Saint Louis de Montfort, the apostle of Our Lady, wrote in True Devotion, “God the Father made an assemblage of all the waters and he named it the sea (mare). He made an assemblage of all the graces and he called it Mary (María).”1 She is full of grace. This means, therefore, that she lacks no grace, as God filled her living cavities with grace. God also gave Martin of Tours (Martínus), one of the great wonder-workers, the ability to work miracles. Water sustains life, and the waters of baptism symbolize the saving graces of the soul from the Most Holy Redeemer. It was through the Virgin Mary that we have Jesus, and it is through the Virgin Mary that we come to Jesus. We come to the great Virgin through the Church and her mediators. Saint Martin was one of those great mediators between God and man, whose excellence was proven by miracles. He raised three people from the dead and cast out demons. He once pointed to a tree and said it was possessed. The druids agreed to allow him to cut their “sacred” tree as long as Saint Martin would stand in its fall line. But the tree, instead of falling, began to spin like a top and landed in front of the druids, and many people converted to the God of Saint Martin that day. This holy bishop established the system of dioceses and parishes, and God still uses him as an instrument from heaven. The door is wide open for many more to be canonized (from Tours) because this is the see which gave the Holy Face message and explained how it could destroy Communism.
Naming creatures is a sign of power, exemplified by Adam naming the animals in the Garden of Eden. God also indicates power by the name He gives things and people. He gave wonderful power to water, but the most wonderful power was given to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she shares this power in the wonderful plan of God with her special saints. Saint Martin bears the root of her name, Mar. Is she done with sharing this God-given power? No! Saint Louis de Montfort prophesies, “Mary has produced, together with the Holy Ghost, the greatest thing which has been or ever will be—a God-man; and she will consequently produce the greatest saints that there will be in the end of time. The formation and the education of the great saints who shall come at the end of the world are reserved for her. For it is only that singular and miraculous Virgin who can produce, in union with the Holy Ghost, singular and extraordinary things.” Why did heaven choose the see of Saint Martin? Heaven chose it because it is a spring for these great saints. God loves a good battle, and He has given us the outline to fight Communism, which wishes to enslave the whole world.
The sea was used to drown the Egyptian army as it pursued the Chosen People. As the Blessed Virgin Mary is like a sea of grace, she is set about to crush the head of serpents, “Rejoice . . . you alone have crushed all heresies in the whole world.”3 Notice the grammar from the Divine Office. It is in the past tense. This means that all heresies that have not been crushed will be crushed. She wishes now to enlist the handpicked soldiers who will be the models of Saint Martin. Filled with grace like the waters of the world, they will join the ranks of the Archconfraternity of the Holy Face, “who shall surpass most of the other saints in sanctity as much as the cedars of Lebanon outgrow the little shrubs.” For “it was through Mary that the salvation of the world begun, and it is through Mary that it must be consummated.” Just as Saint Louis de Montfort predicted that his book True Devotion to Mary would be buried (and it was for over one hundred years until it was found in a treasure chest), so too, the Rosary and the Holy Face were “buried” for a time. The Rosary “only retained its first fervor for one century after it was instituted by St. Dominic. After this, it was like a thing buried and forgotten.” The Holy Face was opposed by revolutionary men both inside the bosom of the Church and from without the Church. But the Holy Face, too, will be revived on a grand scale for the Triumph of the Blessed Virgin Mary and for her greatest saints to shine in these later times.
This article is taken from a chapter in The Secret of the Holy Face by Fr. Lawrence Carney, which is available from TAN Books.
