The Virgin Mary in the life of saints and contemplatives

Anecdotes of saints · 17th century -XX

Some of the greatest saints and mystics in history had with the Virgin Mary a relationship that exceeded ordinary devotion: it was a living, maternal and transformative presence in their daily prayer. These are some of your most moving anecdotes.

1. San Juan Bosco: the dream of the nine years (1824)

Juan Bosco tenía nueve años cuando, en el verano de 1824, tuvo el sueño que definiría toda su vida. En ese sueño se encontraba en un patio donde muchos muchachos reían, jugaban, y no pocos blasfemaban. Juan intentó hacerles callar a puñetazos. Entonces apareció «un hombre de aspecto majestuoso, vestido con un manto de luz que le cubría todo el cuerpo, cuyo rostro era tan luminoso que Juan no podía fijar en él sus ojos».

El hombre de luz le dijo: «No con golpes, sino con la mansedumbre y la caridad deberás ganar a estos amigos tuyos.» Junto a él había «una mujer majestuosa, vestida con un manto que resplandecía como si en cada punto tuviera una estrella luminosísima». La mujer tomó a los muchachos de la mano —que se habían transformado de niños peleoneros en corderos mansos— y los presentó a Juan.

Juan Bosco told this dream for the first time to Pope Pius IX in 1858, at the express mandate of the Pontiff. The Pope ordered him to put it in writing, and it was thus incorporated into the Memorias del Oratorio, the autobiography that Don Bosco issued in his last years. During his entire life, Don Bosco interpreted the woman of the dream as the Virgin Mary, and the boys as the young to whom he was to dedicate his mission.

Don Bosco's devotion to Mary Helper was the engine of his work: with the poorest and most abandoned young people in Turin he founded the Oratory, and later the Salesian Congregation, which today works in more than 130 countries. He built in Turin the Basilica of Mary Auxiliary, consecrated in 1868, which is still today an important center of Marian pilgrimage.

2. San Alfonso María de Ligorio: «Las Glorias de María» (1750)

San Alfonso María de Ligorio (1696-1787) is considered one of the most important Marian theologians in the history of the Church. Doctor of the Church and founder of the Redemptorists, his life was marked from childhood by intense devotion to the Virgin.

He started collecting materials for his great Marian work when he was 38, and finished it at the age of 54, in 1750, with the title The Glories of Mary. The work arose as a direct response to the Jansenists, who spread the idea that Marian devotion was a superstition incompatible with the true faith. Saint Alfonso wanted to demonstrate with Tradition, the Fathers of the Church and theology that the intercession of Mary is the foundation of the Christian faith.

Saint Alfonso reported in his spiritual correspondence that during prayer he often experienced a certainty of the presence of the Virgin. When he suffered nights of spiritual aridity - periods of dryness in prayer well known in the great mystics - he found in Mary's invocation the way back to consolation. He attached to this devotion his ability to maintain pastoral charity for decades of exhausting work as bishop and confessor.

The Glories of Mary It has been translated into dozens of languages and has formed the Marian piety of entire generations of priests, religious and lay people all over the world. It is considered one of the most influential Marian works in the history of the Church.

3. Beato Carlos de Foucauld: «Mi Dios, si existes, hazme conocerte» (París, 1886)

Carlos de Foucauld (1858-1916) was, in 1886, a young 28-year-old French aristocrat who had abandoned the faith in adolescence. Army officer, explorer, Parisian dandy: his life was the antithesis of spirituality. However, his contact with the Muslims of North Africa had left him a question that he could not silence: what if God exists?

In the fall of 1886, that question took him to the parish of Saint- Augustin in Paris, where he sought Abbé Huvelin, a priest he had heard of. I wasn't gonna confess: I was gonna argue. The abbé heard him in the confessional and, without responding to his philosophical arguments, he simply invited him to kneel and make a general confession of his whole life. Carlos de Foucauld obeyed. He left the converted confessional.

La Virgen María jugó un papel particular en los primeros años de su vida de fe. Al entrar en la iglesia, De Foucauld pasaba siempre ante las imágenes marianas y se detenía a rezar. En sus diarios y cartas espirituales, la llama «Nuestra Señora» con una familiaridad filial que va creciendo con los años. Su devoción mariana se hizo más intensa cuando, siguiendo el ejemplo de Nazaret, fue a vivir como hermano a Tierra Santa, cerca de los lugares donde la Virgen había vivido.

Carlos de Foucauld was ordained a priest in 1901 and lived the last years of his life in the Sahara desert, in Tamanrasset (Algeria), among the Tuareg. He was killed on December 1, 1916. He was beatified by Pope Francis on May 27, 2022.

4. San Francisco de Sales: the healing of melancholy before Our Lady of Good Relief (Paris, about 1588)

Francisco de Sales (1567-1622) is known for his proverbial meekness and for being the patron of Catholic writers and the press. But few know that in his youth he went through a devastating spiritual crisis that led him to the brink of despair.

He studied philosophy and theology in Paris, at the school of Clermont, when he began to torment the question of predestination: what if God had predestined him to eternal condemnation? The question, fed by the theological debates of the time, became an obsession that deprived him of sleep, appetite and joy. Young Francis fell into what we would call a deep depression today.

One day in 1588, in the church of Saint- Étienne-de-Grès de Paris, where an ancient image of the Virgin called Our Lady of Good Help (Notre-Dame du Bon Secours), Francis kneeled at the image and prayed for the prayer he had learned as a child: the Memory from San Bernardo. He asked the Virgin to grant her at least to be able to love her and serve God even from hell.

At the end of the prayer, Francis felt that the darkness that smashed him suddenly dissipated. An indescribable peace took its place. The holy future came out of the church free from the anguish that had paralyzed him for months. He never suffered her again. He attributed this healing to the intercession of the Virgin Mary and, from that moment on, his Marian devotion became one of the pillars of his spiritual life and of his work as a writer and preacher.

O Virgin Mary, Mother of saints and contemplatives, who guides those who seek you with a sincere heart, lead us also to your Son Jesus Christ. By the Rosary and by your intercession, give us the peace that the world cannot give. Amen.