One Minute Meditation
Usefulness of Devotion to Mary for Sanctification
One of the most excellent means of salvation, devotion to Mary, is also the surest, the easiest, and the shortest way to perfection. That statement is generally accepted in the spiritual realm today and finds a striking confirmation in experience.
Pope Pius X teaches it ex professo in his Encyclical Ad diem ilium of February 2, 1904, in which he encourages the faithful to practice devotion to Mary as the most excellent means “to restore all things in Christ,” according to the motto he had adopted.
“For can anyone fail to see” he writes, that there is no surer or more direct road than Mary for uniting all mankind in Christ and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and immaculate in the sight of God? .. the Son of God made man, being the ‘author and consummator of our faith’; it surely follows that His most holy Mother should be recognized as participating in the divine mysteries and, in a sense, having custody over them; and that the edifice of the Faith of all centuries rises upon her (as upon a foundation) who is the noblest after Christ…since Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary, who conceived Him by the Holy Ghost and bore Him [at] her breast, it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary…no one ever knew Christ so profoundly as she did, and no one can ever be more competent as a guide and teacher of the knowledge of Christ …. Hence it follows … that the Virgin is more powerful than all others as a means for uniting mankind with Christ.
She provides the most sure and efficacious assistance to us for arriving at the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ. Alas! Those seduced by the wiles of the demon or deceived by false doctrines, furnish us with peremptory proof of it by their conduct, thinking they can do without the help of the Virgin. Hapless are they who neglect Mary under pretext of the honor to be paid to Jesus Christ! As if the Child could be found elsewhere than with the Mother!
Fr. Emile Neubert SM (Devotion to Mary)
