I wonder when I’ll get used to having anything delivered on Sunday. This time it was a used book: Purest of All Lilies: The Virgin Mary in the Spirituality of St. Faustina, by Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC. (Links at the end of this post.) The back cover reads that “the Virgin Mary is a spiritual mother of St. Faustina and us” and that the book is an “in-depth study of the very special relationship between the Virgin Mary and St. Faustina.”

“Before Holy Communion I saw the Blessed Mother inconceivably beautiful. Smiling at me She said to me: ‘My daughter, at God’s command I am to be in a special and exclusive way your Mother; but I desire that you, too, in a special way, be My child” (Diary, 1414).

Fr. George Kosicki, CSB, quoted on the back cover of Purest of All Lilies.

I got this one used and now that I think about it, I realize that I’ve got a used copy of another of his books, packed away in a box somewhere: The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body. I’ll sort through boxes of books (I need my library and music rooms set up yesterday!) and see if I can dig it out. Another book goes with (are they an actual trilogy?) these two: The Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church: Essays from the International Mariological Symposium in Honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. (Unfortunately, this one is larger than the other two and not as inexpensive.)

And before anyone says anything about St. Faustina’s presumption of specialness, this extraordinary interest and attention is not unique to St. Faustina.

QUOTE “Anyone who has studied the ascetical theology of the Catholic Church (something that is dogmatic, not devotional) knows that such is how Christ unites Himself to any soul! This is not me playing with words. St. John of the Cross, the greatest doctor of spiritual theology in the Catholic Church repeatedly wrote about how unique the Blessed Trinity’s union is to each one of us. This is true, even at the lowest levels of holiness, provided we are in sanctifying grace… Christ could very easily say to any and every saint in history that He was ‘uniting Myself with you so intimately as with no other creature.’ Our souls are even more unique than our bodies.”

Quoted from Pro Divine Mercy From a Rad-Trad by Fr. David Nix.

Now, this series of posts is about the Blessed Virgin Mary, not the Divine Mercy, but I thought what Fr. wrote was important enough to quote it here at length. We can accept a false modesty for ourselves and try to impose a false modesty on others, but at some point we need to wake up to the reality of what saints really are: beloved of the Beloved, loved by Love Himself, and He calls us, each one, to be saints. It’s that universal call to holiness. The Blessed Mother is high above all angels and saints but she is part of the plan of salvation. She was given to all of us from the Cross when her Son gave the beloved disciple to her and her to him. And we are ALL of us that beloved disciple. We are each of us loved in a way that no one else is loved or ever can be or ever will be loved, by the One Who Loved us into being.

Purest of All Lilies is a thin book (the details on Amazon says it’s 180 pages, but it’s not, my copy only has 128). Looking at the table of contents I see: 

• Chapter one, a brief sketch of St. Faustina’s life and death, beatification and canonization.
• Chapter two, the Virgin Mary in the spirituality of St. Faustina: Eucharistic-Marian Spirituality, To the Divine Mercy through Mary, the Will of God through Mary.
• Chapter three, Marian doctrine in St. Faustina’s spirituality.
• Chapter four, Marian devotion in St. Faustina’s spirituality.

I can hardly wait to get into this one. I’ll share more about the book as I begin to read it. Stay tuned. Ah, so many books to read, so few people volunteering to come clean my house and walk Miss Lucy Dawg and feed us both so I can sit down with anotha cuppa and get some readin’ and writin’ done.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay at the site. May His peace be always with you. God bless you!

This has been a post in the Something About Mary Every Day In May series.

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Links

• Purest of All Lilies: The Virgin Mary in the Spirituality of St. Faustina, Paperback.
• The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body. Paperback. Kindle.
• The Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church: Essays from the International Mariological Symposium in Honor of the 150th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Paperback.

Full disclosure: When you make any purchase through my Amazon affiliate links (or my general Amazon link) on this site, I may make a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you. And thank you for your prayers and support.

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