From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Acquiring Peace and Zeal for Perfection [1]   
      
   WE SHOULD enjoy much peace if we did not concern ourselves with what   
   others say and do, for these are no concern of ours. How can a man who   
   meddles in affairs not his own, who seeks strange distractions, and   
   who is little or seldom inwardly recollected, live long in peace?   
   Blessed are the simple of heart for they shall enjoy peace in   
   abundance.   
   --Thomas à Kempis, From the Imitation of Christ--Book 1 Chapter 11   
      
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   April 28th - Saint Louis Mary de Montfort   
      
   d. 1716   
   Born: Jan 31. 1673 Canonized: 1947 by Pope Pius XII He was born poor.   
   Studied in Paris, and ordained in 1700. While a seminarian he   
   delighted in researching the writings of Church Fathers, Doctors, and   
   Saints as they related to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom he was   
   singularly devoted.   
      
   ST. Louis Mary was the eldest of the eight children of John Baptist   
   Grignion, and was born in modest circumstances at Montfort, then in   
   the diocese of Saint-Malo, in 1673. After being educated at the Jesuit   
   college in Rennes, he went at the age of twenty to Paris to prepare   
   for the priesthood; but being unable through poverty to gain   
   admittance to the seminary of Saint-Sulpice, he entered a small   
   institution conducted by the Abbé de la Barmondière. At the abbé’s   
   death he moved to a still more Spartan establishment: real penury   
   reigned, and the wretched food was cooked by the students, who all in   
   turn “had the pleasure of poisoning themselves”, as one of them   
   afterwards ironically observed. Louis himself fell so dangerously ill   
   that he had to be removed to the hospital. When at last he recovered,   
   it was made possible for him to enter Saint-Sulpice to complete his   
   religious course. We find him selected as one of the two exemplary   
   students who were annually sent on pilgrimage to one of our Lady’s   
   shrines, on this occasion Chartres.   
      
   His success while still a seminarian in giving catechetical   
   instruction to the roughest and most undisciplined children in Paris,   
   confirmed Louis Grignion in the desire to undertake apostolic work.   
   Therefore, after his ordination in 1700, he spent a short time at   
   Nantes with a priest, who trained men for home missions, before   
   proceeding to Poitiers, where he was appointed chaplain to the   
   hospital. In this institution for nursing the sick poor he soon   
   produced a much-needed reformation, and organized from amongst the   
   female staff and residents the nucleus of the congregation of   
   Daughters of the Divine Wisdom, for whom he compiled a rule.   
   Nevertheless the very improvements he introduced aroused resentment,   
   and he was obliged to resign his post. At once he began to give   
   missions to the poor, who flocked to hear him, but the bishop of   
   Poitiers, at the instigation of the critics of Father Grignion,   
   forbade him to preach in his diocese. Undismayed, he set off on foot   
   for Rome to seek authority from Pope Clement XI, who received him   
   encouragingly and sent him back to France with the title of missionary   
   apostolic. As Poitiers remained closed to him, he returned to his   
   native Brittany, where he embarked on a course of missions which he   
   continued almost uninterruptedly until his death   
   .   
   Although the majority of parishes received St Louis Mary with open   
   arms, adverse criticism continued to dog his steps, and he found   
   himself excluded from certain churches and even dioceses by   
   ecclesiastics of Jansenist proclivities. Moreover, his methods   
   sometimes startled the conventional. He would invite his audience to   
   bring their irreligious books to be burnt on a great pyre surmounted   
   by an effigy of the Devil represented as a society-woman; or he would   
   himself realistically act the part of a dying sinner whose soul was   
   being contended for by the Devil and his guardian angel, impersonated   
   by two other priests standing beside his prostrate form. But, if he   
   seemed to appeal to the emotions, the response he elicited was   
   frequently practical and lasting. It often expressed itself in the   
   restoration of some dilapidated church, in the setting up of huge   
   memorial crosses, in liberal alms to the poor and in a real spiritual   
   revival. Nearly sixty years after the holy man’s death, the curé of   
   Saint-La declared that many of his parishioners still practised the   
   devotions Louis had inculcated in one of his missions. The first and   
   foremost of these was the rosary, for the recitation of which he   
   established numerous confraternities. Then there were hymns or   
   metrical prayers of his own composition, many of which are sung to   
   this day in parts of France. It seems to have been his great love for   
   the rosary which led him to become a tertiary of the order of St   
   Dominic.   
      
   But St Louis did not confine his evangelistic efforts to his   
   missions—he believed in preaching the word of God in season and out of   
   season. On one occasion, when travelling on a market-boat between   
   Rouen and Dinant, he asked his fellow passengers, who were singing   
   obscene songs, to join him in the rosary. Twice they answered his   
   invitation with jeers, but eventually they not only recited it   
   reverently on their knees, but also listened attentively to the homily   
   with which he followed it. Another day-it was a rough alfresco dance   
   which he brought to an end in the same way. Perhaps his greatest   
   triumphs were won in the Calvinistic stronghold of La Rochelle, where   
   he held several crowded missions in rapid succession, and reconciled a   
   number of Protestants to the Church. St Louis had long desired to form   
   an association of missionary priests, but it was only a few years   
   before his death that he succeeded in attaching to himself a few   
   ordained men who became the first Missionaries of the Company of Mary.   
   He was in the midst of a mission at Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre when he   
   was attacked by a sudden illness which proved fatal. He was only   
   forty-three years of age when he died in 1716.   
      
   Apart from his verses and hymns, St Louis Mary Grignion’s chief   
   literary work was the well-known treatise on “True Devotion to the   
   Blessed Virgin”, in which a renewal of interest was caused by his   
   canonization in 1947.   
      
   Leaving out of account earlier biographies, such as those of the   
   contemporary J. Grandet and of P. de Clorivière (1775), special   
   mention must be made of A. Laveille’s Le b,. L.-M. Grignion de   
   Montfort d’après des documents inédits (1907); but there are many   
   other Lives in French....   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   "Learn, my Sisters, to suffer something for the love of God, without   
   letting everyone know it"   
   --St. Teresa   
      
      
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