by Greg Willits
Founder – Rosary Army
To be a witness to Jesus Christ in the modern world can be rife with difficulty. I’m not entirely certain I can succinctly tell you why I love Jesus, and my inability to point to a specific time or way in which Jesus was fully present in my life often tempts me to silence.
When I hear someone tell of a very concentrated moment of Christ being made known in their lives, I have to fight a twinge of jealousy. My relationship with Jesus has been a lifelong journey and even after more than fifty years, I still struggle to give reason for the hope that is in me (1 Peter 3:15).
Don’t take that struggle as doubting Christ as much as it is doubting myself.
For this reason, I’m so thankful for St. Louis Marie de Montfort, who I’ve come to call “my dear, dear friend St. Louis.”
While St. Louis Marie de Montfort is arguably best known for his perennial work True Devotion, the basis of that book is found in a lesser-known but perhaps even more important treatise entitled The Love of Eternal Wisdom.
This important but little-known work from my dear, dear friend lays the way to fully have Jesus in your life, and to more clearly identify the movements of the Lord in your life.
We all feel a pull. We all have that God-sized hole in our hearts that St. Augustine speaks of and we long to fill it.
That hole is in the shape of Jesus Christ who St. Louis de Montfort calls Eternal Wisdom.
A Most Beautiful Prayer
The prayer St. Louis de Montfort gives us at the beginning of The Love of Eternal Wisdom is perhaps one of the most beautiful prayers I’ve ever read. It is rich and detailed and it alone could be the subject of an entire book (and is something I regularly pray about tackling myself).
In most translations, this prayer is displayed in a paragraph block with all the words one after another without any separation or sense of cadence. In my reflections, I’ve found St. Louis’ important prayer more profound and more personal when written out as a sort of Psalm or poem to God. Said daily, this prayer alone has the power to set all new pathways in our lives.
The importance of this prayer in light of our overall goal of more deeply knowing Jesus Christ the Eternal Wisdom cannot be over-emphasized and is worth tackling line by line as in its stanzas it provides a clear outline of what we all ultimately seek in both earthly and eternal life.
Prayer to Eternal Wisdom
Divine Wisdom,
Lord of heaven and earth,
I humbly beg pardon for my audacity in attempting to speak of your perfections, ignorant and sinful as I am.
I beg you not to consider the darkness of my mind or the uncleanness of my lips unless it be to take them away with a glance of your eyes and a breath of your mouth.
There is in you so much beauty and delight;
you have shielded me from so many evils and showered on me so many favors, and you are moreover so little known and so much slighted.
How can I remain silent?
Not only justice and gratitude, but my own interests urge me to speak about you, even though it be so imperfectly.
It is true, I can only lisp like a child, but then I am only a child, anxious to learn how to speak properly through my lisping, once I have attained the fullness of your age.
Who it is we seek
Our dear friend De Montfort starts with his constant reminder of not what we seek, but Who it is we seek:
Divine Wisdom, that is, Jesus Christ, Lord of heaven and earth.
Every time we call out for Divine Wisdom — of Eternal Wisdom — we are calling out for Jesus.
Our desperate seeking of Divine Wisdom is our desperate seeking of He Who is divine, and the Wisdom that comes from His divinity.
In this prayer, we then immediately praise the God of mercy through our own repentance. We acknowledge that we are imperfect and are in no way worthy of approaching God given our sinfulness and ignorance, and yet God desires for us to come to Him nevertheless, not as groveling beggars, but as beloved baptized children, adopted into the same kingship of His own beloved Son.
Given this immense gift of mercy, it makes so much sense that even though He doesn’t see us as beggars but as adopted children through our very baptisms, we would still beg Him to forget our sins, to look not upon our sins, but on the faith of His Church, and to purify us by the very Sacrifice of His Son with whom He is and always has been well pleased (Matthew 3:17).
Knowing the ugliness and darkness of our sin, of how our sin has injured ourselves, God, and others, how can we not then marvel at the beauty of the perfection of God’s purity and sinlessness?
