The following is an excerpt from Our Lady: Queen of the Religious Life, by Fr. Louis Colin C.SS.R.

     After having led her candidate to the entrance of this promised land which is called the religious state, Our Lady, far from abandoning him, becomes a faithful traveling companion. More than ever, her maternal influence will cast its rays over that soul and, during the whole course of the soul's earthly journey, Our Lady will bring to it light, protection, support, joy, generosity, and love. At all times she will be like an oasis in the desert, a refreshing source of supernatural life: Vita et spes nostra, salve.

Who cannot make his own this avowal of Saint Alphonsus: "Oh Mary, everything that has come to me—my conversion, my holy vocation, and so many other graces—I recognize as having been given to me through your intercession."[1]

The Christian life—still less the religious life—cannot be conceived of without Mary. The primary, essential end of all institutes is the sanctification of their members. What is a vocation if not a call from Christ to perfection? Si vis perfectus esse . . . (Matt. 19:21). Every religious life, then, implies intense efforts toward moral perfection, tend­ing to produce a work of eminent sanctity. One is a religious and one really lives as a religious in the same measure in which he approaches the heights and God.

Now, Mary is at the very beginning of this ascending life. With the Holy Spirit, she is one of the first and best artisans of this testimonial of sanctity. To quote Saint Francis de Sales, life in the cloister "is a combat and a continual warfare against the world, the flesh, and oneself, under the banner and the protection of our most dear Mistress."[2] With her, everything is possible; without her, nothing succeeds.

But let us hasten to add that the vivifying action of the Virgin in its beginning, its force and its results, is conditioned in part by the quality of our Marian devotion.

"Oh, if Mary were but known, how much happier, how much holier, how much less worldly we should be, and how much more should we be living images of our sole Lord and Saviour, her dear and most blessed Son," wrote Father Faber.[3]

"Not only do we observe that sanctity has been given only to souls devoted to Mary," Charmot remarks, "but we believe that by choosing a spirituality less penetrated with Marian influence one thereby chooses a smaller measure of sanctity and of apostolic fruitfulness."[4]

The constant intervention of Our Lady in the development and the fullness of our religious life is one of the natural and necessary consequences of her twofold maternity, divine and human, as well as of her universal mediation.

Religious life is an imitation, a reproduction of the very life of the Man-God; or rather it is a budding forth, a blossoming, a fructification of the personality of Jesus Christ. "Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). We form part of the Mystical Body of the Saviour, of which we are the living members. With Him, we form the full, total Christ. Our sanctification consists, then, in incorporating ourselves more and more intimately with Jesus, in such a way as to participate more and more abundantly in His states, His mysteries, His virtues; in short, in His divine life. If every Christian is already another Christ—Christianus, alter Christus—how much more is the religious! One is a crude sketch, the other is a facsimile.

This engendering of Christ in us, His growth, the pro­gressive assimilation of our humanity by His Divinity, will be the work of the Virgin Mother.

During her life on earth, through the operation of the Holy Ghost she conceived in her womb the Word made man; today, always in collaboration with the same Spirit, she mystically engenders Him in us. "My dear children, with whom I am in labor again, until Christ is formed in you" (Gal. 4:19). Our Lady is always in spiritual gestation as regards our souls, which she forms, nourishes, Christifies, even to the day when she will bring them forth to life eternal.

Saint Louis de Montfort reminds us: "It is with her, in her, and of her that He [the Holy Ghost] has produced His masterpiece, which is God made man; whom He goes
on producing in the persons of His members daily, to the end of the world. The predestined are the members of that adorable Head: that is why, the more He ... finds Mary, His dear and indissoluble spouse, in any soul, the more active He becomes and the more mighty in producing Jesus Christ in that soul, and that soul in Jesus Christ."[5]

The Virgin attracts the sanctifying Spirit to us. De Montfort continues: "When the Holy Ghost, her spouse, has found Mary in a soul, He flies there. He enters there in His fullness; He communicates Himself to that soul abundantly and to the ... extent that the soul has made room for Mary. . . . One of the great reasons why the Holy Ghost does not now perform startling wonders in our souls, is that He does not find there a sufficiently great union with His faithful and indissoluble spouse."[6]… 

As Mother of Christ, Our Lady is also mother to us all; and when it is a question of consecrated souls, doubly a mother since she has brought forth these souls to both the Christian and the religious life.

