True Devotion to Mary: 1

For a blog that is called All for Jesus, through Mary, with a Smile, we've talked far too little about Our Lady. So here are a few basic points about true devotion to Mary. I suppose I'll post them in installments.

1. The purpose of true devotion to Mary is to lead us to Jesus. That, says St. Louis de Montfort, is the very characteristic of Mary. 

"You never think of Mary without Mary's thinking of God for you. You never praise or honor Mary without Mary's praising and honoring God with you. Mary is altogether relative to God; and indeed I may well call her the relation to God. She only exists with reference to God. She is the echo of God that says nothing, repeats nothing, but God. If you say, 'Mary,' she says, 'God.' St. Elizabeth praised Mary and called her blessed, because she had believed. Mary, the faithful echo of God, at once intoned: 'My soul magnifies the Lord.' (Lk. 1:46). 

That which Mary did then, she does daily now. When we praise her, love her, honor her or give anything to her, it is God who is praised, God who is loved, God who is glorified, and it is to God that we give, through Mary and in Mary." (St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to Mary, paragraph 225)