout people of his time and with the poor.2

During his time in seminary, under the influence of Boudon and Surin, Montfort succeeded in crystallizing his spiritual life in the love of God, which in turn implied remaining apart from all other creatures He took Boudon’s exhortation literally: "Leave other creatures, contemplate God alone. . . . We must say to ourselves always, God alone, God alone."3 God alone will be Montfort’s motto, the hallmark of his excellence. For his part, Blain remarks that, after having abandoned the Sorbonne, Montfort "found more time to give to God and was free to follow his overriding attraction to retreat and prayer."4 In addition, all his bodily mortifications, the subject of so much attention among the seminarians, were forms of this "perfect self-annihilation" of which Surin spoke and that served to enhance his adoration. There was an exception to this withdrawal from the presence of others: the "afflicted Christians"—to use Boudon’s expression—whom we must honor because we see in them the "living images" of God.5 Blain writes that, echoing Boudon’s book, Montfort, while living in the community of La Barmondière, "felt a holy envy for the poor and afflicted; he honored and respected them as the living images of Jesus crucified. One day, seeing him escort to the door, hat in hand, a man who appeared rather insignificant, and surprised by such marks of respect, I asked him why he showed such respect to someone who did not appear to require it. He answered, ‘It is because he is on the cross and we must respect and honor all those who have the good fortune to be thus attached.’"6 There is a flash of this same attitude in the famous incident at Dinan in 1706, when he brought a poor leper to the missionary house, crying "Open the door to Jesus Christ." 7 This display of honor for the poor and sick goes hand in hand with true adoration for the person of Christ, Who is present in them. Around 1702, referring to a Benedictine of the Blessed Sacrament, Montfort said explicitly, "I adore Jesus crucified in her" (L 13).

Thus does Montfort’s adoration become more Christological: he adores Jesus in the poor, and he enters into an adoring and atoning Eucharistic spirituality. In each case, he acts from a perspective of pure faith, without either visions or miracles: "Faithful adorers give so much glory to God here on earth but they are so few, for even the very spiritual want to taste and see" (L 19). For him, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament includes a sacrifice, an immolation, of which one’s bodily attitude is only a symbol: "What an honor it is for your body to be spiritually sacrificed in the hour of your adoration before the Blessed Sacrament!" (L 19).

Throughout his ministry, Montfort notes the neglect of the Eucharist by priests and faithful. He makes complaint in his Hymns, especially in the "Act of Reparation to the Blessed Sacrament" (H 136), which he composed during the mission at Campbon in 1709, and which Besnard defines as almost an "elegy":8 "Let me cry, let me weep bitter tears to God above; / For Jesus is abandoned in his Sacrament of love; / Forgotten and insulted . . . " (H 136,1). The link with adoration appears in the paradoxical situation of the "King of glory," worthy of adoration and yet "forsaken at our altars" (H 136,1); "The home for this adorable / Is often a sorry space; / The church is like a stable, / A plain, improper place" (H 133,4). The missionary gives all his zeal to the task of restoring the houses of God, but his goal is to create a place that is appropriate for celebration of the mysteries of salvation, for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and for prayer. Besnard gives an example: "Fervent worshipper, angel at the altar, whether seen in celebration or contemplated in thanksgiving, but always in the church. It is impossible not to be deeply affected by the grandeur of the mysteries and the holiness of the ministry."9

Montfort’s adoration is not restricted to the Eucharist, although it was undoubtedly the preferred setting. The universe was for him a truly divine milieu, offering the opportunity to adore God always and anywhere. Besnard, his biographer, gives us precious and profound testimony to this: "Everything served to elevate him closer to God, and one can say that he regarded this great universe as nothing but a vast and august temple that God fills with His majesty, desiring our adoration from every place therein. This thought pierced him so acutely that he was in a nearly constant state of adoration, bareheaded even when traveling, . . . so as to join exterior worship to that which he rendered unceasingly to the Supreme Being."10

Not only space but time as well became for Montfort a means of elevating himself to his Creator and of adoring His mysterious designs. The missionary encounters God in the events of his life, on his daily journey. If, for example, he remains in Paris around 1703 rather than return to Poitiers, it is because "my Master led me there in spite of myself. He has his plan in all this and I adore his plan, though I do not understand it" (L 15). And at the same time, he endeavors to know God’s designs through prayer: "Let us pray that God may make His holy will clear to us" (L 33). In his last letter, written two weeks before his death, Montfort begins with a solemn declaration about the difficult life that the first Daughters of Wisdom were leading at La Rochelle: "I worship the justice and love with which divine Wisdom is treating his little flock" (L 34).

