Tea at Trianon: The Heart of Mary

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The Heart of Mary

"All the glory of the king's daughter is within...."
-- Psalm 44:14

At Fatima, Portugal on June 13, 1917, Our Lady said to the three little children: "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God." Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary was manifested by Heaven as being the path to peace for individuals and for the world. Two hundred years before the Fatima apparitions, St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort instructed his followers on how to live out one's consecration to the Blessed Virgin in the treatise True Devotion to Mary. "Mary is the sanctuary and repose of the Holy Trinity, where God dwells more magnificently and more divinely than in any other place in the universe, not excepting his dwelling between the Cherubim and the Seraphim."

To take our refuge in Mary's heart is a shortcut to holiness, to union with God. "This practice of devotion to our Blessed Lady is also a perfect path by which to go and unite ourselves to Jesus, who...took no other road for His great and admirable journey....The Most High has come down to us perfectly and divinely, by the humble Mary....So it is by Mary that the very little ones are to ascend...without any fear, to the Most High." (True Devotion to Mary)

The key to Marian consecration is the renewal of our baptismal vows, when we "give ourselves entirely to Jesus Christ by the hands of Mary," as St. Louis de Montfort recommends. In doing so, we give to Our Mother "our body with all its senses and its members; our soul with all its powers, our exterior goods of fortune, whether present, or to come; our interior and spiritual goods, which are our merits and our virtues, and our good works, past, present, and future."By giving everything to Our Lady, she will purify our good works and offer them to God on our behalf, bringing about the greater glory of God. Uniting our hearts with hers, we "do all our actions by Mary, with Mary, in Mary, and for Mary; so that we may do them all the more perfectly by Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, and for Jesus."

The Holy Eucharist seals our covenant with God. St. Louis de Montfort urges that before receiving Holy Communion, "you must implore that good Mother to lend you her heart, that you may receive her Son there with the same dispositions as her own. You will explain to her that it touches her Son's glory to be put into a heart so sullied and inconstant as yours....But if she will come and dwell with you, in order to receive her Son, she can do so by the dominion which she has over hearts....You will ask her for her heart by these tender words: "I take thee for my all. Give me thy heart, O Mary." Share