Eleventh Day: May 8, 2020
Treatise: of True Devotion to the Virgin Mary [68-77]
We belong to Jesus and Mary as their slaves.
Second Truth. Through baptism, we have become slaves
Eleventh Day: May 8, 2020
Treatise: of True Devotion to the Virgin Mary [68-77]
We belong to Jesus and Mary as their slaves.
Second Truth. Through baptism, we have become slaves of Jesus Christ; therefore we must strive to bear fruit for the glory of God, letting him reign in our souls, because He has conquered us with his blood. In fact, in many parables, Jesus himself affirms our belonging to Him and our duty to bear fruit. For example, he compares us to a flock that must multiply and give milk, and of which Jesus is the Shepherd. On the contrary, Jesus cursed the barren fig tree and condemned the slothful servant who wasted his talent. All this proves that Jesus Christ wants to gather some fruit from us, that is, from our good works. St. Paul writes: Indeed, we are God’s workmanship: created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. (Ephesians 2:10).These words show that Jesus Christ is the beginning and end of all our good deeds. We must serve him, not just as paid servants, but rather, as slaves of love.
Saint Louis Marie, explains the meaning of the word “slave,” making the appropriate distinctions (remember that he lived at the end of the 1600s and the beginning of the 1700s): “there are in this world two ways of belonging to another and being subject to his authority: ordinary service and the other is by slavery. With ordinary service, one commits to serve another for a certain time and for a certain salary or wage. With slavery, on the other hand, one depends entirely on another, for all of his life and must serve the master without claiming any salary or reward.” On the other hand, he states that there are three types of slavery:
1. Natural slavery: In this way all creatures are slaves of God, for the earth is the Lord’s and everything that fills it. (Ps 24:1)
2. Forced slavery: The demons and the condemned are slaves in this sense.
3. Voluntary slavery. This is the most perfect and gives the greatest glory to God, who looks into the heart and wants it to be given to him. By this slavery we freely choose God and his service before all things, even if we were not by our very nature obliged to do so.
He also clarifies the difference between the servant and the slave, saying: “The servant does not give to his employer all that he is, all he possesses, or all that he can acquire for himself or for others; the slave, on the other hand, gives himself totally to his master, with all that he possesses and can acquire, without exception. The servant demands wages for the services rendered to his employer. The slave, on the other hand, cannot demand anything, no matter how much skill, attention and energy he put into the work. The servant can leave his employer when he wants or at least, when the term of the contract expires; whereas the slave has no right to abandon his master at any time. Finally, the servant is at the patron’s service only for a time; the slave’s service is forever.”
No other human state involves belonging more completely to another than slavery. Among Christians, nothing makes a person belong more completely to Jesus Christ and Mary than voluntary slavery. Repeatedly, in the Holy Scripture, Christians are called slaves of Christ. Formerly, the word servant was used to indicate only a slave, because servants as we know them did not exist. Therefore, we cannot belong to Christ as servants with wages, but as slaves, who are moved by a great love to consecrate our service as slaves. Everything that we have said of Jesus, we can refer, without doubt, also to the Blessed Virgin Mary because as the saints say:
“All that belongs to God by nature belongs to Mary by grace.”
According to the saints, we call ourselves slaves of love of the Blessed Virgin so as to be more perfectly slaves of Jesus Christ. She, in fact, is not like the other creatures. If we become attached to them, they can separate us from God instead of allowing us to approach Him. The strongest inclination of Mary is to unite us to her Son Jesus Christ, as the strongest desire of the Son is that we go to him through