St Louis de Montfort on the Little Office

and how it works with the Rosary

St Louis-Marie de Montfort is famous for promoting devotion to Our Lady, especially via the Rosary and Total Consecration. In his own time, he was considered a bit crazy, and it wasn’t until after his death that his writings gained a much larger audience.

He definitely includes the Little Office up with the Rosary. He puts the Rosary first and foremost, but includes “the Office of our Lady, so universally received and recited in the Church” as well as other hymns and antiphons from the Little Office. (True Devotion, 116. § 6.)

The Secret of the Rosary is a book squarely focused on promoting the Holy Rosary. Each point is a numbered rose, totalling fifty roses, plus a few appendices. Although it is chiefly about the Rosary, St Louis Marie mentions the Little Office a few times.

In the Sixth Rose he compares the Rosary with David’s Psalter, which forms a major part of the Little Office, so I’ll include it here. He makes the case that the Rosary is even better than the Psalter because it deals with the fulfilment of the mysteries prefigured by David. He also makes some interesting points on the three groups of mysteries, which leads some to avoid the new Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.

In the Forty-third Rose he shows how it’s more difficult to say the Rosary well than it is to pray the Office well.

Okay, so the Little Office is bunched in with all prayers other than the Rosary, but gives one point in favour of the Little Office. Unless you count this as a point in favour of the Rosary since you’re putting in more effort to maintain concentration.

In the Forty-eighth Rose, St Louis Marie gives a bunch of objections to the Rosary.

To help you to be better armed against their onslaught I am going to tell you some of the things these people are always saying and thinking. … “Oh yes, the Rosary is all right for old women who can’t read. But surely the Little Office of Our Lady is much more worthwhile than the Rosary?”

Further examples of objections include accusations that the Rosary is too hard, so you can see the balance. It’s like Jesus talking about the children in the marketplace, in Matthew 11:17.

Who crying to their companions say: We have piped to you, and you have not danced: we have lamented, and you have not mourned. Mt 11:17

Lastly there is a story of some Dominican monks who found the Rosary helped make all their other duties more full of love. When things were not going well they would say: “Oh, Brother! Either you are not saying Mary’s Psalter any more or else you are saying it badly.”

So that’s what I’ve found so far from St Louis-Marie de Montfort. The Rosary and the Little Office complement each other. The Rosary is for everyone. The Little Office for those with a bit more access to resources. The Rosary helps everything. The Little Office is a treasure trove of fuel for meditation.

Extended quotes to give context:

Bold text added by me for emphasis.

True Devotion to Mary

115. THERE are several interior practices of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Here are the principal of them stated compendiously.

§ 1. To honour her as the worthy Mother of God, with the worship of hyperdulia; that is to say, to esteem her and honour her above all the other Saints, as the masterpiece of grace, and the first after Jesus Christ, true God and true Man;

§ 2. To meditate her virtues, her privileges, and her actions;

§ 3. To contemplate her grandeurs;

§ 4. To make to her acts of love, of praise, of gratitude;

§ 5. To invoke her cordially;

§ 6. To offer ourselves to her, and unite ourselves with her;

§ 7. To do all our actions with the view of pleasing her;

§ 8. To begin, to continue, and to finish all our actions by her, in her, and with her, in order that we may do them by Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ our Last End. We will presently explain this last practice.

116. True devotion to our Lady has also several exterior practices, of which the following are the chief:

§ 1. To enrol ourselves in her confraternities, and enter her congregations;

§ 2. To join the religious orders instituted in her honour;

§ 3. To publish her praises;

§ 4. To give alms, to fast, and to undergo outward and inward mortifications in her honour;

§ 5. To wear her liveries, such as the rosary, the scapular, or the little chain;

