13 March 2010

Can One be Called Truly Christian without Devotion to the Blessed Virgin?

If someone says that he is Christian, what is that he believes? Is it only that Jesus 'was a good guy'? Can one really profess and then hide that Jesus is truly his Lord and Redeemer? If he professes Jesus is Lord, God the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, and one professes obedience to him, then he must not put anything or anyone before him*. If he professes that Jesus is Redeemer, than from what has he been redeeded and AT WHAT COST? If this is not something to at least be excited about every day of one's life, than one is dead to sin, and/or hasn't examined his conscience. And by my saying this, it is not I who judges, but he who speaks of our Lord when it suits him out of human respect causes himself to be judged by our Lord.

*As a side note: Veneration to the Blessed Virgin Mother is not putting someone before Christ because in true devotion to Christ's mother, we are giving ourselves most fully to Christ.  It is not possible for us to give ourselves so unreservedly as to do so by not our own merits but by the merits of the Blessed Virgin.  When we truly devote and consecrate all our good actions -- interior and exterior, and goods to Jesus through Mary, we rely on her merits, and not our own. Thereby, we most expediently give ourselves entirely to Jesus, rather than to chip away --- if at all -- little by little, or little by nothing, of giving ourselves to Jesus. Even our most heroic efforts to give Jesus glory cannot be sufficient on their own to merit the graces the Holy Trinity has given to the Blessed Virgin Mother of Jesus Christ.

Anyone who boasts that he has no need of the Blessed Mother offends Jesus Christ. Such a person puts himself at a higher degree of sanctity than God the Son himself, "Who being in the form of God ... But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." Yet such an impious person will not humble himself as a servant to the Virgin that conceived the Savior, nursed and raised him, and followed him on his way to Calvary and remained at his crucifixion. All the apostles except for St. John, to whom was given the Blessed Mother and she to him as his Mother, ran away to save their lives, while you without the smallest humility, run away to save your indifference to the one creature who God made the purest of all creatures -- the sacred tabernacle of God the Son. You run away to remain in sin, not to save your soul, but your (way of) life. But our Lord warns us, "He who saves his life will lose it".
Any person without true reverence and devotion to the Blessed Mother will practice disobedience. If they have any and all of the other virtues but this one, they are a living proof that they have the devil for a father and not the Lord, because the devil himself can immitate every virtue but obedience. And, he too, is in emnity with the Blessed Virgin ( "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.").
Who does not need the merits of the Blessed Virgin to approach Jesus Christ? She to whom the angels bow and the devils flee is the humblest of all God's creatures. Anyone who thinks most presumptiously that he can stand before Christ on his own merits has not examined himself, while even Mary, who did not sin, and was even conceived without sin, was in need of redemption. If anyone has any sense of truth and of that which is sacred, let him come prostrate himself interiorly and exteriorly before our Lord's True Presence and commit himself to Jesus as his Lord and Savior, through the merits of his Blessed Mother.+

No comments:

Post a Comment