Chosen soul, living image of God and redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus Christ, God wants you to become holy like Him in this life, and glorious like Him in the next.It is certain that growth in the holiness of God is your vocation. All your thoughts, words, actions, everything you suffer or undertake must lead you towards that end. What a marvelous transformation is possible! Dust into light, uncleanness into purity, sinfulness into holiness, creature into Creator, man into God!
Chosen soul, how will you bring this about? What steps will you take to reach the high level to which God is calling you? The means of holiness and salvation are known to everybody. These means are: sincere humility, unceasing prayer, complete self-denial, abandonment to Divine Providence, and obedience to the will of God.
The grace and help of God are absolutely necessary for us to practice all these. A person who corresponds to great graces performs great works, and one who corresponds to lesser graces performs lesser works. The value and high standard of our actions corresponds to the value and perfection of the grace given by God and responded to by the faithful soul. No one can contest these principles.
My contention is that you must first discover Mary if you would obtain this grace from God. Mary alone found grace with God for herself and for every individual person. No patriarch nor prophet nor any other holy person of the Old Law could manage to find this grace. It was Mary who gave existence and life to the Author of all grace, and because of this she is called the “Mother of Grace.”
As Saint Bernard says, “The will of God is manifested to her in Jesus and with Jesus.” God chose her to be the treasurer, the administrator and the dispenser of all His graces, so that all His gifts and graces pass through her hands. According to Saint Bernardine, “She gives the graces of the eternal Father, the virtues of Jesus Christ, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit to whom she wills.”
Since Mary produced the Head of the elect, Jesus Christ, she must also produce the members of that Head. If anyone, then, wishes to become a member of Jesus Christ, and consequently be filled with grace and truth, he must be formed in Mary through the grace of Jesus Christ, which she possesses with a fullness enabling her to communicate it abundantly to true members of Jesus Christ, her true children.
~ Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort ~