In all the biographical and autobiographical information we have of him, Montfort appears as a true adorer of God. In the universe and throughout history, among the poor and in the Eucharist, he encountered the divine presence and manifested his adoration before the mystery of God. Through his own experience and together with the spiritual men and women of his time, the saint knew how to speak of adoration with authority or sing of it in his hymns.

II. ADORATION IN FRENCH SPIRITUALITY OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

In order to place Montfort’s statements about adoration in context, we must spend a moment looking at the spiritual figures of his century. They are usually grouped together as the "French school of spirituality."

A clear theocentrism characterizes the French, or Bérullian, school of spirituality. The honor of having renewed "the spirit of religion, the supreme worship of adoration and reverence to God"11 is properly due to Cardinal de Bérulle. In the cardinal’s words, God is so great, so "infinitely present and infinitely distant" that He must be adored "in His Essence and in His Persons, in His Being and in His operations."12 The God of Bérulle, being a Trinitarian God, is above all else the Father. It is thus the Father whom we must "adore like the dawn, but an eternal dawn, and like a dawn at noon in the plenitude of its light."13 Adoration is an interior attitude, consisting of "sublime thoughts of what we adore," but it leads to vital implications deriving from a "will marked by surrender, submission, and abasement"14 and expressed externally by threefold adoration of the Trinity: "the first adoration in the morning when we adore it as the source and primary truth of our being; the second at noon, as the perfection of our being; and the third in the evening, as the object of our being."15 Adoration is our first duty, but it must always yield to love, because "to love God is the greatest action that our spirit can take."16 This means that our adoration must exist not in fear but by the law of grace and love.

For Bérulle, adoration is no less Christocentric than theocentric. In effect Bérulle "considers Christ a result, a means, an example of adoration."17 Taking the mystery of the Incarnation seriously, the apostle of the Word Incarnate affirms, "We adore a God Who is eternal, but Who made Himself mortal; a God Who is invisible, but Who made Himself visible; a God Who is impassive, and yet Who made Himself prey to heat and cold, subject to the Cross and to death."18 Bérulle presents Jesus as the perfect religious and adorer of the Father, to Whom, as a man, he renders infinite adoration: "You are now, O Jesus! This adorer, this man, this servant infinite in power, in quality, in dignity. . . ."19 All Christians must become one with Jesus and strive to remain in a permanent state of adoration.

Bérulle’s disciples follow in the footsteps of their leader by emphasizing important aspects or by drawing the central conclusions from his teachings. Thus Condren states that adoration is like a holocaust, an annihilation, a state of sacrifice, and that this sacrifice is "made first and foremost to adore God, to acknowledge His greatness, and to give homage to His divine perfections."20 Olier, founder of the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, invites the faithful to live "the religion of Jesus Christ," to join in the adoration and praise that Jesus renders to his Father. And because Jesus renders this homage to his Father in the Eucharist, Olier "dreams of priests who prolong their adoration until they consume themselves before the Blessed Sacrament."21

Within this context, we can better understand the original contribution that St. Louis de Montfort made on the subject of the spirituality of adoration.

III. MONTFORT’S ILLUMINATION ON THE SUBJECT OF ADORATION

As we move from the thinking of Bérulle, Condren, and Olier to that of Montfort, we see Montfort’s concern with abandoning a literary genre better adapted to the spiritual elite in favor of a language that is closer and more comprehensible to the people. At the same time, the missionary does not ignore the most profound ideas of his predecessors. In Montfort’s thought, we can see particular attention to the nature of adoration and its objects.

