Tea at Trianon: Devotion to 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, February 11, 2014

Devotion to Mary

From the writings of Mother Mectilde de Bar:

Love Mary, and you will not die without her having made you love Jesus. This is what she does best, and this is what she never fails to do, if are willing to correspond to the graces she presents to us.

When I encounter a soul who has what she ought regarding the Mother of God, it seems to me that I hold such a soul’s salvation in my hands; by this I mean that I take it as something assured. If all souls were persuaded of this, they would love her tenderly and have a total trust in her. One must never fear to give her too much, nor to go beyond what is due her, because nothing remains in her, and all returns to Jesus and in Jesus.

I would have much more to say if I could express the advantages of this devotion. It is certain that it opens the intelligence to the understanding of ineffable things concerning the sacred mysteries and the ways of grace. It teaches one to pray, to practice mortification. It sustains and consoles one in sorrows. It keeps one from falling in the hour of temptation. It chases away our enemies visible and invisible, and defends us against their wicked designs. (Read more.)