True Devotion to Mary: with Preparation for Total Consecration (Tan Classics) Paperback – April 1, 2010

wonderful for anyone who understands catholicism and just wants some context for prayer and understandimg why catholics pray to the VM. this does not teach anything, it gives context through experience and belief not through doctrine.

Catapult your faith!

I naively purchased this book as a nondenominational Protestant curious about Catholicism and why Catholics have so much hype around the Virgin Mary.It is like asking for a glass of water and then getting blasted with a firehose. If Mary is a big stumbling block to you please do not start here. Little old Protestant me nearly had a stroke trying to read this. It freaked me out.I would recommend Scott Hahn’s book Hail Holy Queen and Tim Staple's Behold Your Mother. These were great books to get introduced to Our Lady, and offer wonderful scriptural background to how and why Catholics have a devotion to Our Lady.That being said this book is one of if not the best books on Our Lady and why we should venerate and honor her. St. Louis’ language can be hard to get through at times but it is absolutely worth the effort. Seasoned Catholics should absolutely put this book at the top of their TBR if you have not read it yet. It’s a must read in my opinion. I am now 3 years a Catholic and reading it again, and while it can be a challenging read I do really love it and highly recommend it.

Finally - a new edition of True Devotion to Mary which combines this celebrated marian work with all the readings necessary to prepare for the initial or renewal of the consecration to Jesus through Mary. For readers well familiar with this work, they will welcome the new look and feel - just beautiful and very well done. But they'll also appreciate the over 130 pages of extra readings to prepare oneself spiritually for the devotion which St. Louis de Montfort describes. This additional material includes several chapters from the Holy Gospel as well as The Imitation of Christ, in addition to all of the prayers recommended by St. Louis de Montfort.For the uninitiated truly interested in Marian devotion there really is no other book on par with this one. Praised by popes, saints and other holy persons, the book situates Marian devotion within the most effective and humble paths to perfection, well tested over time, and attested throughout the last two thousand years from the earliest fathers and saints of the Church to the most recent approved marian apparitions. Readers of this book have always found that it lays out in a very compelling and progressive manner how to best approach this beloved devotion, pointing out some of the dangerous and erroneous practices that have lead souls astray and created so much misgivings between Catholic and Protestant Christians, and leading the reader ever closer to the true devotion which is tender, honest, cognisant of our own incapacities and ever focussed on the ultimate objective, a perfect union with Jesus.As has been commented by many, there is a peculiar quality to the book which, despite repeated readings, continues to engage the reader in a lively fashion and challenge the reader to increase their understanding of its spiritual depths.

St Louis is the master at guiding people to the devotion of Jesus through his Blessed Mother. This does read like it's from an age gone by, but was easy to understand, and I mentally replaced some of the older words (thy, thou) with modern versions (your, you) easily after a short time.If you want the best for your consecration, this is it!

I found this book to be very surprising. It made me think of Mary in an entirely new way. If you are confused regarding the Catholic view on Mary this will enlighten you. I learned a lot about Mary’s role that I didn’t know prior to reading this book. It brought me closer to her.

This book is changing me