“Intimacy with Our Lord is greatly facilitated by our devotion to Mary”

On the subject of the foundations of the interior life, we cannot speak of the action of Christ, the universal mediator, on his Mystical Body, without also mentioning the influence of Mary Mediatrix.

Many are deluded if they claim to achieve union with God without constant recourse to Our Lord, who is the way, the truth and the life. It would also be a mistake to want to go to Our Lord without passing through Mary, whom the Church calls, on a special feast, Mediatrix of all graces. (...) 

Without going as far as this error, there are Catholics who certainly do not see the need to have recourse to Mary in order to reach the intimacy of the Saviour.  St. Louis de Montfort even speaks of “Doctors who know the Mother of God only in a speculative, dry, sterile and indifferent way; who fear that devotion to the Blessed Virgin will be abused, that we will do injustice to Our Lord by honoring his holy Mother too much. If they speak of devotion to Mary, it is not so much to recommend it as to denounce the so-called abuses of this devotion”. They seem to believe that Mary is an obstacle to divine union!

There is, according to Saint Grignion de Montfort, a lack of humility in neglecting the mediators God has given us on account of our weakness. Intimacy with Our Lord in prayer will be much facilitated by a true and profound devotion to Mary.

The three ages of the interior life, prelude of eternal life volume 1, chapter 6 by Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP (1947)