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“I am all yours, and all that I have is yours, O most loving Jesus, through Mary, your most holy Mother.”
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Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Above: Coat of arms of John Paul II, embedded in front of the baptismal font of St Peter's Basilica in Rome. Photo by Father Lawrence Lew, O.P.

The Church commemorates today the saintly author of True Devotion to Mary, a book which St. John Paul II says “was to be a turning point in my life.” John Paul’s episcopal motto, Totus tuus, was inspired by St. Louis de Montfort’s Tuus totus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt: “I am all yours, and all that I have is yours, O most loving Jesus, through Mary, your most holy Mother” (Treatise on True Devotion, n. 233).

One of the images De Montfort uses to communicate this total belonging to Jesus through Mary is the image of the slave. He writes:

There is nothing among men which makes us belong to another more than slavery. There is nothing among Christians which makes us more absolutely belong to Jesus Christ and his holy Mother than the slavery of the will, according to the example of Jesus Christ himself, who took on the status of a servant for love of us,—Formam servi accipiens,—and also according to the example of the holy Virgin who called herself the servant and slave of the Lord (Lk 1: 38). The Apostle calls himself, as by a title of honour, Servus Christi,—“The slave of Christ.” Christians are often called in the Holy Scriptures Servi Christi, “Slaves of Christ” … (True Devotion to Mary, n. 72).

It is not that De Montfort wants us to be slavish, any more than the Lord in the Gospel for today wants his followers to be sheepish. On the contrary, the Christian soul ought to be free and bold, not slavish and sheepish.

These two images, slaves and sheep, both signify that the foundation of the Christian life is humble submission to God. It is by submitting to the rule of the Gentle Master that we find our true freedom, making us masters of ourselves. It is by quietly listening for and meekly following the voice of the Good Shepherd that we become strong and bold, true warriors in our spiritual battles. And our Blessed Mother is the perfect teacher of this humble submission, as John Paul II writes:

Mary responded to God’s will with the total gift of herself, body and soul, forever, from the Annunciation to the Cross and from the Cross to the Assumption…. Paradoxically, this “bond of charity,” this “slavery of love,” endows the human being with full freedom, with that true freedom of the children of God. (Letter to the Montfort Religious Family, 8 December 2003)

Let us then not be afraid to be called and to be the Lord’s slaves, his servants and handmaids, the little sheep of his flock.

Saint Dominic, humble servant of the Lord, pray for us!
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