Friday
July 1, 2005
vol 16, no. 182

Amazing claim by Venerable Mary of Agreda carries incredible credibility of who is really the true Author of The Mystical City of God

"I most firmly believe that Venerable Mary's claim that Our Lady is the author must be taken literally, and that this is the true key to the excellence of the City of God. Just as there are two authors of Holy Scriptures, the true, Divine Author and the human instruments, so too there are two authors of the City of God - the true author, Immaculate Mary, and the human instrument. The Bible is the product of Divine inspiration; the City of God, is the product of 'Marian inspiration'; Scriptures, the history of God's Revelation to man, summed up in the Person of Jesus Christ; the City of God the 'History and Life of the Virgin Mother of God,' His greatest creature."

    Beyond doubt the excellence of a book is closely tied to its author. Here again, the Holy Bible is absolutely insurpassable since, though actually written via human instruments, the true Author is the Holy Ghost. Scripture maybe said to have two authors - the true and Divine Author, and the human instruments He used. As the same is true of the liturgy of the Catholic Church, we may thus conclude Scriptures and the missal should hold primacy of place in spiritual reading.

    Obviously, Our Lord has been pleased to inspire countless others in the Church to write books, from the greatest Fathers and Doctors to lowly laity. Generally speaking, the greater the saint, the more useful and valuable the book. In fact, many saints are great largely due to the books they have written.

    Who, then, is the author of the City of God? While the Church has officially recognized Venerable Mary of Jesus of Agreda as the author - and that shall never change - that is not the whole story.

    Venerable Mary makes a unique claim in the City of God, a claim to be found absolutely nowhere else in the annals of Catholic literature (except Marian apparitions). This claim, well-known to her superiors, drew the immediate attention of the Catholic world and the persecution of some of it. It is certainly a reason the book drew such scrutiny in her own country (the Spanish Inquisition studied it for fourteen years) and from Rome.

    What is the claim? While the revelations came either directly from God Himself, the Author of all truth (cf. Conception, p. 11 and Ch. II), or from Our Lady (cf. Incarnation, p. 338), in the actual writing of the book, Venerable Mary claims simply that the City of God is "inspired by" the Immaculate Virgin, and moreover, at the very end of the last book, states flatly that Our Lady is the author of the book! Here are some quotes [all emphasis mine]:

    Almighty God: "I desire thee to put [these mysteries] down in writing according as thou art directed by the most pure Mary" (Conception, p. 11).

    Our Queen: "I give thee my blessing, in order that in my name and under my direction and assistance thou mayest again resume thy writing"4 (Conception, p. 18).

    Venerable Mary: "[The Mother of Mercy] added the command that I write the history of her life according as her Majesty herself should dictate and in-spire me" (Conception, p. 7).

    Venerable Mary wrote these words, among the very last in the entire work: "Thine, O Lady, is the credit and the glory for all that I have written, not only because it records thy most holy and admirable life, but because Thou hast given it a beginning, hast furthered it, and brought it to a close; and if thou hadst not been its author and controller, it could never have entered into the thoughts of man... Only what thou hast taught and commanded, have I written; I was but the mute instrument of thy tongue, moved and governed by thy wisdom" (Coronation, pp. 666-667). (I know she also used the term "inspirer," but I could not locate the passage.)

    The two heads of the Theological Faculty of the great University of Louvain, Drs. Hermann Damen and Anton Parmentier, in their glowing approbation to which I shall often refer, speak of "the instructions given by the most holy Virgin at the end of each chapter" (Incarnation, xvii). They take Venerable Mary at her word, that these words actually are the words of Mary Immaculate.

    This is an astounding claim! Our Lady has "inspired" and "authored" a book! I would not dare publish, or even countenance, such a claim if the book had not been approved by the Church and, moreover, if there were some other way to account for the supernal excellence of the work. We must not underestimate the seriousness of this claim, especially in lieu of the myriad false claims of Marian "apparitions" and "messages," both in her own day, which she recognized (cf. Conception, p. 3), and in our times. The devil constantly seeks to undermine true messages and apparitions with false ones, as happened at Lourdes and in our day (among others) in the false "apparitions" at Medjugorie (no doubt a demonic attempt to undermine the message of Fatima.)

