Ecumenism

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

ECUMENISM

Summary

I. Vatican II and Ecumenism. II. Saint Louis de Montfort and Ecumenism: 1. Montfort and the Calvinists; 2. Montfort, an unlikely patron of ecumenism? III. Relevance of Montfort’s Doctrine: 1. The need for updating; 2. The need for charitable honesty; 3. The Marian dimension of ecumenism. 4. Ecumenism and the dialog with non-Christians.

The restoration of unity was one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council (UR 1). In the words of a post-conciliar document, the Council "clearly asked Catholics to reach out in love to all other Christians with a charity that desires and works actively to overcome in truth whatever divides them from one another."1 Since the council, this ecumenical commitment has been reaffirmed frequently and forcefully by the Popes.2 Saint Louis de Montfort’s doctrine contains useful insights into the work of restoring unity to the followers of Christ.

I. VATICAN II AND ECUMENISM

In UR, the Council Fathers declared that baptized believers in Christ enjoy a certain communion with the Catholic Church, albeit imperfect. They have the right to call themselves Christians and should be looked on as brothers by members of the Catholic Church. Many good things of the Church’s life can exist outside her visible boundaries—the written Word of God, the life of grace, the theological virtues, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as visible elements (UR 3). At the same time, the council strongly emphasized that the engagement of the Catholic Church in the ecumenical movement did not signify any change in her unique claims. It is in her, the visible society governed by Peter’s successor and the bishops in communion with him, that the one Church of Christ subsists.3 The separated brethren are not blessed with that unity which Christ wished to bestow on the members of his Body. It is through the Catholic Church alone that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained (LG 8). Thus Christian unity, the goal of ecumenism, does not mean the construction, through ecclesiastical mergers, of some utopian "new" Church, but rather the gathering of all Christians "into the unity of the one and only Church." This essential unity will increase until the end of time, but it nevertheless already "subsists in the Catholic Church as something she can never lose."4

The council distinguished carefully between the various non-Catholic Christian communities. In first place in UR come the separated Eastern Churches. These are Churches in the proper sense, possessing true Sacraments, "above all—through apostolic succession—the priesthood and the Eucharist," and so they are joined to the Catholic Church, despite all the tragic tensions of past and present, "in the closest intimacy" (UR 4). Then come the Churches and "ecclesial communities" that broke away from Catholic unity since the end of the Middle Ages: the Old Catholic Churches, the Anglican Communion, and the various Protestant denominations (UR 19).

When it outlines the practice of ecumenism, the council gives primacy to "spiritual ecumenism" (UR 7, 8). Without this "soul," the "body" of ecumenical activity and dialogue cannot live. The saint turns out to be the Church’s best ecumenist, just as he is also the most effective practitioner for evangelization.5

J. Saward

II. SAINT LOUIS DE MONTFORT AND ECUMENISM

1. Montfort and the Calvinists.

It would be an anachronism to expect Saint Louis de Montfort to have been engaged in ecumenical dialogue as we know it today. He was, however, engaged in the apostolate to the Calvinists, not so much to share baptismal unity in Christ as to draw them to the Catholic Church. Since La Rochelle, with its concentration of Protestants, was an area evangelized by Montfort, he had to devise a plan on how to deal with them.

During the lifetime of Saint Louis de Montfort, the cold war—which at times heated up—between the Catholics and the Protestants was a sign of the age. Both sides had hardened their positions, at times refuting no more than a caricature of the other’s faith.

Saint Louis Marie showed an interest in working with the Calvinists. The second part of LS—yet to be published in English except for a few entries found in GA, 558-571—contains a late insertion, "Concerning Heretics," which Montfort copied from an anonymous author (S 360-370). The entry is divided into two parts: first, nine concise rules or "Methods to Convert Heretics," and second, the much longer part of the entry, a "Methodical Table to learn easily how to treat points of the faith against persons of the so-called reformed religion." This second part is itself divided into two: the first deals directly with "controversy," giving again summary rules to follow in any discussion with the Protestants, and the second with means "to aid the more docile" of the Protestants, who either a) believe "that we [Catholics] can be saved in our religion" or b) even "desire to be instructed [in the Catholic faith]."

