Introduction

“What a marvellous transformation is possible! Dust into light, uncleanness into purity, sinfulness into holiness, creature into Creator, man into God! A marvellous work, I repeat, so difficult in itself, and even impossible for a mere creature to bring about, for only God can accomplish it by giving his grace abundantly and in an extraordinary manner. The very creation of the universe is not as great an achievement as this.

Chosen soul, how will you bring this about? What steps will you take to reach the high level to which God is calling you? The means of holiness and salvation are known to everybody, since they are found in the gospel; the masters of the spiritual life have explained them; the saints have practised them and shown how essential they are for those who wish to be saved and attain perfection. These means are: sincere humility, unceasing prayer, complete self-denial, abandonment to divine Providence, and obedience to the will of God.”

St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of Mary, 3‒4

The retreat entitled “Mary’s Way” is an invitation to a great adventure that may change your life. Really! Many people experienced a transformation after entering this path. They found their place in the Heart of God. And you, too, can rediscover your way to our Lord, your joy and peace. God is good; He loves you and wants to transform you. This is His plan that He prepared specifically for you. He sees your struggles, battles, ineptitude, diminishing patience, and frustrations. And He wants to address all of it. He is good, and He sends his Holy Spirit, who allows us to comprehend the truth hidden in the Heart of God. It may happen that we are looking for spectacular things, but God wants to come to us in a straightforward way. Say: “God, come to my life and transform me!” I encourage you to enter this path with trust and openness. He desires the change that we carry within us. He appeals to your deeply rooted desire for happiness. Every one of us has different desires, sometimes specified, sometimes chaotic. Sometimes, we can easily define them; sometimes, it is more challenging. Our inner desire shows us the area of the desert. And in the desert, we crave water. Yet it often happens that while seeking to meet our expectations, we find only a temporary relief, and this transience demonstrates that we need something more. So we try searching for subsequent impressions, but it is wise to recognise that they may also perish and that the incessant search for sensations is a trap. Therefore, we need something more that could quench our desire and would not perish. Where could we find it? The answer lies in the teaching of Jesus Christ, who speaks to us, like He spoke to the Samaritan woman: “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. (…) those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn 4:10; 4:14).

Here, you get the invitation to discover the source of Living Water. The one who gives you this invitation is Mary, the Mother of God and your Blessed Mother. She’s the one who invites you to this retreat. Where is this water? How to find it? In the Word of God for every particular day, in the meditations, prayer, and the voice of the Church. It is an exceptional invitation for the next 33 days of your life. Take this effort because you will value only those things you achieve in toil and sufferance. We don’t appreciate things that we get too easily. Do you want to dig down to this source within you? Today is the day to make the very first decision—the decision about entering this path.

The retreat is a special time when God acts. Not because He speaks louder, as He always speaks to us in the same way, but because we are more open to listening to His voice. It’s like with the radio waves. The radio waves may pass across your room, but you don’t hear them if you don’t have an appropriate receiver. When you turn the radio on and tune into the proper frequency, it suddenly turns out you hear what you couldn’t hear a moment ago. Our heart attitude is this kind of a receiver. God wants to speak to you in a very particular way during this time. He will speak through the Holy Bible, the voice of the Church, the voice of conscience, your calling, your desires, inspirations, life circumstances, events, and even failures. We need to enter the school of the heart of Mary, who was pondering over all of this in her heart and unceasingly asked: “God, what do you want to tell me by this?”. It is all about such an attitude. This kind of open heart allows us to discern God, who often comes in the most straightforward situations of our everyday life. And all of a sudden, we discover that He is with us and guides us and that we can see signs of His presence.

The retreat is the time of grace. It is not about our efforts but, most of all, about our awareness that God gave us a special grace of renewal and change for this particular time. He had already forestalled you with His grace, even before you decided to take up this retreat, because God knows what you need. And it is not about what new things you can learn. God doesn’t want you to know Him in theory. Likewise, when you see some actor or a politician, you can think: “I know him,” and it means “I have some sort of knowledge about him; I have seen him so many times; I remember what he said.” This kind of knowledge makes us feel that we, in a way, know that person. But his wife, who has been living with him for many years, day by day, and they have meals together; they leave for the holidays, talk to each other, drink tea and spend much time together—she knows him in a completely different way. She knows him from life. It is similar in the case of God: He doesn’t want you to have only some sort of knowledge about Him. He wants you to know Him from life.

This retreat program is only an introduction to the spirituality of consecration. It is not about a one-time act of consecration to Mary but about learning how to live this consecration in everyday life. This retreat will teach us some internal attitudes that will manifest in our daily lives. The mere act of consecration means that on our spiritual journey to Christian growth and becoming like Christ, we want to totally depend on Mary because this is the most efficient way. The texts you will read during this retreat are not only to be experienced once so that you “know” what it’s like but so that you can live accordingly every day. You may often get back to these texts to recount them, update and refresh them in order to rediscover them and follow this path with Mary in the spirit of St. Louis de Montfort more and more consciously.

The following 33 days invite you to discover how Loving God is next to you in daily life. This is the invitation not only to find God’s truth intellectually but also to accept Him in your life in a particular way and live Him daily. This retreat is the time to discover particular graces that God has given you. This is the time to learn the most secure and sure way to God with Mary, the Mother of Christ, the Holy Spirit Spouse, your Blessed Mother!

Daily plan of the retreat

Read the meditation for the day.
15 minutes of personal prayer. If possible, once a week, pray before the Blessed Sacrament.
The mystery of the Holy Rosary. Each day, pick the mystery closest to what you are experiencing.