Mary Defends Souls Who Invoke Her:
When They Are
Tempted by the Devil
Taken from The Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus de Liguori
Not only is the most Blessed Virgin Queen of
Heaven and of all saints, but She is also Queen
of hell and of all evil spirits; for She overcame
them valiantly by Her virtues. From the very
beginning God foretold the victory and empire
that our Queen would one day obtain over the
serpent, when He announced that a woman should
come into the world to conquer him: I will put
enmities between thee and the Woman — She shall crush thy head.
Who could this woman, his enemy, be, but Mary,
who by Her fair humility and holy life always
conquered him and beat down his strength? The
Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ was promised in
the person of that woman, as it is remarked by
St. Cyprian, and after him another ancient
writer; and therefore God did not say, "I place,"
but "I will place"; lest He might seem to refer
to Eve: meaning that God said, I will place
enmities between thee and the Woman, to signify
that the serpent’s opponent was not to be Eve,
who was then living, but would be another woman
descending from her, and who, as St. Vincent
Ferrer observes, "would bring our first parents
far greater advantages than those which they had
lost by their sin." Mary, then, was this great
and valiant woman, who conquered the devil and
crushed his head by bringing down his pride, as
it was foretold by God Himself: She shall crush
thy head. Some doubt as to whether these words
refer to Mary, or whether they do not rather
refer to Jesus Christ; for the Septuagint renders
them, He shall crush thy head. But in the
Vulgate, which alone was approved of by the
sacred Council of Trent, we find She, and not He;
and thus it was understood by St. Ambrose, St.
Jerome, St. Augustine, and a great many others.
However, be it as it may, it is certain that
either the Son by means of the Mother, or the
Mother by means of the Son, has overcome Lucifer;
so that, as St. Bernard remarks, this proud
spirit, in spite of himself, was beaten down and
trampled under foot by this most Blessed Virgin;
so that, as a slave conquered in war, he is
forced always to obey the commands of this Queen.
"Beaten down and trampled under the feet of Mary,
he endured a wretched slavery." St. Bruno says
"that Eve was the cause of death," by allowing
herself to be overcome by the serpent, "but that
Mary," by conquering the devil, "restored life to us."
And She bound him in such a way that this enemy
cannot stir so as to do the least injury to any of Her clients.
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Lord, may everything we do begin with Your
inspiration and continue with Your help,
so that all our prayers and works may begin in You and by You be happily ended.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
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