St. Louis de Montfort

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At the age of 19 he went to Paris to study theology. He said goodbye to his family and friends at the bridge over the river Cesson on the outskirts of Rennes. The event takes on deep symbolism. Having left all, he crossed the bridge to a new life of total dependence upon Divine Providence. So convinced that God was His loving Father, that he gave to the first beggars he met, his money, luggage and even exchanged clothes with one of them, then turning he walked joyfully to Paris, begging for food and shelter all along the way. He lived the rest of his life in just this way – with a total trust that God would provide for daily needs.

Now, I am not encouraging you to be irresponsible with the responsibilities of your state in life. But what I love about Montfort is that He really believed God was His Father and that His Father would provide his daily bread, as we all say in the Our Father.  

We need to be responsible. But too often this slips into an anxious self-reliance forgetting we even have God for our Father and leaving us thinking that everything depends upon us alone.

St. Louis de Montfort, teach us to do our part and to surrender the rest to God in confident trust.   

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Two events from the life of St Louis de Montfort teach us the true meaning of courage.

When faced with evil we have two good options that are the two parts of courage: Attack and Endure

The first thing we must do when we face evil, is to attack it, pounce on it, bar its entrance - take initiative and change it if you can - but never remain passive in the face of evil. Make no mistake here – I did not say attack people – I said to attack evil. Evil has no rights.

Montfort was not a pushover. He fought for what was right – one time literally. In May of 1714, he arrived at Roussay to preach a parish mission. He mounted the pulpit in the parish church, and after a brief prayer, began to speak. This was a tiny town in the west of France in which the two most prominent buildings were the Church and the bar next door – full of a drunken rowdy crowd. As Montfort raised his voice, the drunkards could hear the sermon, and the parishioners could hear the raucous noise coming from the bar. Knowing this, those in the bar tried to disturb his sermon by screaming insults at the congregation and mocking them for their faith.

Montfort very calmly paused the sermon, gave the people his blessing and exited the church. As he left, though empty handed and alone, he walked directly into the bar. An eyewitness describes what happened next: “Father said nothing, except with his fists. For the first time since he came to Roussay men had a chance to see how big, and to feel how hard, those fists were. He struck them down and let them lie. He overturned tables and chairs. He smashed glasses. He walked over the bodies of stunned and sobered hoodlums and went slowly back up the street to the church to finish his sermon.”

Evil has no rights and it is irrational, therefore there are instances in which we must use the force necessary to eradicate that evil.

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The second part of Courage is to endure. Once you have done all you can to change evil and can do no more, then you must endure the evil with patience, that is, without giving up, giving in or becoming evil yourself. But it also means to endure cheerfully.

Montfort had the custom of building a life-sized scene of Calvary on the highest point overlooking a town where he was giving a parish mission. At Pontchateau, when he announced his determination of building a monumental Calvary on a neighboring hill, the idea was enthusiastically received by the inhabitants. For fifteen months 500 peasants worked daily without pay. The finished Cross was over fifty feet tall! On the day of dedication, the order came from the king that the whole scene should be demolished, and the land restored to its former condition. Political adversaries had convinced the king that what the Calvary they built was really meant to be a base for a British invasion. So the King ordered that the 500 peasants, watched by a company of soldiers, were compelled to carry out the work of destruction. Father de Montfort was not disturbed on receiving this humiliating news, exclaiming only: “We had hoped to build a Calvary here. Let us build it in our hearts. Blessed be God!”

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In 1706 Montfort set out for Rome walking more than 700 miles one way to ask the Pope what he should do. In June, Montfort met with Clement XI, pouring out his heart to the Pope. Surprisingly, the Holy Father turned down St. Louis’ offer to go and be a missionary in Canada or Japan. Instead, the Pope commissioned Montfort to return to return home and renew the Church there. Returning on foot he spent the rest of his life conducting more than 200 missions and retreats in North Western France in village squares, churches, monasteries, military barracks, poor houses and even houses of prostitution. Today, more than 300 years later, many of the towns and parishes still hold his visit to their town as the turning point in the faith of the area.

The mission of St. Louis de Montfort was to lead all people to Jesus through Mary saying, “It was through the blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus Christ came into the world, and it is through her that he must reign in the world.”

If we do not risk anything for God, we will never do anything great for him.

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Like St. Louis de Montfort our mission is to lead people to Jesus through Mary.

We do this by living a simple way of life in which we sit at the School of Mary each day in the Rosary; and we share life with family and friends; and we seek to foster good conversation by being intentional about what we reflect upon and talk about what matters most; and when the time is right, we invite them to encounter Jesus through Mary.

And why do we do this? Because God and Our Lady have told us that we really can do eternal good for our loved ones and we can change world events and help bring about the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the Era of Peace. The Triumph of Her Heart is not some imaginary thing. We are heading toward it.

I want my family and friends and yours to experience it.

But we must do our part.

Wont you join me?