The rules or methods for converting Protestants are apologetic arguments, e.g.: "You only know which book of Scripture is the Word of God through the Church to which you formerly belonged; you are not able, therefore, to know the true meaning of disputed passages except through the same Church. . . . They [the Calvinists] must be told that when it is a question of salvation, the safest [path] must be taken, which they admit. Now, according to them and their council of Charenton, it is indifferent to believe in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist, and according to us it is necessary to believe in it; therefore, the safest path is to believe in it. . . . They have to be shown that the . . . Church that recognizes the Pope as successor of Saint Peter is the true Church because it possesses the true mark, which is visible perpetuity without interruption since Jesus Christ up to the present."

If Montfort followed these guidelines, which he transcribed into S, he would have also obeyed some practical notes that form part of his "Concerning Heretics": "1. Never treat of two controversial points at the same time. . . . When one has thoroughly gotten to the bottom of one point, then an-other one can be treated. . . . 3. Never treat of open questions concerning religion, e.g., touching on the manner that Our Lord is present in the Blessed Sacrament, whether it be by adduction or reproduction, or how God predestines or how God gives grace" (S 370).

Saint Louis Marie speaks of "proving" the Catholic position in order to convince the Protestants and to shake them in their beliefs. The best way "to prove" the Catholic faith is "by Holy Scripture, which must always be treated with great respect. By the tradition of the Apostles, which is the foundation of everything we believe, because if tradition had not told us that Holy Scripture is such and such, we would not even know it, etc.; . . . by the contradictions . . . of sects and heresies; . . . by the authority of the councils, the Holy Fathers [of the Church], miracles, succession, etc.; by human reason, which aids faith" (S 369).

These methods of trying to convince Protestants of the truth of the Catholic faith represent the standard approach at the beginning of the eighteenth century, especially evident in the statement "outside the Church and outside salvation" (S 367). The most important attitude of Saint Louis de Montfort in his apostolate to the Calvinists was not so common in his time: to do everything "with charity" (S 367).

More specific to Saint Louis Marie is the role of Mary in the hope of fulfilling the Lord’s prayer, "May they all be one" (Jn 17:21). TD 49-59 and PM indicate Saint Louis de Montfort’s conviction that Christ will only fully reign in the world through Mary; it is through her that all will be gathered into "one flock and one shepherd" (PM 30).

P. Gaffney

2. Montfort, An Unlikely Patron of Ecumenism?

a. Some difficulties.

St. Louis de Montfort does not at first seem to be a suitable patron of ecumenism. To the modern ear, the words he uses to describe those outside the Catholic Church sound harsh and intemperate:

"Every heretic I detest / The pagan, the Turk, and the Jew, / The schismatic and the apostate, / Only the Catholic is my good" ( H 6, 32; cf. TD 30, 42, 64, 250).

Moreover, it is undeniable that St. Louis’ writings about Our Lady have disturbed and confused some non-Catholics. In the nineteenth century, Edward Bouverie Pusey, one of the original leaders of the Oxford Movement in the Church of England, cited St. Louis Marie as an example of the immoderate Marian piety that, to his mind, blocked the reunion of Rome and Canterbury. In the same period, Bishop Ullathorne, a Catholic of irreproachable orthodoxy, reported an example of how TD (Faber’s translation) could disconcert an unprepared Protestant. A certain lady, the bishop tells us, was on the very threshold of the Catholic Church. She had only one unresolved difficulty: devotion to Our Lady. "De Montfort’s book was put into her hands as the proper remedy, and it drove her away in terror."6

These examples do not disqualify St. Louis from the role of ecumenist. They prove only the need for his writings to be translated with linguistic accuracy, expounded with scholarly rigor, and presented with pastoral prudence. When they are thus unfolded, they will be seen to offer rich resources for the ecumenical endeavors of the Church.

In addition to the fact that Saint Louis Marie makes the distinction between formal and material heretics (TD 167) and would, then, be speaking about those involved in a knowing and willing alienation from the Church, the colorfulness of St. Louis Marie’s language in his hymns is explained by their pastoral purpose. The missionary is reaching out to the common people. When souls are in danger, the refined vocabulary of the salons is useless. In the hymn cited above, he is urging Catholics to guard the pearl beyond price that God has lavished on them - the true faith in its fullness. The person speaking is not St. Louis Marie himself but the hypostatized virtue of faith. She detests the heretic as heretic, not as a human person made in the image of God. She simply preaches the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas: heresy and apostasy are vices opposed, by definition, to the virtue of faith.7 Faith cannot but "detest" them.