1. The attitude of adoration

Montfort does not define adoration, but he readily ties it to abasement, sacrifice, and love. He writes that the body "is sacrificed by fasting and watching before the Blessed Sacrament" (L 18), and that it is an honor for the body "to be spiritually sacrificed in the hour of your adoration before the Blessed Sacrament" (L 19). Montfort understands that "every mind should realize its inadequacy and adore" (LEW 15) when confronted with the glory of Wisdom. The chosen means of adoring and rendering sovereign worship to the adorable Being of God is through prayer: "That is where man does sacrifice / His body and his soul; / There he adores with Jesus Christ, / Trembling before all, / He humbly adores His majesty. . . ." (H 15,4). This is not simply an optional posture. Men owe to God "this perfect sacrifice / of a grateful heart," which consists of "adoring God as we must" (H 26,5). The adoration of God must be tied to love, and Montfort takes pleasure in repeating a refrain in the hymns: "May we adore and love Him" (H 116,7; 117,6; 132,1). For Montfort, then, adoration is a complex attitude, with both a negative aspect (self-sacrifice) and a positive aspect of acknowledgment, praise, and love.

2. Recipients of adoration

But to whom do we owe this attitude of adoration? Certainly not to idols, including the false wood and stone gods of idolatrous paganism (cf. TD 48, 50, 59, 64, 93; PM 17) as well as the objects of an exaggerated love among Christians: the flesh ("the body naturally idolizes itself" (LEW 201); the body, which "becomes an idol / When too much gratified" (H 33,14); women of society who are "idols of beauty" or "idols of vanity" (H 156,7; 33,112; 43,23). Montfort declares war on all forms of idolatry (H 33,112), but he invokes the aid of the Holy Spirit: "Speak and crush the idols / That battle with your love" (H 141,6).

a.  An absolute "no" to idolatry.

No earthly creature may receive the adoration of men (the Cross is unique, as Montfort will explain). Not even the Virgin Mary is an exception. On this subject, Montfort’s teaching is categorical. Mary is certainly the "living tabernacle of God, in whom Eternal Wisdom willed to receive the adoration of both men and angels" (LEW 224), and Montfort invites us to view her this way: "Let us adore Jesus / Living in the womb of Mary" (H 87,1). She also promotes adoration; she is a means and model of adoration: "It is through herself / That I adore and love" (H 82,6). In the Magnificat, it is Mary personified who invites us to adore the Lord: "May we adore and love Him . . . May we adore and bless / Our one true God!" (H 85,2). She is the perfect adorer of Jesus, especially at the moment of Eucharistic communion, when with us she will receive her son; she will "adore him profoundly, . . . embrace him intimately in spirit and in truth, and perform many offices for him" (TD 270). However, Montfort is careful not to confer this adoring worship—even relative adoration—upon Mary herself: "The cross is adorable / Mary herself is not" (H 102,23). While Suarez adopts the language of "adoration" for Mary, with the qualifier "of dulia," Montfort unequivocally reserves adoration for God alone. Indeed, "It is not his wish [i.e., the wish of Wisdom] that the honor even of a relative adoration be given to any other creature however exalted, such as his most Blessed Mother" (LEW 172). The saint consistently distinguishes between "adorable Jesus" (he uses the same adjective to describe the Heart, the Blood, the Cross of Jesus) and "admirable Mary" (H 28,17; 40,33; 63,1; 127,70). This theological rigor on the subject of worship is significant in a spiritual figure and missionary like Montfort. For Montfort, God remains the only recipient of adoration, in the three Persons revealed in Jesus Christ and in the plan of salvation.

b. Adoration of God.

Montfort’s God is the God of biblical revelation, i.e., the Trinitarian God: Montfort adores God and desires that everyone acknowledge Him as the one true God. In SR 74 (which reflects Montfort’s own thought) we read, "All Christians have but one faith and adore one and the same God." The ardent desire of the saint is that everyone adore the true God, and he prays vigorously for this: "Jesus on the Cross, / Let your reign begin, / It is time, it is time. / All will adore and follow you then. . . ." (H 164,17). The confession of faith in a unique God also forms a part of the rules that Montfort sets for the charitable schools: "My God . . . I adore you and acknowledge you as my sovereign Lord and Master upon whom alone I depend" (RW 292,1).

Montfort places us before the "three adorable Persons" (SR 41), beginning with the Father: "Here I adore you, Father of my fathers, / All-powerful Lord, before Whom all is nothing" (H 24,33). Faith in this God, unique in the Trinity of Persons, clearly becomes a doxology, which Montfort puts on Mary’s lips in the Magnificat: "He is our one and true God, / Let all adore and bless Him! / The cries of all ring out loud / As they sing and address Him: / Glory to the Eternal Father, to the Word Incarnate / And to the Holy Spirit as well / Who in His love unites Them with an ineffable bond (H 85,6).

