Day 3: 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.

68. Second truth. - From what Jesus Christ is in our regard, we must conclude that we are not at all our own, as the Apostle says, but belong wholly to him, as his members and his slaves, whom he purchased infinitely dear, at the price of all his blood. Before baptism, we belonged to the devil as his slaves; and baptism has made us the true slaves of Jesus Christ, who must live, labor, and die only to bear fruit for this God-Man, to glorify him in our body and to make him reign in our soul, because we are his conquest, his purchased people, and his inheritance. It is for this same reason that the Holy Spirit compares us: 1. to trees planted along the waters of grace, in the field of the Church, which must give their fruit in their season; 2. to the branches of a vine of which Jesus Christ is the stock, which must yield good grapes; 3. to a flock of which Jesus Christ is the shepherd, which must multiply and give milk; 4. to a good soil of which God is the husbandman, in which the seed multiplies and yields thirtyfold, sixtyfold, or a hundredfold. Jesus Christ laid his curse upon the fruitless fig tree, and pronounced condemnation against the useless servant who had not turned his talent to profit. All this proves to us that Jesus Christ wills to receive some fruits from our wretched persons, namely, our good works, because these good works belong to him alone: Creati in operibus bonis in Christo Jesu: Created in good works in Jesus Christ. Which words of the Holy Spirit show both that Jesus Christ is the sole principle and must be the sole end of all our good works, and that we must serve him, not only as hired servants, but as slaves of love. Let me explain myself.

69. There are two ways here below of belonging to another and of depending on his authority, namely: simple servitude and slavery; which gives rise to what we call a servant and a slave. By the servitude common among Christians, a man engages himself to serve another for a certain time, in return for a certain wage or some such recompense. By slavery, a man is entirely dependent on another for his whole life, and must serve his master without claiming from him any wage or recompense, like one of his beasts, over which he has the right of life and death.

70. There are three kinds of slavery: a slavery of nature, a slavery of constraint, and a slavery of the will. All creatures are slaves of God in the first manner: Domini est terra et plenitudo ejus [The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof]; the demons and the damned are so in the second; the just and the saints are so in the third. The slavery of the will is the most perfect and the most glorious to God, who looks upon the heart, who asks for the heart, and who calls himself the God of the heart, or of the loving will, because by this slavery one makes choice, above all things, of God and of his service, even if nature did not oblige one to it.

St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary §§68–70. Our complete English edition.