St. Louis’ language would be inappropriate in our own time, but its vigor can still serve to challenge those tempted, through false irenicism, to minimize the claims of the Catholic Church. In the early years of the eighteenth century, the age of rationalist "Enlightenment," Louis de Montfort boldly preached fidelity to the Wisdom of God and His Church together with nonconformity to "the wisdom of the world." In a prophetic way, he foresaw the pressure that would be placed on Catholics, priests and laity, to attenuate their faith, to bring it into line with the "thoughts and maxims" of the world (RM 37), to make it look like just one of the many religions of mankind. Louis de Montfort is a "fool for Christ’s sake," shocking us out of the tendency to indifferentism and any other compromise of our faith.8 This is his first contribution to ecumenism.

As for his Mariology, it, too, can be an encouraging help, not an embarrassing hindrance, in the sacred cause of Christian unity. In RMat, Pope John Paul II said that he wished "to emphasize how profoundly the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and the ancient Churches of the East feel united by love and praise of the Theotokos" (RMat 31). During the Marian Year, 1987-1988, the Holy Father gave practical expression to this shared love of the one Blessed Mother. Marian services in the various Eastern rites were celebrated in the course of the year, and when the Ecumenical Patriarch visited Rome in December 1987, the celebrations of the Divine Liturgy and Vespers that he attended included canticles, both Latin and Greek, in praise of the Ever-Virgin Theotokos.9

b. The Eastern Churches.

The language of St. Louis’ Marian devotion, which some western Christians find extravagant, is close in spirit of that of the Byzantine tradition. The Roman rite is restrained in its mentioning and invoking of the Mother of God, whereas in the East she appears on almost every page of the liturgical books.10 In the Byzantine liturgy, while the Eucharistic Prayer is being completed by the priest, she is directly invoked in hymns sung by the choir. Newman mentioned this oriental exuberance in his response to Pusey’s Eirenicon: "Is it not a very pregnant fact that the Eastern Churches, so independent of us, so long separated from the West, so jealous for Antiquity, should even surpass us in their exaltation of the Blessed Virgin?"11 Many of the Marian titles in the TD can be found in the Byzantine liturgy and Fathers: "Eastern Gate," "Sanctuary of the Godhead," "Repose of the Blessed Trinity," "Throne of God," "City of God," "Altar of God" (TD 164).12 Through Poiré, St. Louis Marie seems to have had access to some of the most important of the Greek Fathers, most notably St. Basil (FC 14), St. John Chrysostom (FC 37), St. Germanus of Constantinople (TD 165), and St. John Damascene (TD 41).

The objection could be made that St. Louis’ advocacy of such typically Western devotions as the Rosary makes him unappealing to Eastern Christians. This need not be the case. The popular Byzantine Jesus Prayer, which often includes a Marian insertion ("through the prayers of thy Holy Mother"), is recited using a woolen prayer-rope similar to rosary beads. The praying of decades of the Hail Mary together with meditation on the mysteries of Jesus and Mary is also well established in the East, and not just among Eastern-rite Catholics. The Russian starets Father Alexander Guamanovsky used a prayer scheme in which "O Hail Mother of God and Virgin" was recited 150 times. He claimed that this "rule" had been given by the Mother of God to the Church in the eighth century and had been revived in the eighteenth by St. Seraphim of Sarov.13 Bishop Seraphim Zvezdinsky had a plan for prayerfully "remembering" the fifteen mysteries of Our Lady’s life from her Nativity to her Assumption and Coronation.14 These Russian spiritual fathers are close in spirit to the author of SM and MR.

Perhaps the most striking affinity between St. Louis and the Russian Orthodox tradition is his theological meditation on Eternal Wisdom, that is to say, the Second Person of the Trinity seen as the Wisdom of the Father (cf. LEW; H 103, 124, 125, 126). Several Russian theologians of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth—V . Soloviev, P. Florensky, and especially S. Bulgakov—had a similar preoccupation and developed the doctrine of "sophiology."15 This has always been controversial, however, and lacks the precisions and careful distinctions made by St. Louis Marie.16

c. Protestant Churches.

To Protestants, St. Louis might appear to be an immovable stumbling block. Careful exegesis of his works, however, can contribute to ecumenical dialogue, especially on the subject of devotion to Our Lady. The fear of some Protestants that Catholics elevate Mary to the level of deity will be overcome by the forcefulness with which St. Louis confesses "with the whole Church" that "Mary, being a mere creature coming from the hands of the Most High, is, in comparison with His infinite Majesty, less than an atom, or rather is nothing at all, since He alone is ‘He Who is’" (TD 14).