From this maternity of grace flow directly the right and the duty of education. Every mother is the born educator of her children. The Virgin has never neglected this function. She has exercised it with such perfection that she can be called "the First Educator of religious souls."

The fundamental law of all education is that of exam­ple, which enlightens, convinces, sustains and draws forth. Pagan philosophers themselves recalled that fact to all teachers of youth. Who can tell the influence, fortunate or disastrous, which the moral dignity or the misconduct of parents exercises over children? Words, exhortations, chastisements are of little efficacy when they are not upheld and reinforced by the testimony of an irreproachable life. Likewise, it is the heroism of the general which calls forth valor in his troops. The power of founders of orders over their sons and their disciples can be explained only by the radiation of their virtue.

The influence of the Virgin on the religious world is primarily due to her matchless sanctity. She dazzles, conquers, subjugates. No one can contemplate her without admiring and loving her. Is it not true that admiration is a kind of approach to equality? Does not love carry a tendency to imitate?

The virgin heights exercise an irresistible fascination over the Alpine climber. At the beginning of the most perilous ascents and of the most adventuresome expeditions, one always finds passion for the mountain and the call of the summits.

The beauty, the grandeur, the ideal perfection of Our Lady calls forth a kind of attraction and rapture. At sight of her, the soul feels the spontaneous need to grow, to climb, to rise toward her and to follow her, although it is impossible to overtake her.

On the road to perfection, Mary is at once light and strength, the guide and the trainer.

To this external influence is added another which is deeper and which reaches right into the inner core of one's being. Our Mother kneads and fashions a religious soul within us as if with her own hands, by means of interior graces of light, purity, fortitude, and charity—

A supernatural mentality, consisting of deep faith, prudence, wisdom, without any connivance with the spirit of the world;

A delicate virginal conscience having a horror of the least fault, a conscience in which sin has no entrance;

A strong will which nothing wearies or rebuffs, and which never blanches before a duty to be accomplished or a sacrifice to be accepted;

Above all a heart—for the formation of the heart is the special field of the mother—like her own and like that of Jesus, meek, humble, trusting, generous, devoted, over-flowing with charity for God  and with zeal for one's neighbor.

Marian formation has its full efficacy, nevertheless, only in docile and malleable souls.

Religious life is at once a tendency and an activity: a tending toward sanctity and an activity of all the virtues. The endless ascent proves steep and at times seems impos­sible: whence the temptation to discouragement, to abandonment. Nothing remains then but to utter the cry of little Therese at the foot of the stairs: "Mama! Mama!" The two outstretched arms of Our Lady surely constitute an excellent means of transport.

The religious never works alone in the acquisition of the theological and moral virtues, but always in company with the Holy Ghost, Our Lord, and the Virgin. Every supernatural good work is primed, sustained, and completed with the aid of actual, predisposing, assisting, perfecting graces, graces which are to our virtues what the sap is to the tree and blood to the human organism—the vehicle of life—and which come to us only through the intercession and the mediation of Mary.

Mary's intervention is still more marked in the practice of the vows of religion, for it is there especially that the religious state proves itself a sacrifice, a holocaust: poverty of spirit and heart, carried even to the complete despoliation of everything created; obedience, humble, sincere, generous to the commands of authority and to the prescriptions of the rule; chastity, incorruptible in spite of the heat of the passions and the temptations of the world. The carrying out of such a program during an entire lifetime requires something close to heroism.

The aid of the Virgin will not be unwelcome as a remedy for our weakness or our laxity.

In his Encyclical on Holy Virginity, Pius XII effectively stressed this point: "To keep chastity spotless and perfect and to make it grow, there exists a remarkable means which has not ceased to prove itself through the course of centuries: it is solid and fervent devotion to the Virgin Mother of God. In a certain manner, all other means are contained in this devotion; whoever is sincerely and profoundly animated by it is without doubt impelled to be attentive to prayer, to approach fruitfully the tribunal of penance and the holy table. That is why we exhort with a paternal heart all priests and religious men and women to place themselves under the particular protection of the Mother of God, who is the Virgin of virgins and 'the educator of virginity,' according to the word of Saint Ambrose (De Instit. Virg., in Migne, PL, Vol. XVI, Col. 320) and who is very specially the most powerful mother of all those who have consecrated themselves to the service of God."[7]

