03/08/2024
May the Lord give you peace!
According to a pious legend, one day St. Francis of Assisi had a vision in which he saw his friars trying to reach Christ by a ladder that was red and very steep. After climbing a few rungs, they would suddenly fall back. Our Lord then showed St. Francis another ladder, white and much less steep, at whose summit appeared the Blessed Virgin, and He said to Francis: “Advise your sons to go by the ladder of My Mother.”
Among those devotions rich in Franciscan tradition is devotion to Our Blessed Mother Mary. Francis of Assisi was among the greatest Marian devotees in the history of the Church and, according to the Second Life of Thomas of Celano, he had a love for her that was beyond words. “Inexpresseble,” Celano writes of Francis’ love for the Blessed Virgin, “for it was she who made the Lord of majesty our brother.” St. Francis chose her as the patroness and Queen of the Order of Friars Minor and exhorted his friars to always possess a true and living devotion to the Mother of God. This loving devotion is imbued in his famous Salutation to the Blessed Virgin Mary:
Hail, O Lady,
Mary, holy Mother of God:
you are the Virgin made Church
and the one chosen by the
most holy Father in heaven
whom He consecrated
with His most holy beloved Son
and with the Holy Spirit the Paraclete,
in whom there was and is
the fullness of grace and every good
Hail His Palace!
Hail His Tabernacle!
Hail His Home!
Hail His Robe!
Hail His Servant!
Hail His Mother!
And hail all you holy virtues which through the grace and light of the Holy Spirit are poured into the hearts of the faithful so that from their faithless state you may make them faithful to God. Amen.