The saint does not ask for a simple adoration but a "perfect adoration" (H 15,37). Among the principal oracles of Incarnate Wisdom he cites the text of John 4:24: "God is a spirit and those who adore him must do so in spirit and in truth" (cf. LEW 145). In Hymn 136, lines 4–6, Montfort interprets this text to suggest the totality and sincerity of one’s gift of oneself to God: "In spirit, it is not shared, / . . . in truth it is not feigned . . ." (H 139,5–6).

Montfort is not interested solely in the immanent Trinity, God "in Himself," but also in the economic Trinity, God "in his blessings" (H 50,1). He adores the holy "will" (L 33), "the justice and love with which divine Wisdom is treating his little flock" (L 34), but also "God’s judgment" (HD 20, H 8,39) and His "blows" (H 11,35; 101,50), i.e., the afflictions that we encounter in our journey through life.

c.  "Adorable Jesus."

The adoration that is directed to God in the Trinity is centered on the person of the "adorable Jesus" (LEW 8,223; SR 6; SM 78), acknowledged by the faith of the Church as "true God and true man" (LEW 223). At the same time, Jesus remains, in Bérulle’s words, a "means" of adoration: "Before his Father, he truly amazes, / He humbles himself every day, / He prays, he adores, he constantly praises, / He speaks for us in a powerful way" (H 40,8).

Among the mysteries of Jesus, Montfort gives precedence to that of his childhood. He sings the mystery of Christmas in Bérullian terms, inviting us to adore the Christ child: "The Eternal is become a day, the Word is now grown silent, / The All-Powerful is now an infant. / Let us acknowledge, / Let us adore . . . / Our God a tiny infant" (H 57,1). The saint looks beyond the picture of a small infant lying in hay and, in the paradoxical encounter between divine grandeur and human weakness, adores the Lord: "A God in all his majesty / Has become part of humanity / our likeness. / Let us go adore him . . ." (H 57,5). He imagines the kings, prostrate before the infant Jesus, acknowledging his divinity among the signs of poverty: "Your almighty power is for us to adore / Despite your appearance so lowly and poor" (H 60,7). While expressing his admiration for Mary, Montfort reserves his adoration for her child: "Dear child of Mary, / . . . She has an infant, our Lord Who is adorable, / Let us all greet / Let us humbly meet / This Mother who is admirable" (H 63,1).

After this adoration of Jesus as an infant, Montfort adores him on the Cross. "The Cross is adorable" (H 102,23; cf. C 19,12; FC 1), he proclaims, while noting that it is a case not of absolute but of relative adoration (LEW 172). He explains this adoration in light of Wisdom: by the Passion and death on the Cross, the Cross "became as it were deified and an object to be adored by angels and by men. Jesus now requires that all his subjects adore it as they adore him" (LEW 172). The Cross, when it is received into the hands of God, is the mark of the faithful disciple of Jesus Christ (FC 3). Thus it becomes the true sign of the Christian (cf. H 109,23).

Regarding religious observances, Montfort does not fail to emphasize the value of adoration of the Eucharist. For the Daughters of Wisdom he ordains that "each week they make at least an hour of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament" (RW 134,2), but he believes that there should also be Eucharistic piety among the simple faithful whom he catechizes. In the hymn "The Rule of a Person converted during a Parish Mission," Montfort gives priority to an hour each month of Eucharistic adoration, asserting with Bérulle that Jesus is the sunlight of the soul: "An entire hour each month is spent / In my primary devotion; / It is the Blessed Sacrament / I adore without reservation" (H 139,60).

Finally, Montfort turns in satisfaction to adoration of the Heart of Jesus: "O Heart of God, adorable Heart! / Heart, object of my total love" (H 47,1); "Mortal, adore with the angels / This Heart which must be adored" (H 40,5). He does not look at the Heart of Jesus in isolation but in connection with the Trinity and with the Heart of the Virgin: "Infinitely adorable Heart / In the Most Holy Trinity" (H 40,9); "He is adorable; I praise his Heart, / I praise with all proportion / His admirable Mother and her Heart. / So great is their union" (H 40,33). One could hardly wish for greater theological precision in such simple, spiritual language.