The life of Gabriele dell'Addolorata offers a particularly brilliant illustration of the role of Our Lady in the development of the religious life and the acquisition of holiness. "This devotion to the Blessed Virgin," writes Gabriele's biographer, "is the salient point of his life, and it was the primary source whence was derived all that was exceptional and admirable in it."[8]

"I do not think that anyone can acquire intimate union with Our Lord and a perfect fidelity to the Holy Ghost," said Louis de Montfort, "without a very great union with the most holy Virgin and a great dependence on her aid. ... It is to Mary alone that God has given the keys to the cellars of divine love and the power to enter into the most sublime and secret ways of perfection, and ... to make others enter there also."[9]

But it is especially in the various states of the mystical life that the intervention of the "Queen of Contemplation" proves itself, if not more extensive, at least more profound. As it has been correctly noted in regard to Saint Teresa, "The Marian life of the seraphic virgin of Avila, an eminently contemplative soul, was very deep. That consummate mistress of the spiritual life teaches us by her writings and by her example that a profound devotion to the Blessed Virgin and efforts to remain in her presence are of great efficacy in the realization of the contemplative ideal" (From the Revue Marie[10]).

Let us never forget, we repeat, that all these exceptional graces of sanctification will come to us only in the measure of our prayer and devotion to Our Lady.

 

"To give Me honor does not detract or take from the honor to My Son. I say this, My child, to you and My children in all humility. I, your Mother, I, too, am but an instrument of the Father in Heaven. My Son has chosen to send Me to you as a Mediatrix between your world and the world of the Father." - Our Lady of the Roses, December 24, 1974

 

Our Lady of the Roses Bayside messages:
These messages came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

 

MOTHER OF GRACE
"My child and My children, I have come to you under many names in the past, but I want you to acknowledge Me as the Mother of Grace. Because that is why I come to you now, My children: to give you the graces necessary to remain upon earth in a state of purity and perseverance, and knowledgeable to the truth that will lead you and keep you on the narrow road to Heaven." - Our Lady, September 14, 1985

CO-REDEMPTRIX
"You will not stop the words of My Mother. She is your Co-Redemptrix, and as such, it is She Who has been given the mission to bring you back onto the road to the Kingdom. Without Her you will be lost." - Jesus, August 5, 1974

PROTECTRESS
"I come to you as a Protectress of peace." - Our Lady, October2, 1990

SHIELD
"I ask you for a constant vigil of prayer so that satan will not enter upon you. You must now say when you arise: I will protect myself with the shield of the Immaculate Conception. You will say before you enter your bed (which will not be a bed of security and comfort now): I protect myself with the shield of the Immaculate Conception. For, My children, when you sleep he does not sleep." - Our Lady, July 1, 1971

MANTLE OF LOVE
"My children, as a Mother, My heart is torn for you. O mothers who come to Me, hearts bleeding in sorrow, I will comfort you, for I, too, know the suffering of loss. Come to Me, all you who sorrow and weep for your children, for I will place My mantle of love and comfort upon you. Come to Me, and I will lighten your burden." - Our Lady, October 6, 1979

SINLESS
"Remember, My children, come to My Mother; for in Her memory of Her human days upon earth, She above all humans created--sinless, without the stigma of sin, a perfect life upon earth without sin, and assumed into Heaven, body and spirit--She above all can direct you because She is your Mother; She is the Queen of Heaven, and the Mother of every human being upon earth." - Jesus, August 14, 1979

NATIONS
"As a great Mother of great sorrows, She has opened Her heart to all mankind, choosing of Her own free will to act as your Mother, the Mother of all nations, the Mother of all children of earth--to guide you back to the road to Heaven." - Jesus, October 6, 1979

BELOVED DAUGHTER
"You have witnessed, my child, the arrival of my beloved daughter, my first and only child, one whom I cherished--a true miracle from the Father." - Saint Anne, September 7, 1973

BEAUTY
Veronica - Now within the light I can see Our Lady. Oh, She is so beautiful. She is just so beautiful! Words cannot describe Her beauty. All I can say is, this is something that is not earthly; it's the most heavenly sight that anyone could see. Our Lady has on Her white gown, with the gold trim all about the edge. And She has the mantle over Her head. I very seldom have even seen a wisp of Our Lady's hair. It is so beautiful. - October 6, 1988