§ 6. To recite with attention, devotion, and modesty, the holy Rosary, composed of fifteen decades of Hail Marys in honour of the fifteen principal mysteries of Jesus Christ, or five decades, which is the third of the Rosary, either in honour of the five Joyous Mysteries, which are the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Jesus Christ, the Purification, and the Finding of our Lord in the Temple; or in honour of the five Sorrowful Mysteries, which are the Agony of our Lord in the Garden of Olives, His Scourging, His Crowning with Thorns, His Carrying of the Cross, and His Crucifixion; or in honour of the five Glorious Mysteries, which are the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Ascension, the Descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, the Assumption of our Blessed Lady body and soul into Heaven, and her Coronation by the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity. We may also say a Chaplet of six or seven decades in honour of the years which we believe our Lady lived on earth; or the little Corona of the Blessed Virgin, composed of three Our Fathers and twelve Hail Marys, in honour of her crown of twelve stars, or privileges; or the Office of our Lady, so universally received and recited in the Church; or the Little Psalter of the holy Virgin, which St. Bonaventure has composed in her honour, and which is so tender and so devout that one cannot say it without being melted by it; or fourteen Our Fathers and Hail Marys in honour of her fourteen joys; or some other prayers, hymns, and canticles of the Church, such as the Salve Regina, the Alma, the Ave Regina caelorum, or the Regina caeli, according to the different seasons; or the Ave Maris stella, the O gloriosa Domina, the Magnificat, or some other practices of devotion of which books are full;

§ 7. To sing or have sung spiritual canticles in her honour;

§ 8. To make her a number of genuflexions or reverences, while saying, for example, every morning, sixty or a hundred times Ave Maria, Virgo fidelis, to obtain from God the grace by her to be faithful to the graces of God during the day; and then again in the evening, Ave Maria, Mater misericordiae, to ask pardon of God by her for the sins that we have committed during the day;

§ 9. To take care of her confraternities, to adorn her altars, to crown and ornament her images;

§ 10. To carry her images, or to have them carried, in procession, and to carry a picture or image of her about our own persons, as a mighty arm against the evil spirit;

§ 11. To have her images or her name carved, and placed in churches, or in houses, or on the gates and entrances into cities, churches, and houses;

§ 12. To consecrate ourselves to her in a special and solemn manner.

Secret of the Rosary, St Louis de Montfort

SIXTH ROSE: MARY’S PSALTER

EVER SINCE Saint Dominic established the devotion to the Holy Rosary up until the time when Blessed Alan de la Roche re-established it in 1460, it has always been called the Psalter of Jesus and Mary. This is because it has the same number of Angelic Salutations as there are Psalms in the Book of the Psalms of David. Since simple and uneducated people are not able to say the Psalms of David the Rosary is held to be just as fruitful for them as David’s Psalter is for others.

But the Rosary can be considered to be even more valuable than the latter for three reasons:

1. Firstly, because the Angelic Psalter bears a nobler fruit, that of the Word Incarnate, whereas David’s Psalter only prophesies His coming;

2. Secondly, just as the real thing is more important than its prefiguration and as the body is more than its shadow, in the same way the Psalter of Our Lady is greater than David’s Psalter which did no more than prefigure it;

3. And thirdly, because Our Lady’s Psalter (or the Rosary made up of the Our Father and Hail Mary) is the direct work of the Most Blessed Trinity and was not made through a human instrument.

Our Lady’s Psalter or Rosary is divided up into three parts of five decades each, for the following special reasons:

1. To honor the three Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity;

2. To honor the life, death and glory of Jesus Christ;

3. To imitate the Church Triumphant, to help the members of the Church Militant and to lessen the pains of the Church Suffering;

4. to imitate the three groups into which the Psalms are divided:

(a) the first being for the purgative life,7

(b) the second for the illuminative life,

(c) and the third for the unitive life;

5. And finally, to give us graces in abundance during our lifetime, peace at death, and glory in eternity.

FORTY-THIRD ROSE: FIGHTING DISTRACTIONS

WHEN THE ROSARY is well said it gives Jesus and Mary more glory and it is more meritorious for the soul than any other prayer. But it is also the hardest prayer to say well and to persevere in, owing especially to the distractions which almost inevitably attend the constant repetition of the same words.

When we say the Little Office of Our Lady, or the Seven Penitential Psalms, or any prayers other than the Rosary, the variety of words and expressions keeps us alert, prevents our imagination from wandering, and so makes it easier for us to say them well. On the contrary, because of the constant repetition of the same Our Father and Hail Mary in the same unvarying form, it is difficult, while saying the Rosary, not to become wearied and inclined to sleep or to turn to other prayers that are more refreshing and less tedious. This goes to show that one needs much greater devotion to persevere in saying the Holy Rosary than in saying any other prayer, even the Psalms of David.

