"The things I could do if I knew how to persuade her to help me!"

Marthe Robin was a French Catholic mystic and stigmatist, foundress of the Foyers de Charité. Her whole life and all her activities, including growing up on her farm, were permeated with Marian grace. This is what she wrote about her attachment to Mary:

''I really love to place everything, with blind trust, in the hands of this tender and beloved Mother, whose protection I feel more and more, I who am her child. To make sure that my trust is not inferior to the generosity of the Blessed Virgin, I must hope for unlimited things'' (Nov. 11, 1932, J.I. No. 3).

''I would like to be able, with the help and assistance of the Blessed Virgin, to transform my natural life into a life totally supernatural and divine. Oh, the things I could do if I knew how to persuade her to help me, and if I pray to her with the trust of a child that she never ignores. O My Mother, reign over my soul ... make Jesus reign within me! ... I put in your blessed hands all the deeds of my life to be presented to my King and Lord Jesus'' (March 4, 1930).

''O Mary, oh my sweet mother, obtain for me on this beautiful day of heaven, complete abandonment, perfect abandonment, loving abandonment to Love. That by you, with you, in you, very pure Virgin, I may love, adore, pray, atone, petition and suffer with more and more love. May my life be only a loving yes... May I be only a soul consecrated to Jesus." (March 7, 1930).

Going further, Marthe also said: ''My whole life project consists in staying united to Mary, my Mother, under the dependence of the Inner Master who directs me, to let myself be invaded, devoured, and consumed by God'' (May 11, 1932).

Notes from Father Dominique Bostyn's Workshop

on the theme "Marthe Robin and Father de Montfort," at the 2004 International Meeting in Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, France.