St. Louis Marie demonstrates throughout his works, in a way that should be enlightening for Protestants, that Catholic devotion to Our Blessed Lady is God-centered and Christ-centered. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate end of devotion to Mary (TD 61). Mary’s whole mission on earth and in heaven is to bring Jesus to men and men to Jesus. Devotion to the Mother is the "easiest," shortest," and "surest" way to union with the Son (TD 152). It helps us renew our baptismal commitment to Christ (TD 126-130). It is to him that we consecrate ourselves through Mary. "Since of all God’s creatures Mary is the most conformed to Jesus, it follows that, of all devotions, the one that consecrates and conforms a soul most to Our Lord is devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, his mother, and that the more a soul is consecrated to Mary, the more it is consecrated to Jesus" (TD 120).

The theology of St. Louis Marie issues a challenge to those Christians who have difficulties with Marian devotion. It invites them to ask themselves whether they truly believe in the Incarnation if they hold back their love from the Holy Virgin, in whose womb and by whose faith the Word was made flesh. Christological heresy, from Valentinus and Nestorius in the early centuries to the errors of our own time, has constantly sought to rob Our Lady of her unique role in the economy of salvation. Christological orthodoxy, by contrast, sees her as "crushing all heresies" (TD 166). In the words of Cardinal Newman, "She is called the Tower of David, because she has so signally fulfilled the office of defending her Divine Son from the assaults of His foes."17

St. Louis dramatically poses another question for the heirs of the Reformation. Can we be so confident that, with God as our heavenly Father, we have no need of an earthly mother in the order of grace? "Just as in natural and bodily generation there is a father and mother, so in supernatural and spiritual generation there is a Father who is God and a Mother who is Mary" (TD 30).

Father Louis Bouyer, convert and Oratorian priest, has argued that it is a kind of Monophysitism to accept human motherhood in the order of nature but not in the order of grace: "The most pernicious Docetism of Monophysitism is often the one we do not notice, in particular, Docetism toward ourselves, toward our new life as children of God. . . . The attitude of the Christian who imagines that, at the level of grace, it is sufficient for him to have a heavenly Father, and that he has no need of an earthly Mother, is a very dubious one. Does it not imply that Christian life and ordinary life have to remain on different levels, with nothing in common? There is no vainer illusion! There is no Christian life that is different from ordinary life. Christian life is that life placed under the immediate guidance of God without being cut off from its roots in history."18

A good case can be made for the thesis that the Christian bodies most vulnerable to the ravages of ideological feminism have been those traditionally reluctant to acknowledge the unique role of woman, of the Woman, in the drama of Redemption. In the Catholic Church, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has argued that Mary is the God-given "remedy" for all the Church’s contemporary troubles, not least for extreme feminism. He confesses that he has learned to appreciate the wisdom of the principle, well liked by St. Louis Marie, De Maria nunquam satis. The young Ratzinger thought it was exaggerated. "Now—in this confused period where truly every type of heretical aberration seems to be pressing upon the doors of the authentic faith—now I understand that it was not a matter of pious exaggerations, but of truths that today are more valid than ever.19

In recent years, many Protestants have come to see the force of these considerations and are slowly rediscovering the person and mission of Our Blessed Lady. "Without her," writes the Reformed theologian Donald G. Dawe, "the redemptive mystery of her Son is lost. With her it is received with joy."20 Over thirty years ago, Max Thurian, at the time a member of the Protestant monastic community at Taizé and now a Catholic priest, wrote a biblical Mariology, in which he argued that "instead of being a cause of division among us, Christian reflection on the role of the Virgin Mary should be a cause for rejoicing and a source of prayer."21 The council took note of this new stirring: "It gives great joy and comfort to this most holy Synod that among the separated brethren, too, there are those who give due honor to the Mother of Our Lord and Savior."22 The Council Fathers were thinking chiefly of the Orthodox, but there is no doubt that they were also celebrating the Marian re-awakening in the Protestant world.

Two years after the close of the council, the English Catholic layman Martin Gillet founded the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary to promote ecumenical devotion to Mary and the study of her place in the Church under Christ. Having extended its activities and membership to the United States and other countries, the Society now holds regular international congresses.