    This claim demands the attention of all those who love Our Lady and desire to imitate her virtues. Venerable Mary claims she was the "mute instrument" of Our Lady in writing a 2600-page book which, though some of it was communicated directly by God Himself, Our Lady is claimed as the "inspirer" and "author," that is, that God (using our terms) had put her entirely in charge of the project, with Venerable Mary as her holy slave; a book, more-over, which contains over 300 pages of instructions, admonitions, etc. on practically every facet of Catholic life (including details of the current state of the Church) which are claimed as verbatim quotes from our Queen!

    Those who love the messages of Fatima, Lourdes, La Salette (all three are found in the City of God), etc.: if you were told there was an authentic message from Our Lady, comprising not hundreds of words, but hundreds of pages, would you not desire to read it?

    Since St. Louis de Montfort said one prayer of the humble Mary is more powerful than all the prayers of the rest of creatures combined, 5 can we not say that one phrase of Our Lady is worth more than whole volumes written by the greatest Doctors of the Church? An example is the simple statement at Lourdes, "I am the Immaculate Conception." If a few words from our Queen are so precious, what must be said of hundreds of pages of them?

    If I had never read the book, I, as perhaps you now are, would be inclined to dismiss such a claim as just another spurious, demonic attempt to claim visions, locutions, revelations, etc., so prevalent in our day (Medjugorje) which have wrought such confusion among so many.

    But no! This claim in a book so singularly approved by the Church urges us to join our scrutiny with that of all generations since its first printing.

    In reading the book, one senses Venerable Mary wants to declare that its excellence was not due to her but entirely to our Sovereign Queen, claimed as its true author. She finally makes this claim on nearly the last page of the entire work.

    I most firmly believe that Venerable Mary's claim that Our Lady is the author must be taken literally, and that this is the true key to the excellence of the City of God. Just as there are two authors of Holy Scriptures, the true, Divine Author and the human instruments, so too there are two authors of the City of God - the true author, Immaculate Mary, and the human instrument. The Bible is the product of Divine inspiration; the City of God, is the product of "Marian inspiration"; Scriptures, the history of God's Revelation to man, summed up in the Person of Jesus Christ; the City of God the "History and Life of the Virgin Mother of God," 6 His greatest creature.

    Since the excellence of a book is closely tied to its author - Sacred Scriptures being the greatest book ever written - and since beyond doubt Our Lady is the greatest Saint, the Queen of all saints, and absolutely peerless, then it can be claimed that any book truly authored by her must surely be among the greatest, if not the greatest book outside of Holy Scriptures. Many eminent theologians believe this (a few examples are below). However, obviously, just as Christ is infinitely above His Mother, so Scripture is infinitely above the City of God, and the Church could never demand acceptance de fide of its private revelations any more than it could equate the worship due to Christ as God and the honor due His Mother.

    One would have to read the life of Venerable Mary, or at least the Introduction to each of the three main parts of the book, to even faintly understand all Our Lord and our Queen did to prepare this humble nun to be an instrument for the writing of the Life of Mary, which preparation included the attainment of what masters of mystical theology recognize as the pinnacle of the spiritual life, complete spiritual death, and what should interest us most, the concomitant and perfect holy slavery thus realized. In fact, the profound relation which Venerable Mary, the City of God, and our holy slavery have will be the subject of the next article in this series.

    Since Church approbation means only that there are no errors in faith or morals, and that we are free to believe its privately-revealed contents, we must examine the evidence to ascertain whether the claim that Mary Immaculate is the true author of the City of God is worthy of belief.

    Let us therefore examine the book's contents, the fruits it has produced in souls, and the approbations the book has received from grave, learned, pious and distinguished Catholics in order to determine whether the book lives up to the claim that Our Lady is its true inspirer and author. For, if this be true, what book (outside of Scripture and the missal) could be found which could be more useful and excellent than one authored by her who is herself the living Imitation of Christ? And who is there in the Catholic world who would not desire to obtain it and read it?

FOOTNOTES:

4 She said this to Ven. Mary before she wrote it the second time; recall that she burned the first writing under obedience to her confessor.

5 True Devotion Ch. 1, Art. 2, no. 27

6 From the full title of the City of God

(First Published in Reign of Mary #77, Spring 1994)

For the full volumes of Venerable Mary of Agreda's work on line, see THE MYSTICAL CITY OF GOD

For past articles in Fiat Voluntas Dei, see 2005tim.htm Archives