“I feel a tremendous urge to make our Lord and his holy Mother loved, to go in a humble and simple way to teach catechism to the poor in country places and to arouse in sinners a devotion to our Blessed Lady …… I know very well, my dear Father, that I am not worthy to do such honorable work, but when I see the needs of the Church I cannot help pleading continually for a small and poor band of good priests to do this work under the banner and protection of the Blessed Virgin.”
– St. Louis de Montfort
Christian life fully and truly lived is nothing less than a radically powerful and intimate participation in the life of Jesus Christ himself. St. Louis de Montfort, the great French missionary and preacher, recognized this simple and compelling truth as being the very foundation upon which a renewed Church must be established. So convinced was he of this that, nearly three centuries before the Second Vatican Council’s sustained development of the universal call to holiness of all the faithful, he could boldly assert to those who turned to him for guidance “to grow in holiness is your vocation.” Fr. de Montfort dedicated himself to living this same vocational call to grow in holiness and to helping others to do the same. In doing so he discovered what he came to call the wondrous Secret of Mary – that those who truly sought to grow into the full maturity of life in Jesus Christ could find no more sure or certain or reliable means of doing so than by surrendering themselves fully into the care of the great Mother of God in the same way that the Lord himself has done who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Phil 2: 6-7) – for us and for our salvation.
St. Louis de Montfort burned with a deep and genuine vocational zeal for the renewal of the Church through the vigorous proclamation of the Gospel. For Fr. de Montfort the secret of effective proclamation of the Gospel and the secret of authentic living of the Gospel are one and the same, and the name of this secret is Mary. He was so convinced of this that he devoted all of the energy of his vocational life to living and proclaiming a true devotion to Our Lady as the most powerful and direct means of becoming fully mature in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. To share this mission, to live this spirituality and to continue this work he founded the Company of Mary. As members of this Company, ours is a missionary vocation lived in the spirit of this great missionary and apostle of Our Lady.
As a priest of the United States Province of the Company of Mary, I am bound to operate in full accordance with Catholic teaching and tradition and to place myself at the service of the renewal of the Catholic Church in the United States. As a preacher and retreat master, I am active in both English and Spanish and my ministry includes parish missions as well as days of recollection, retreat preaching and programs of formation in the spirituality of St. Louis de Montfort – most especially involving how to develop and live a true devotion to the Blessed Virgin and the preparation for and living of the Total Consecration of oneself to Jesus through Mary.