It’s like walking through the house in the middle of the night after a thunderstorm knocked out all the power and the batteries in the flashlights are all dead. We stumble from room to room kicking our toes against the furniture when suddenly the lights unexpectedly return. What relief we feel at something so simple and common!
How much more should our relief be when we no longer have to stare at our impurity and filth but are instead awash in the light of God’s loving kindness?
And how often does God offer us this relief?
Endlessly!
Every time we avail ourselves of the immense gift of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we feel this relief of the burden of sin being instantly wiped away.
To repeat our dear friend, St. Louis, how can we possibly remain silent?
How, indeed?
This is the love we should feel for Eternal Wisdom — for Jesus — to want to proclaim His goodness and forgiveness to all.
And thank God for someone like St. Louis de Montfort for giving us further relief in acknowledging that we’ll probably screw up our efforts of proclamation. But justice (that is – what is right) and gratitude (the thankfulness that rises in our chests upon receiving the relieving gift of forgiveness and mercy) should compel us to do so nevertheless, knowing our efforts will be imperfect.
So how do we go about doing this?
Like a child, with imperfect words. We know we do not possess wisdom and intelligence enough to do justice to God, but we possess a love of Eternal Wisdom that should allow us enough to act.
When I first became a parent, I wasn’t sure how to keep my child clean and fed. Before his birth, my wife and I read books and made lists and bought every single thing we thought necessary to care for a newborn. Then, when our son arrived, it felt like all of that was for naught. There were nights when our son constantly cried and my wife and I did everything we could to calm him to no avail. I remember strapping him into a sling against my chest and slowly walking miles on a treadmill as I tried to rock him to sleep through his colic and tears.
We had no idea what we were doing – but we didn’t stop trying to figure it out.
Mistakes were made, for certain, but our son was eventually comforted and our confidence increased considerably. By the time our fifth child was born (fifteen years ago today, actually), we barely made any preparations at all. I think the most we did to get ready was that we ran a couple of loads of laundry to wash newborn baby clothes.
We had gone from not knowing how to properly care for an infant to becoming old pros.
The last line of St. Louis’ prayer speaks to this. We can only lisp like children because we are children who are ready and anxious to love Jesus — Eternal Wisdom — as He deserves to be loved.
We’ll only reach this point — of fully and correctly being able to love Him – when we ourselves reach full maturity. As Colossians 1:28 says: “It is he whom we proclaim, admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.”
Until we reach the fullness of perfection with Christ, we are still children growing out of our imperfections into the perfection of Jesus.
But for now, we praise Him for His goodness, and for the Love of Eternal Wisdom that He showers upon us all.
Some News from Headquarters
We’re still busy at work preparing new courses for School of Mary. Remember, enrollment is completely free.
In the meantime, not only is Lent quickly approaching (Ash Wednesday is February 14 this year), but the next cycle of Preparation for Total Consecration according to St. Louis de Montfort runs from February 12 through March 25 (Feast of the Annunciation).
We have a full learning path on School of Mary where my wife and I accompany you through this entire process (again, this is all made completely free thanks to our donors).
Now is a great time to make your way through the introductory videos so you’ll be ready to go on day one. Why not say a prayer asking for strength and courage and commit even more fully to God right now through your own total consecration to His son, Jesus?
Click here to get started on School of Mary and our free Total Consecration resources (including our free 100-page downloadable workbook).
This Week’s Podcast – We Got Hacked!
On this week’s Adventures in Imperfect Living, we share some recent difficulties and our not-so-good first reactions.
It’s easy to panic when an emergency happens, and for us we had a major scam attack our bank account that temporarily sent us into a frenzy.
We share how we managed to bring God into this craziness and how God worked through this difficulty to increase our faith even more.
I think you’ll enjoy this episode.
That’s it for this week. If you know someone who would benefit from this newsletter, please feel free to forward it along.
Thanks again to all of our donors, supporters, and prayer warriors. You make this work possible!
Be sure to pray your Rosary every day and do whatever it takes to be holy!
