Louise Madore D.W

Encountering Wisdom, the Only Path to True Happiness

In 1703, our Founder, St. Louis-Marie Grignion of Montfort, then still a young priest, was going through a difficult period. At this very moment, when he was most distraught, he lived an intense spiritual experience. The meditation of the Wisdom Biblical Writings and his proximity with wounded humanity, led him to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth and to be deeply affected by the overwhelming love of Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom.

Marked by a deep relationship with Christ, nourished and molded by the Word of God, Montfort reached out towards his brothers and sisters, especially the poorest. He devoted his entire life to spreading the message of the Gospel. During his numerous parish missions, he invited people to welcome Jesus as Wisdom made flesh, eager to conquer the hearts of all human beings and to make them happy.

At that same period, young Marie Louise Trichet met Father de Montfort in Poitiers. It was a turning point in her life. Montfort brought her to live at the school of Wisdom and revealed to her the loving folly of the Cross. In a culture where the poor were left to themselves in extreme precariousness, Marie Louise chose to live among them and to devote all her life to their concerns as a religious nun of apostolic life.

From the experience of God as Divine Wisdom, Louis Marie of Montfort and Marie Louise Trichet expressed their deep desire to create a way of life that serves others and that brings them to know and to love Divine Wisdom.

To people of all times who are driven by the desire to find meaning to their lives, Montfort offered in his work, The Love of Eternal Wisdom, a wisdom of being and living that leads to true happiness. This work delivers the whole of Montfortian spirituality.

In the work, Treatise of True Devotion that Montfort later wrote, he proposed a privileged way, that of “a true devotion to Mary” to promote the growth of Wisdom in us.

Following St. Louis Marie Grignion of Montfort and his first disciple, Blessed Marie Louise of Jesus, the Montfortian family: the Missionaries of the Company of Mary, the Daughters of Wisdom and the Brothers of St. Gabriel and also the Friends of Wisdom and many lay groups, let us ground our life in this spiritual way, developing one or other dimension of this rich spirituality.

Like them, it is only by letting ourselves be touched by the love of Wisdom, that will awaken in us the desire to seek her, to know her and to possess her in order to discover true happiness.

“O you humans, you children of humankind
It is you I have been calling to for so long!
To you I lift my voice, you are my desire; it is you I seek,
It is you whom I claim for my own.
Listen and come to me
I desire only your happiness.”
(Pr 8, 4.32 – LEW 66-)