IV. ADORATION OF GOD IN OUR TIMES

If Montfort finds places everywhere in which to adore God, today we speak of the "exile" of God and the Trinity from the daily lives of men and women. On the one hand, we note the fact of God’s absence from our world: "God’s habitat no longer exists in this world, and if the heavens sing His glory, their song is a posthumous song. . . . The universe has become uninhabited."22 Indeed, the word "adoration" has all but disappeared from vocabularies, even the theological vocabulary. Today one would say that the culture, at best, prefers to speak of God rather than speak to God in a context of prayer and adoration. On the other hand, adoration among Christians seems to leave out the Christian concept of Triune God: "It scarcely seems to matter, in doctrines of faith as well as in ethics, that God is one and triune."23 We often fall into a generic deism that excludes the Holy Trinity: "It is no exaggeration to say that we once again find the Trinity exiled from Christian theory and praxis. Yet it is perhaps this exile that gives rise to our nostalgia and motivates us to recover the beauty of the ‘trinitarian legacy’ in theology and in life."24

Even if his experience is not ours, Montfort helps us to recover the adoration of a unique God in the true biblical monotheistic sense and, at the same time, adoration of a specifically Christian God, the Trinitarian God. But it is up to us to make these essential dimensions live in the difficult context and the language of our times.

1. Idolatry or adoration?

Our age is not one of atheists but, rather, one of idolaters. In effect, the man who is living as if God did not exist but who cannot live without religion is resorting to supplementary gods, to whom he invariably offers incense in his own secret adoration. When a man no longer adores God, he replaces God with idols. Thus, before all else, it is necessary to free mankind from all idolatry with a profession of faith in the one God Who has revealed Himself throughout the history of salvation.

a. Liberation from modern idolatries.

Notwithstanding the strict interdiction against directing one’s adoration to possible rivals to God (cf. Deut 4:19, 5:7; Ex 34:14), the people of Israel fell back into the idol worship from which they had been wrenched away. The Bible recognizes two forms of idolatry: perversion and substitution. "The first arises with respect to Yahweh, when the image or even the name of God is manipulated or perverted; the second, when YHWH is replaced with other gods or false gods."25 These same forms of idolatry exist in the world today. The idolatry of "perversion" exists when men and women, who are the image of God, are oppressed by new forms of slavery. And the idolatry of "substitution" occurs when mankind endows the works of his own hands with an absolute or divine character: the god of money, the god of power, the god of sex, the god of technology, etc.26 As Montfort notes, citing the Bible, in order to adore God we must extricate ourselves from all idolatry. This is the most important liberation: freeing men and women from the diabolic circle of egoism so that they are open to adoration of God.

b. Adoration in spirit and truth.

In response to the contemporary difficulty in finding places for encountering God, Montfort gives special value to the biblical verse of John 4:24: "I serve God Whom I adore, / In spirit and in truth" (H 139,4). The significance of this famous text in the Gospel of John does not lie in any affirmation of a worship that is purely internal, without rites, gestures, or forms. Certainly the text affirms the relative value of the material temple, because henceforth the Father wishes to encounter mankind only in the temple of the body, which Jesus restores to life (Jn 2:19–22). In the person of Christ, "we see a new type of adoration of God, in which the place of worship is unimportant."27 True adorers no longer have any need for a national religion at Jerusalem or on Mount Garizim (Jn 4:20–23). They adore the Father "in spirit and truth," which is to say in the Holy Spirit (in John "spirit" always refers to the divine Spirit), and in the revelation that is centered on the truth of Jesus (Jn 14:6). True adorers are the baptized, begotten by the Spirit (Jn 3:3–8). Wholly sanctified, they can adore by means of "a consecration of their entire being, spirit, soul, and body (1 Thess 5:23)."28 True adoration is thus a gift from on high and takes the form of responding in love to the revelation, in Christ, of the true face of God.