Our imagination, which is hardly still a minute, makes our task harder and then of course there is the devil who never tires of trying to distract us and keep us from praying. To what ends does not the evil one go against us while we are engaged in saying our Rosary against him.

Being human, we easily become tired and slipshod—but the devil makes these difficulties worse when we are saying the Rosary. Before we even begin he makes us feel bored, distracted or exhausted—and when we have started praying he oppresses us from all sides. And when, after much difficulty and many distractions, we have finished, he whispers to us: “What you have just said is worthless. It’s useless for you to say the Rosary. You had better get on with other things. It’s only a waste of time to pray without paying attention to what you’re saying; half an hour’s meditation or some spiritual reading would be much better. Tomorrow when you’re not feeling so sluggish you’ll pray better; don’t finish your Rosary until tomorrow.” By tricks of this kind the devil gets us to give up the Rosary altogether or else hardly say it at all, and we keep putting it off or else change to some other devotion.

Dear Rosary Confraternity members, do not listen to the devil, but be of good heart even if your imagination has been bothering you throughout your Rosary, filling your mind with all kinds of distracting thoughts—as long as you really tried hard to get rid of them as soon as they came. Always remember that the best Rosary is the one with the most merit, and there is more merit in praying when it is hard than when it is easy. Prayer is all the harder when it is (naturally speaking) distasteful to the soul and is filled with those annoying little ants and flies running about in your imagination, against your will, and scarcely allowing you the time to enjoy a little peace and appreciate the beauty of what you are saying.

Even if you have to fight distractions all through your whole Rosary be sure to fight well, arms in hand: that is to say, do not stop saying your Rosary even if it is hard to say and you have absolutely no sensible devotion. It is a terrible battle, I know, but one that is profitable to the faithful soul. If you put down your arms, that is, if you give up the Rosary, you will be admitting defeat and then, having won, the devil will leave you alone.

But at the Day of Judgment he will taunt you because of your faithlessness and lack of courage. “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater.”³⁸ He who fights even the smallest distractions faithfully when he says even the very smallest prayer he will also be faithful in great things. We can be absolutely certain of this because the Holy Spirit has told us so.

So all of you, servants and handmaids of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, who have made up your minds to say the Rosary every day, be of good heart. Do not let the flies (it is thus that I call the distractions that make war on you during prayer) make you cowardly abandon the company of Jesus and Mary, in whose holy presence you always are when saying the Rosary. In what follows I shall give you suggestions for getting rid of distractions.

FORTY-EIGHTH ROSE: PERSEVERANCE

5. As a fifth point I must add also perseverance in prayer. Only he will receive, will find and will enter who perseveres in asking, seeking and knocking. It is not enough to ask Almighty God for certain graces for a month, a year, ten or even twenty years; we must never tire of asking. We must keep on asking until the very moment of death, and even in this prayer which shows our trust in God, we must join the thought of death to that of perseverance and say: “Although he should kill me, I will trust in Him”⁵⁴ and will trust Him to give me all I need.

Prominent and rich people of the world show their generosity by foreseeing people’s wants and ministering to them, even before they are asked for anything. On the other hand, God’s munificence is shown in His making us seek and ask for, over a long period of time, the grace which He wishes to give us and quite often the more precious the grace, the longer He takes to grant it. There are three reasons why He does this:

1. To thus increase this grace still more:

2. To make the recipient more deeply appreciate it;

3. To make the soul who receives it very careful indeed not to lose it—for people do not appreciate things that they can get quickly and with very little trouble.

So, dear members of the Rosary Confraternity, persevere in asking Almighty God for all your needs, both spiritual and corporal, through the Most Holy Rosary. Most of all you should ask for Divine Wisdom which is an infinite Treasure: “(Wisdom) is an infinite treasure”⁵⁵ and there can be no possible doubt that you will receive it sooner or later—as long as you do not stop asking for it and do not lose courage in the middle of your journey. “Thou hast yet a great way to go.”⁵⁶ This means that you have a long way to go, there will be bad times to weather, many difficulties to overcome and many enemies to conquer before you will have stored up enough treasures of eternity, enough Our Fathers and Hail Marys with which to buy your way to Heaven and earn the beautiful crown which is waiting for each faithful Confraternity member.

