The saint who assured John Paul II that he was “allowed” a tremendous devotion to Mary
The Polish Pope recalled that he at one time feared that he was loving Our Lady too much. But this French saint helped him to see the truth.
St. John Paul II never hid the influence of a great French saint on his strong Marian devotion. As a young worker at the Solvay factory during World War II, he discovered Mary’s role by reading True Devotion to Mary, by St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. Karol Wojtyla grew up close to Mary from his earliest childhood, but when he entered the seminary, he thought it might be better to take a step away from her. He admitted later that he feared that his devotion to her would take away from the adoration due to Christ.
“But thanks to Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort,” he wrote in 2004 in the Letter to the Religious of the Montfortian Families, “I understood that authentic devotion to the Mother of God is truly Christocentric (…). Reading True Devotion marked a turning point in my life. I say a ‘turning point’ although it is a long inner journey that coincided with my clandestine preparation for the priesthood. I realized (…) something fundamental. It happened that the devotion of my childhood and even my adolescence to the Mother of Christ gave way to a new attitude, a devotion coming from the depths of my faith, as from the very heart of the Trinitarian and Christological reality.”
The motto Totus Tuus, inscribed on St. John Paul’s papal coat of arms, is directly inspired by the spirituality of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. This is what he confirms in that same letter of 2004: “These two words express total belonging to Jesus through Mary: ‘Tuus totus ego sum, and omnia mea tua sunt,’ writes St. Louis-Marie, and he translates it: ‘I am all yours, and all that I have belongs to you, O my lovable Jesus, through Mary, your holy Mother’ (Treatise of True Devotion to Mary, no. 233). This saint’s teaching had a profound influence on my Marian devotion and my own life.”
https://aleteia.org/2018/06/29/the-saint-who-assured-john-paul-ii-that-he-was-allowed-a-tremendous-devotion-to-mary/
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