2 Return to the Trinitarian legacy

The Trinity must be liberated from its exile and must no longer be considered a kind of spiritual theorem without any connection with the Christian life. We can encounter the three Divine Persons in the history of salvation, as in Karl Rahner’s axiom "The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity." Indeed, "if God in Himself were something other than the God Who is the subject of revealed history, we would have no other means of access in spirit and truth to the profundity of the Trinitarian life."29

The wonders that God has performed in the history of salvation are thus the road that leads the Christian, as it led the mother of Jesus (Lk 1:46–55), to praise and adoration of the Lord. And since this glory cannot be captured in history, there is always room for silence, amazement, adoration, especially with respect to the mysteries of the life of Christ and how they touch the Virgin Mary, and above all to those Montfort loved to emphasize: the Incarnation, the Cross, the Eucharist. The Love of Eternal Wisdom expresses from beginning to end admiration and adoration for the entire Trinitarian plan of salvation and for each mystery of Eternal Wisdom.

From Montfort’s perspective, a life consecrated to Christ by the hands of Mary is an act of adoration, in its negative as well as its positive aspects. It implies a total sacrifice of oneself in the renunciation of Satan and of all forms of evil. It requires a total, perpetual gift that unites us with Christ "because he is our last end. Since he is our Redeemer and our God we are indebted to him for all that we are" (TD 125).

Spirituality for Montfort is incarnational. Montfort adores God in the poor and he takes care of them concretely. Certainly God remains God because He is transcendent, but we must discern His presence in the world of the oppressed. To adore this presence means to become involved in the disappearance from the world of the idolatries and ideologies that become the means of oppressing the children of God. The mystical character of adoration is nourished on history and reverts to history in prayer and engagement; its object is the coming of God’s reign in the world.

G. Fenili - S. De Fiores

Notes: (1) Blain, 14. (2) Cf. S. De Fiores, Itinerario, 106–114, 176– 183. (3) H. Boudon, Les saintes voies de la Croix (The Holy Ways of the Cross), Hérissant, Paris 1769, 109 and 123. (4) Blain, 46. (5) H. Boudon, Les saintes voies, 234. (6) Blain, 52. (7) Besnard I, 7–8. (8) Besnard II, 181. (9) Besnard II, 182. (10) Besnard II, 183. (11) F. Bourgoing, preface to P. de Bérulle, Oeuvres complètes de Bérulle (Complete Works of Bérulle), ed. Migne, Paris 1856, 101. (12) P. de Bérulle, Oeuvres, 1198. (13) Ibid., 334. (14) Ibid., 1210. (15) Ibid., 1199. (16) Ibid., 1245. (17) A. Molien, Bérulle, in DSAM 1 (1937), 1554. (18) P. de Bérulle, Oeuvres, 938.(19) Ibid., 183. (20) Ch. de Condren, L’idée du sacerdoce et du sacrifice de Jésus-Christ (The Ministry and the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ), Paris 1901, 41. (21) I. Noye and M. Dupuy, Olier, in DSAM 11 (1982), 745. (22) Ch. Duquoc, La dislocazione della questione dell’identità di Dio e il problema della sua localizzazione (The Dislocation of the Question of the Identity of God and the Problem of Its Localization), in Con 28 (1992) 4, 19. (23) J. Moltmann, Trinità e regno di Dio (The Trinity and the Kingdom of God), Brescia 1983, 11. (24) B. Forte, Trinità comme storia: Saggio sul Dio cristiano (Trinity As History: An Essay on the Christian God), Edizioni paoline, Cinisello Balsamo 1985, 14. (25) P. Richard, Presenza e rivelazione di Dio nel mondo degli oppressi (The Presence and Revelation of God in the World of the Oppressed), in Con 28 (1992) 4, 49–50. (26) Ibid., 50. (27) R. Schnackenburg, Il vangelo di Giovanni, Paideia, Brescia 1973, 1:646. The Gospel According to St. John, trans. Kevin Smith, Herder & Herder, New York 1968 (28) J. de Vaux and J. Guillet, Adoration, in Vocabulaire de théologie biblique, ed. X. Léon-Dufour, Cerf, Paris 1962, 17. Themes of the Bible, Fides, Notre Dame 1960 (29) B. Forte, Trinità comme storia, 19.

Taken from: Jesus Living in Mary: Handbook of the Spirituality of St.
Louis de Montfort (Litchfield, CT: Montfort Publications, 1994).

Provided courtesy of the Montfort Fathers © All Rights Reserved.

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