Our Lady is widely recognized, both within the Catholic Church and outside, as the Mother of Christian Unity. It cannot be otherwise, for the reason that St. Louis himself adduces. If Mary is the "safest" and "surest" way to Jesus, then she is also the most secure and direct way to unity according to his will. This is Pope John Paul II’s message in Rmat: "It is a hopeful sign that these Churches and ecclesial communities [in the West] are finding agreement with the Catholic Church on fundamental points of Christian belief, including matters relating to the Virgin Mary. For they recognize her as the Mother of the Lord and hold that this forms part of our faith in Christ, true God and true man. They look to her, who at the foot of the Cross accepts as her son the beloved disciple, the one who in his turn accepts her as his mother. Therefore, why should we not all together look to her as our common Mother, who prays for the unity of God’s family and who "precedes" us all at the head of the long line of witnesses of faith in the one Lord, the Son of God, who was conceived in her virginal womb by the power of the Holy Spirit?"(RMat 30)

St. Louis de Montfort is a most worthy model for today’s ecumenism. The resolute God-centeredness of his thought ("God Alone") points us to "the one thing necessary" in all our Christian strivings, whether for unity or for any other praiseworthy goal. This has been acknowledged recently by John Macquarrie, the Anglican theologian, in his collection of essays on ecumenical Mariology, Mary for All Christians. The text he quotes from TD will make a fitting conclusion to this article: "There have been few devotees of Mary so enthusiastic as Louis de Montfort, whose book on devotion to Mary is still widely used. But no one could be more forthright in making it clear that devotion to Mary is not an end in itself. . . ‘When we praise her, love her, honor her or give anything to her, it is God who is praised, God who is loved, God who is glorified, and it is to God that we give, through Mary and in Mary.’"23

J. Saward

III. RELEVANCE OF MONTFORT’S DOCTRINE

1. The need for updating

A review of the guidelines Saint Louis de Montfort employed in his encounters with the Calvinists (cf. above) reveals the ecumenical situation in France at the turn of the eighteenth century. Thanks especially to the Second Vatican Council, attitudes have drastically changed since his day. Montfort definitely followed the mind of the Church as it was manifested during his life; he would expect this same obedience to be given to the Church today by those who claim to share his vision.

2. The need for Charitable Honesty

"Nothing is so foreign to the spirit of ecumenism as a false irenicism which harms the purity of Catholic doctrine and obscures its genuine and certain meaning" (UR 11). Montfort can never be accused of watering down the Catholic faith in an attempt to win over the Calvinists of his day. If there is one rule of ecumenical dialogue that he strenuously observed, it is this: avoid false irenicism, peace at any price. Although the contemporary ecumenical approach would find that he and his contemporaries were too unbending, seeking only "conversion" and not "convergence," his forceful stress on the truths of the Catholic faith is a helpful antidote to those who would dilute Catholic doctrine in order to achieve unity.

The need of presenting the truth "with charity" (LS 367) condemns any triumphalistic approach. Although the term "triumphalism" would be understood differently in Montfort’s time, the words of Vatican II are to be observed in contemporary ecumenical dialogue: "Catholic theologians, standing fast by the teaching of the Church yet searching together with separated brethren into the divine mysteries, should do so with love for the truth, with charity and with humility" (UR 11).

3. The Marian Dimension of Ecumenism

An analysis of Montfort’s writings indicates that he stresses the need for a clarification of Mary’s role in salvation history as an integral part of ecumenical dialogue. Far from being a stumbling block to union, Montfort sees in Mary a unifying element bringing together all the baptized, provided that she is presented in her true Christocentric context. Moreover, Mary, a daughter of the Jewish people and the woman so revered by Islam, becomes an important point of contact for the monotheistic religions of the world.

