Day 11: Renounce the spirit of the world

227. First practice. Those men and women who wish to enter into this particular devotion, which is by no means erected into a confraternity, although that were to be wished, after having, as I have said in the first part of this preparation for the Reign of Jesus Christ, spent twelve days at least in emptying themselves of the spirit of the world, contrary to that of Jesus Christ, shall spend three weeks in filling themselves with Jesus Christ through the Most Blessed Virgin. Here is the order they may keep:

St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary §227. Our complete English edition.

115. There are several interior practices of true devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin, of which here are the principal ones in brief: 1. To honor her as the worthy Mother of God, with the worship of hyperdulia, that is to say, to esteem and honor her above all the other saints, as the masterpiece of grace and the first after Jesus Christ, true God and true man; 2. to meditate on her virtues, her privileges, and her actions; 3. to contemplate her grandeurs; 4. to make acts of love, of praise, and of gratitude to her; 5. to invoke her heartily; 6. to offer oneself and unite oneself to her; 7. to do one’s actions with a view to pleasing her; 8. to begin, continue, and finish all one’s actions through her, in her, with her, and for her, in order to do them through Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ, our last end. We shall explain this last practice.

116. True devotion to the Blessed Virgin also has several exterior practices, of which here are the principal ones: 1. To enroll in her confraternities and enter her congregations; 2. to enter the religious orders instituted in her honor; 3. to publish her praises; 4. to offer alms, fasts, and mortifications of spirit or of body in her honor; 5. to wear her liveries, such as the holy rosary or the chaplet, the scapular or the little chain; 6. to recite with attention, devotion, and modesty either the holy rosary, composed of fifteen decades of Ave Marias in honor of the fifteen principal mysteries of Jesus Christ, or the chaplet of five decades, which is a third of the rosary, whether in honor of the five joyful mysteries, which are: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Jesus Christ, the Purification, and the Finding of Jesus Christ in the Temple; or in honor of the five sorrowful mysteries, which are: the Agony of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives, his Scourging, his Crowning with thorns, his Carrying of the Cross, and his Crucifixion; or in honor of the five glorious mysteries, which are: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, his Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Spirit or Pentecost, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin body and soul into heaven, and her Crowning by the three persons of the Most Holy Trinity. One may also say a chaplet of six or seven decades in honor of the years the Blessed Virgin is believed to have lived on earth; or the Little Crown of the Blessed Virgin, composed of three Paters and twelve Aves, in honor of her crown of twelve stars or privileges; or the Office of the Blessed Virgin, so universally received and recited in the Church; or the Little Psalter of the Blessed Virgin, which Saint Bonaventure composed in her honor, and which is so tender and so devout that one cannot recite it without being moved by it; or fourteen Paters and Aves in honor of her fourteen joys; or some other prayers, hymns, and canticles of the Church, such as the Salve Regina, the Alma, the Ave Regina coelorum, or the Regina coeli, according to the different seasons; or the Ave maris Stella, the O gloriosa Domina, etc., or the Magnificat, or some other prayers of devotion, with which the books are filled; 7. to sing, and have sung, spiritual canticles in her honor; 8. to make a number of genuflections or reverences to her, saying to her, for example, every morning, sixty or a hundred times: Ave Maria, Virgo Fidelis [Hail Mary, faithful Virgin], to obtain from God, through her, fidelity to the graces of God during the day; and in the evening: Ave Maria, Mater misericordiae [Hail Mary, Mother of mercy], to ask pardon of God through her for the sins one has committed during the day; 9. to take care of her confraternities, adorn her altars, crown and embellish her images; 10. to carry her images, and have them carried, in procession, and to carry one on one’s person, as a powerful weapon against the evil one; 11. to have her images or her name made, and to place them either in churches, or in houses, or on the gates and entrances of cities, churches, and houses; 12. to consecrate oneself to her in a special and solemn manner.

117. There are a great many other practices of true devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin, which the Holy Spirit has inspired in holy souls, and which are very sanctifying; they may be read at greater length in the Paradise Opened to Philagia, composed by the Reverend Father Paul Barry, of the Society of Jesus, where he has gathered a great number of devotions which the saints have practiced in honor of the Most Blessed Virgin, which devotions serve marvelously to sanctify souls, provided they are done as they ought to be, that is to say: 1. with a good and right intention of pleasing God alone, of uniting oneself to Jesus Christ as to one’s last end, and of edifying one’s neighbor; 2. with attention, without voluntary distraction; 3. with devotion, without haste or negligence; 4. with modesty, and a respectful and edifying composure of body.

St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary §§115–117. Our complete English edition.