“(Let) no man take thy crown”:⁵⁷ take care that your crown is not stolen by somebody who has been more faithful than you in saying the Holy Rosary. It is “thy crown”—Almighty God has chosen it for you and you have already won it halfway by means of the Rosaries that you have said well. Unfortunately someone else may get ahead of you in the race—someone who has worked harder and who has been more faithful might possibly win the crown that ought to be yours, paying for it by his Rosaries and good works. All this could really happen if you stand still on the beautiful path where you have been running so well: “You did run well.”⁵⁸ “Who hath hindered you?”⁵⁹ Who is it who will have prevented you from having the Rosary crown? None other than the enemies of the Holy Rosary who are so numerous.

Do believe me, only “the violent bear it away.”⁶⁰ These crowns are not for timid souls who are afraid of the world’s taunts and threats, neither are they for the lazy and indolent who only say their Rosary carelessly, or hastily, just for the sake of getting it over with. The same applies to people who say it intermittently, as the spirit moves them. These crowns are not for cowards who lose heart and down their arms as soon as they see Hell let loose against the Holy Rosary.

Dear Confraternity members: if you want to serve Jesus and Mary by saying the Rosary every day, you must be prepared for temptation: “When thou comest to the service of God . . . prepare thy soul for temptation.”⁶¹ Heretics and licentious folk, “respectable” people of the world, persons of only surface piety as well as false prophets, hand in glove with your fallen nature and all Hell itself, will wage formidable battles against you in an endeavor to get you to give up this holy practice.

To help you to be better armed against their onslaught I am going to tell you some of the things these people are always saying and thinking. This is to put you on your guard against them all, but not so much in the case of heretics and out-and-out licentious people, but particularly those who are “respectable” in the eyes of the world, and those who are devout (strange as it may seem) but have no use for the Holy Rosary.

“What is it that this word sower would say?”⁶² “Come, let us oppress him, for he is against us.” That is to say: “What is he doing saying so many Rosaries? What is it he is always mumbling? Such laziness! And what a waste of time to keep sliding those old beads along—he would do much better to work and not be bothered with this foolishness. I know what I’m talking about, . . .

“All you have to do, I suppose, is to say your Rosary, and a fortune will fall from Heaven into your lap! The Rosary gives you everything you need without your lifting a finger! But hasn’t it been said: “God helps those who help themselves?” There’s no need then of getting mixed up with so many prayers. “A brief prayer is heard in Heaven,” one Our Father and Hail Mary will do provided they are well said.

“God has never told us to say the Rosary—of course it’s all right, it’s not a bad devotion when you’ve got the time. But don’t think for one minute that people who say the Rosary are any more sure of Heaven than we are. Just look at the Saints who never said it! Far too many people want to make everybody see through their own eyes: folk who carry everything to extremes, scrupulous people who see sin almost everywhere, making sweeping statements and saying that all those who don’t say the Rosary will go to Hell.

“Oh yes, the Rosary is all right for old women who can’t read. But surely the Little Office of Our Lady is much more worthwhile than the Rosary? Or the Seven Penitential Psalms? And how could anything be more beautiful than the Psalms which are inspired by the Holy Ghost? You say you have agreed to say the Rosary every day; this is nothing but a fire of straw—you know very well it won’t last! Wouldn’t it be better to undertake less and to be more faithful about it?

“Come on, my friend, take my word for it, say your morning and night prayers, work hard during the day and offer it up—God doesn’t ask any more of you than this. Of course you’ve got your living to earn; if you were a man of leisure I shouldn’t say anything—you could say as many Rosaries as you like then. But as for now, say your Rosary on Sundays and Holy Days when you have lots of time, if you really must say it.

“But really and truly—what are you doing with an enormous pair of beads? You look like an old woman instead of a man! I’ve seen a little Rosary of only one decade—it’s just as good as one of fifteen decades. What on earth are you wearing it on your belt for, fanatic that you are? Why don’t you go the whole way and wear it around your neck like the Spaniards? They carry an enormous Rosary in one hand—and a dagger in the other.

