Men are Made Best Molded in Mary

Medieval Virgin Mary, Sto. Domingo de Silos

Mary is the Living Mold of God

"Mary is called by St. Augustine, and is indeed, the 'living mold of God.' In her alone the God-man was formed in his human nature without losing any feature of the Godhead. In her alone, by the grace of Jesus Christ, man is made godlike as far as human nature is capable of it.

"A sculptor can make a statue or a life-like model in two ways: 1) By using his skill, strength, experience and good tools to produce a statue out of hard, shapeless matter; 2) By making a cast of it in a mold. The first way is long and involved and open to all sorts of accidents. It only needs a faulty stroke of the chisel or hammer to ruin the whole work. The second is quick, easy, straightforward, almost effortless and inexpensive, but the mold must be perfect and true to life and the material must be easy to handle and offer no resistance.

"Mary is the great mold of God, fashioned by the Holy Spirit to give human nature to a Man who is God by the hypostatic union, and to fashion through grace men who are like to God. No godly feature is missing from this mold. Everyone who casts himself into it and allows himself to be molded will acquire every feature of Jesus Christ, true God, with little pain or effort, as befits his weak human condition. He will take on a faithful likeness to Jesus with no possibility of distortion, for the devil has never had and never will have any access to Mary, the holy and immaculate Virgin, in whom there is not the least suspicion of a stain of sin.

"Dear soul, what a difference there is between a soul brought up in the ordinary way to resemble Jesus Christ by people who, like sculptors, rely one their own skill and industry, and a soul thoroughly tractable, entirely detached, most ready to be molded in her by the working of the Holy Spirit. What blemishes and defects, what shadows and distortions, what natural and human imperfections are found in the first soul, what faithful and divine likeness to Jesus is found in the second!"

"The Secret of Mary: Concerning the Slavery of the Blessed Virgin," in Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, God Alone, Bay Shore, New York: Montfort Publications, 267-268.

N.B. The preparation for the total consecration to Mary.
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