A great victory is reserved for Mary in our day

All the ages of the Church have been marked by the battles and glorious triumphs of the august Mary. Since the Lord set an enmity between her and the serpent, she has constantly defeated the world and hell.

All heresies, the Church tells us, have bowed their heads before the Blessed Virgin, and little by little she has reduced them to the silence of nothingness. Today, the great reigning heresy is religious indifference, which numbs souls in the torpor of selfishness  and the doldrums of passions.

The well of the abyss vomits forth a blackish and pestilential smoke, which threatens to envelop the whole Earth in a dark night, empty of all good, full of all evil, and impenetrable, so to speak, to the life-giving rays of the Sun of Justice. Thus, the divine torch of faith is fading and dying in the bosom of Christendom; virtue is fleeing, becoming rarer and rarer, and the vices are unleashed with frightful fury. It seems that we are approaching the predicted moment of a general defection and an almost universal apostasy. This sad yet accurate picture of our times is far from discouraging us, however.

Mary's power is not diminished. We firmly believe that she will defeat this heresy like all the others, because she is, today as in the past, the Woman par excellence, the Woman whom God promised that she will crush the head of the serpent; and Jesus Christ, by never calling her anything but this great name, teaches us that she is the hope, the joy, the life of the Church, and the terror of hell. A great victory therefore is reserved to her in our time; to her belongs the glory of saving the faith from the shipwreck that threatens to destroy it. 

Father Joseph Chaminade (1761-1850), founder of the Society of Mary (Marianists)

Letter of August 24, 1839