TRUTH
Veronica - She wants to give to all a simple truth from the Father. Our Lady says that much has been questioned by man of Her immaculate conception of Jesus. And also Her birth.
    Now Our Lady said that the Father knew before Her birth and the birth of all on earth what would transpire in time to come.
    Therefore, Her birth was not by accident, because before time came, it was all deemed to be. Therefore, the questioning also of the birth of Her Son would be most easy to understand, Our Lady said, if you know the power of the Father. For nothing is impossible with God.
    The world needed to be saved. The gates of Heaven needed to be opened to a sinful man. Therefore, the Father deemed to send His Son to earth and planned before "My birth," Our Lady says--Her birth, that She should be there to bring forth this heavenly Being Who would be known as the Son of Man and the Son of God.
    It was the plan of the Father to try to teach man and lead him back to the road to the Kingdom which had been shut to him. And because of his evil ways and his turning to satan, he had lost that road and the keys had been taken from him temporarily.
    Therefore, when, Our Lady said, She saw Her Son sacrificed upon the wood, She suffered greatly. But Her suffering and Her joy was intermingled, for She was given the knowledge before the birth of the Son that He would come to save all mankind. Therefore, when He returned to the Father, Her heart was lightened, knowing that She would remain but a short time and join Him in the Kingdom. So the loss was but a temporary heartache to Her.
    Our Lady knows that many question this. It is only because satan wishes to place doubt and destroy the truth. So Our Lady asks that you keep in your heart the truth and be not swayed by scientific minds that have been given great knowledge, but never the truth. - December 30, 1972

ONLY CHILD
"I come to you as your God, and I also want to make this clear: I did not have any brothers or sisters in My family. My Mother was Mary Ever Virgin. This was a supernatural manifestation from Heaven and only those who are in the light, they fully understand the existence of My Mother and the role She played in establishing the One, True Church upon earth." - Jesus, October 2, 1987

GENTLEST
"I give you My heart, torn anew by My own. I give you My Mother, the gentlest of creatures, human and sublime. I give you My Mother Who will be with you through the battle until I return as I ascended into Heaven." - Jesus, August 14, 1979

CONSECRATED
"My children, it is only because many years ago you consecrated your country to Me* that you have not received the destruction that is gradually coming closer to you from the outside world. But if you turn from Me now I no longer will be able to shield you." - Our Lady, July 1, 1971

*In 1846, eight years before Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the Sixth Council of Baltimore formally chose the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived without sin as the Patroness of the United States.

MY HEEL
"I stand upon the head of the serpent. My heel will crush him, but not until man and the world have been cleansed. I come as a Mediatrix of all graces, representative through My Son in the Father." - Our Lady, March 18, 1973

INSTRUMENT
"To give Me honor does not detract or take from the honor to My Son. I say this, My child, to you and My children in all humility. I, your Mother, I, too, am but an instrument of the Father in Heaven. My Son has chosen to send Me to you as a Mediatrix between your world and the world of the Father." - Our Lady, December 24, 1974

GENESIS 3: 15
"My children, I--My heart is greatly saddened at the distortion of doctrine in My Son's Church. I understand that man can be misled, for I have often counseled you that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. You must examine your Bible, the Book of life. Genesis, chapter 3. There must be no changes in the story of the origin of mankind. 'She' must remain. 'He' must not replace it in the story of the serpent's attack upon Eve.
     "The Eternal Father has stated that the serpent shall crawl on his belly, stomach, My children. I use several words to illustrate the manner in which man is describing this time. He will crawl, the serpent, as the lowest animal among the beasts because he has deceived Eve. But the Eternal Father in His mercy has stated that He will place enmities between the serpent and the woman, between, enmities between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed; and the serpent shall have his head crushed by the woman and the serpent shall lie in wait for her heel.
     "Be it known that the Eternal Father has deemed that man shall not change the words to 'he' and 'he.' I say this not to bring any false notions in your mind, My children, that I repeat this in pride. Far be it from Me, for I have not sought, neither on Heaven or earth, to be prideful; but, My children, I must bring to you the words of truth. Many are changing the words to suit their own interpretations of the Book of life, and these interpretations are based upon man's own seeking.” - Our Lady, September 28, 1978