Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P. teaches theology at St. John Seminary in Boston, MA. He preached the following homily to the seminarians there on the Feast of St. Louis de Montfort (April 28) in 2004.

"I would like to recall, among the many witnesses and teachers of [Marian] spirituality, the figure of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, who proposes consecration to Christ through the hands of Mary, as an effective means for Christians to live faithfully their baptismal commitments" (Mater Redemptionis, 48). Many persons who read this sentence in the 1987 encyclical, "Mother of the Redeemer," were surprised to discover that Pope John Paul II had chosen to mention by name a late seventeenth-century French priest named Louis Mary de Montfort. Why the surprise?

The short answer runs like this: After 1965, the general view spread quickly that the sort of Marian devotion promoted by Father de Montfort, and especially the form of Marian consecration that he preached, had been corrected, so to speak, by the documents of the Second Vatican Council. It had become well known during this same period that the eighth chapter of Lumen gentium had been appended to the dogmatic constitution on the Church "when the Fathers decided not to issue a separate document on the Blessed Virgin, as had originally been planned." Many Catholics came to the conclusion that while the Church still wanted us to celebrate Mary's faith and discipleship, that is, her place in the Church, the Council had discouraged invocation of her mediation and maternity. That is, her active role in our lives, her instrumentality.

This view of things understandably displaced from the center of Catholic devotional life a saint whose preferred metaphors for Our Lady include the human neck and a funnel. Pope John Paul II has corrected this misreading, or better misconstrual, of what the conciliar texts propose about Marian spirituality and dedication to Christ. His encyclical on the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches that Mary's grace-her faith and discipleship-itself constitutes a unique source of mediation in the Church. He emphasizes Mary's maternal mediation: "She is a mother to us in the order of grace" (MR 38). Again, because she cooperates in a full way with Christ, her "cooperation is precisely [a] mediation subordinated to the mediation of Christ" (MR 39). One could not imagine a more succinct summary of the teaching that Louie de Montfort transmits within the French school of spirituality. Ad Jesum per Mariam. To Jesus through Mary.
De Montfort's spiritual doctrine sustained Catholic life and devotion from his death on this day, 28 April in 1716, throughout the eighteenth century, and, even after the devastation of the French Revolution, it continued to inspire Catholics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evidence of De Montfort's influence on Catholic life and devotion is to be found everywhere. Including in the layout of Saint John's Seminary chapel. Our Marian altar stands at the entrance to and not within the chapel itself. The chapel includes a neck, so to speak, through which seminarians enter into the place of headship, that is, the chapel, where the Eucharistic Christ abides. For more than a century, this seminary community has funneled daily through Mary's room into the place where divine wisdom is announced and the sacred banquet is celebrated. We still do it. Our quotidian gesture never becomes routine. The seminarian makes this passage a conscious expression of his "total dedication to Christ...though the hands of the blessed Mother."

At Baptism, each Christian commits himself to a "total dedication." He or she must. The alternative frightens. In his book, True Devotion, Louie-Marie de Montfort describes what the human person looks like apart from Christ: "We are naturally prouder than peacocks, more groveling than toads, more vile than unclean animals, more envious than serpents, more gluttonous than hogs, more furious than tigers, lazier than tortoises, weaker than reeds, and more capricious than weathercocks. We have within ourselves nothing but nothingness and sin." This description of unredeemed human nature may sound unfamiliar to certain Catholics of our period. To others it may sound overly pessimistic. In fact, this allegorical picture of fallen man allows Louie de Montfort to introduce the felix culpa of the Easter Proclamation. His consecration supplies a way to live the "great transformation" that the Paschal mystery completes in human history. "It is," as Pope John Paul explains, "an unending and continuous transformation between falling and rising again, between the man of sin and the man of grace and justice" (MR 52).

The statue of Our Lady, Virgo Fidelis, Virgin Most Faithful, reminds those who enter Saint John's Chapel of the indispensable need to remain faithful to the rhythms of this transformation. Marian devotion accomplishes this objective in a personal and, dare I say, maternal manner. Diocesan priest Louie de Montfort attended the seminary founded by Jean Jacques Olier (1608-1657). It is no accident, then, that Saint John's Seminary, which operated under the auspices of the Sulpicians during the first decades of its existence, incarnates the Marian spirituality of Louis Mary Grignion de Montfort. "Total dedication to Christ...through the hands of the blessed Mother" describes the work of the diocesan priest. Every parish is a place where this consecration should flourish.

De Montfort also associated himself with the Dominicans. He was what today we would call a member of the Dominican family. Though he remained a diocesan priest, he chose this second affiliation so that his diocesan preaching-in La Rochelle, Luçon, Nantes, St Malo, all dioceses of western France-would be strengthened by the graces that the Church had committed to the care of the Dominicans. In a word, these are the graces of the Rosary. Louie de Montfort preached Christ and his mysteries. Mysteries such as the Annunciation, the Marriage at Cana, the Crucifixion, Pentecost.... The mysteries of Christ that make no sense apart from the Blessed Virgin Mary. The mysteries of Christ that would remain to us just stories were it not for the ministry of priests. No wonder the Sulpician founders of Saint John's Seminary inscribed under the statue of Our Lady in the vestibule of this chapel. Regina cleri. Queen of the Clergy. Pray for us.