Here is another reflection on Our Blessed Lady by a Carthusian monk who borrows from the writings of a well-known Carthusian writer: Lanspergius. What is quoted here is from the fourth volume of his ‘Opera Omnia’. This particular reflection focuses not so much on being a servant of Mary, but instead being a loyal child of Mary – that is, to be what Jesus is.We have abandoned all into the hands of Mary, even breaking, like the Magdalene, the alabaster vase containing the perfume which we have poured over her feet. By our consecration, we have cut off all possibility of taking back our love; what will Mary give us in return?
‘Mary has not chosen us’, wrote our own Lanspergius, ‘to be her servants, but to be her sons! Sons whom she is not satisfied with protecting and defending, but whom she wishes to cherish in her heart, to nourish with exquisite tenderness. For our part, do not let us attach ourselves to her service as servants but as her most loving children; she herself has set no bounds to her maternal solicitude for us. Let us honour her and love her with truly filial affection, by meditating constantly on her life and her virtues’.
Let us bless God, then, for His inestimable gift to us; for bringing us into His divine cellar, wherein He has hidden the most exquisite delights, and where, as man, He Himself experienced such deep joys. Mary was the paradise of His Heart, the heaven of His affections, the abyss hollowed out by the almighty Hand of God to receive the full outpouring of His created love.
There was nothing in the full course of His life on earth that He did with more constancy than to love this sweet Virgin to whom He owed His life.