4. Ecumenism and the Dialog with Non-Christians

The Incarnate Word declared "may they all be one: as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee" (Jn 17: 21). The Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism (UR) should be seen in the light of The Declaration on the Church’s Relations with non-Christian Religions (NA), which states: "In our times when every day we are drawn closer together, and the ties between various peoples are being multiplied, the Church is giving deeper study to her relationship with non-Christian religions. In her task of fostering love among men and even nations, the Church gives primary consideration to what human beings have in common and to what promotes fellowship among them." Montfort’s belief in "the one true God . . . the God who is Love" is a constant call to live this unity and to share it with others as Incarnate Wisdom. The council was a prayer for unity in the spirit of Montfort’s words: "We must pray for Wisdom. And assuredly God who wants to be importuned, will sooner or later rise up, open the door of his mercy and give us three loaves of Wisdom, that is the bread of life, the bread of understanding and the bread of angels" (LEW 190). In the spirit of "God Alone," the Church framed in NA, chap. 1, a universal call to unity with those who belong to the monotheistic religions of the world: "All men form but one community. This is so be- cause they stem from the same stock that God created to people the entire earth (Acts 17:26)." The Church in NA, chap. 2, calls for Christians to discover those core values which are held in common across the boundaries of world religions: "The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is good and holy in these religions. . . . Let Christians, while witnessing to their own faith and way of life, acknowledge, preserve, and encourage the spiritual and moral truths found among non- Christians." Just as Mary is the Mother of Christ, and of the Church and of the Ecumenical Council dedicated to her, so she is the Mother of all peoples, and lands. She is the Mother of the re-creation: "Nothing on earth can take from her what we place in her keeping" (LEW 222).

P. Gaffney

Notes: (1) Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Directory for the Application of the Principles and Norms of Ecumenism, n. 9, in L’Osservatore Romano, June 16, 1993, p. I. (2) On June 28, 1985, Pope John Paul II made this declaration to the Roman Curia: "The Catholic Church is committed to the ecumenical movement by an irrevocable decision, and she wants to contribute to it with all her powers." Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II (Teachings of John Paul II), VIII/1 (1985), 1999; CCC, 820. (3) G. Philips, secretary of the Council’s doctrinal commission and the principal redactor of LG, has offered this paraphrase: "This is where we find the Church of Christ in all her plenitude and all her power." L’Eglise et son mystère au deuxième concile du Vatican: Histoire, texte et commentaire, (The Church and its Mystery at the Second Vatican Council: History, text, and commentary), Paris 1967, 1:119. (4) Ibid, p. 249f. (5) According to Pope Paul VI, "The first means of evangelization is the witness of an authentically Christian life" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 41; AAS 68 (1976), 31f.; cf. CCC, 821. (6) A letter to The Tablet (April 4, 1866) (The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. 22 (London, 19720, p. 344). (7) Cf.Summa Theologiae 2a qq. 11 & 12. (8) For a discussion of St. Louis as a "fool for Christ," see J. Saward, Perfect Fools, Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford, 1980), pp. 185-196. (9) See Liturgie dell’Oriente Cristiano a Roma nell’Anno Mariano 1987- 1988, (Liturgies of the Christian East at Rome during the Marian Year 1987-1988), Vatican City, 1990, pp. 153ff and passim. (10) See J. Ledit, Marie dans la liturgie de byzance , (Mary in the Liturgy of Byzantium), Paris, 1976. p. 11 and passim. (11) "A Letter Addressed to the Rev.E.B. Pusey DD on Occasion of his Eirenicon" in Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Considered, new edition, vol. 2 (London, 1900), p. 90. (12) For a list of Patristic figures applied to Our Lady, see the index in Enchiridion Marianum Biblicum Patristicum (Rome, 1974), pp. 2003-2013. (13) Jane Ellis (translator), An Early Soviet Saint. The Life of Father Zachariah (Springfield, 1976), p. 6f. (14) Ibid., p. 67f. (15) Cf.N. Zernov, The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century (London, 1963), pp. 138-150. (16) On Bulgakov’s Christology, see L. Bouyer, Le Fils éternel. Théologie de la Parole de Dieu et Christologie, (The Eternal Son. Theology of the Word of God and Christology), (Paris, 1973). (17) "Meditations on the Litany of Loretto for the Month of May" in Meditations and Devotions, new edition (London, 1965). p. 145. (18) Le Trône de la Sagesse. Essai sur la signification du culte marial (The Throne of Wisdom. Essay on the Meaning of Marian devotion), Paris, 1957, p. 239f. (19) The Ratzinger Report. An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, San Francisco, Ignatius Press 1985, p. 105f. (20) "From Dysfunction to Disbelief. The Virgin Mary in Reformed Theology," in A. Stacpoole OSB (ed.), Mary’s Place in Christian Dialogue. Occasional Papers of the Ecumenical Society of teh Blessed Virgin Mary, 1970-1980 (Slough, 1982), p. 149. (21) Mary, Mother of All Christians, New York, Herder and Herder 1964, p. 7. (22) LG 69. (23) Mary For All Christians, Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1991, p. 133.

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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