“For goodness sake drop those external devotions; real devotion is in the heart . . . etc. etc. . . .”

Similarly, not a few clever people and learned scholars may occasionally try to dissuade you from saying the Rosary (but they are, of course, proud and self willed). They would rather encourage you to say the Seven Penitential Psalms or some other prayers. If a good confessor has given you a Rosary for your penance and has told you to say it every day for a fortnight or a month, all you have to do to get your penance changed to prayers, fasts, Masses or alms, is to go to confession to one of these others.

If you consult certain people in the world who lead lives of prayer, but who have never tried the Rosary, they will not only not encourage it but will turn people away from it to get them to learn contemplation—just as though the Holy Rosary and contemplation were incompatible, just as if all the Saints who have been devoted to the Rosary had not enjoyed the heights of sublime contemplation.

Your nearest enemies will attack you all the more cruelly because you are so close to them. I am speaking of the powers of your soul and your bodily senses—these are distractions of the mind, distress and uncertainty of the will, dryness of the heart, exhaustion and illnesses of the body—all these will combine with the devil to say to you: “Stop saying your Rosary; that is what is giving you such a headache! Give it up; there is no obligation under pain of sin. If you must say it, say only part of it; the difficulties that you are having over it are a sign that Almighty God does not want you to say it. You can finish it tomorrow when you are more in the mood, etc. . . . etc. . . .”

Finally, my dear Brother, the Daily Rosary has so many enemies that I look upon the grace of persevering in it until death as one of the greatest favors Almighty God can give us.

Persevere in it and if you are faithful you will eventually have the wonderful crown which is waiting for you in Heaven: “Be thou faithful until death: and I will give thee the crown of life.”⁶³

APPENDIX

THE POWER, VALUE AND HOLINESS OF THE ROSARY:

A Revelation of Our Blessed Lady to Blessed Alan de la Roche

THROUGH THE ROSARY, hardened sinners of both sexes became converted and started to lead a holy life, bemoaning their past sins with genuine tears of contrition. Even children performed unbelievable penances; devotion to my Son and to me spread so thoroughly that it almost seemed as though Angels were living on earth. The Faith was gaining, and many Catholics longed to shed their blood for it and fight against the heretics. Thus, through the sermons of my very dear Dominic and through the power of the Rosary, the heretics’ lands were all brought under the Church. People used to give munificent alms; hospitals and churches were built. People led moral and law-abiding lives and worked wonders for the glory of God. Holiness and unworldliness flourished; the clergy were exemplary, princes were just, people lived at peace with each other and justice and equity reigned in the guilds and in the homes.

Here is an even more impressive thing: workmen did not take up their tools until they had said my Psalter and they never went to sleep at night without having prayed to me on their knees. If they happened to remember that they had not paid me this tribute they would get up—even in the middle of the night—and then would salute me with great respect and remorse.

The Rosary became so widespread and so well-known that people who were devoted to it were always considered by others as obviously being Confraternity members. If a man lived openly in sin, or blasphemed, it was quite the usual thing to say:

“This man cannot possibly be a brother of Saint Dominic.”

I must not fail to mention the signs and wonders that I have wrought in different lands through the Holy Rosary: I have stopped pestilences and put an end to horrible wars as well as to bloody crimes and through my Rosary people have found the courage to flee temptation.

When you say your Rosary the Angels rejoice, the Blessed Trinity delights in it, my Son finds joy in it too and I myself am happier than you can possibly guess. After the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, there is nothing in the Church that I love as much as the Rosary. (Blessed Alan)

Having been strongly urged to do so by Saint Dominic, all the brothers and sisters of his order honored my Son and me unceasingly and in an indescribably beautiful way by saying the Holy Rosary.

Every day each one of them said at least one complete Rosary. If anybody failed to say it he felt that his day was entirely spoiled.

The Brothers of Saint Dominic had so great a love for this holy devotion that it made them do everything better and they used to hurry to church or to the choir to sing the office. If one of them was seen to carry out his duties carelessly the others would say with assurance:

“Oh, Brother! Either you are not saying Mary’s Psalter any more or else you are saying it badly.”