Rev. Fr. Emil Neubert - My Ideal Jesus: Son of Mary (with Supplemental Reading: Favorite Prayers to Our Lady) [Illustrated]

Copyright 1947 by Emil Neubert, S.M.

This booklet has been retypeset by TAN Books, an Imprint of Saint Benedict Press, LLC. The typography is the property of TAN Books, and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without written permission from the Publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 88-50578

ISBN: 978-0-89555-338-6

Third English Edition

9th Printing, May 1963 205th Thousand
10th Printing, Sept. 1988 235th Thousand

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
2010

Maria Duce!

Under Marys Leadership!

PUBLISHING HISTORY

My Ideal: Jesus, Son of Mary has been published in the following languages as of 1963: French (8th edition), Italian (5th), Dutch (4th), German (4th), English (3rd), Spanish (2nd), Polish (1st), Japanese (1st), Hungarian (1st), Slovak (1st), Catalonian (1st), Vietnamese (1st), Malayalam (1st), Chinese (1st), Portuguese (1st). Translations in preparation as of 1963: Croatian, Slovene, Lettonian, Hindi, Arabic, Zulu, Gaelic, Basque, Minor Breton, Ukrainian, and Congolese.

Contents

PART ONEJESUS SETS
FORTH THE IDEAL

PART TWOJESUS SETS FORTH
THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE IDEAL

PART THREEMARY EXPLAINS
TRANSFORMATION INTO JESUS

Preface

The Christian who aims at perfection endeavors to imitate Jesus Christ as completely as possible. Among all the traits of the Divine Model one of the most beautiful to imitate is His filial piety to Mary our MotherHis Mother and ours.

My Ideal has been found to be an efficient aid in this Marian program of life. It leads to a firm, virile, intimate devotion of consecration to the Blessed Mother. It is presently treasured by many priests, sisters, brothers and lay people, young and old, as a blueprint for a Christian way of life under the aegis of Mary Immaculate.

The present edition is an attempt at a wider propagation of this spiritual teaching of Father Chaminade on Marys part in our soul-life. It is a practical manual for sodalities, Catholic Action groups, schools, novitiates, and seminaries. The chapters are suited for reading, study, and meditation on the days of May and October.

PART ONE

Jesus Sets
Forth the Ideal

I

I have given you the example

J ESUS :

My brother, you love My Blessed Mother and you are glad to love her. But your love for her is far from what I would like it to be.

You love her because it is natural to love what is pure and beautiful, and she is ideally pure and beautiful.

1. You love her because it is natural to love those who are good and helpful, and no one is better or more helpful than she.

You love her because you regard her as a Mother and because every child loves its mother.

You love her because you have felt the influence of her love and have found out that with her you succeed more easily in keeping your purity and fervor.

You love her because you have learned from books and sermons that devotion to her is the easiest way of assuring your salvation and the surest way of attaining perfectionand you wish above all to save and sanctify yourself.

2. All these motives of love are good, but there is another much more excellent. These can serve as a foundation for a tender devotion to My Mother; they do not, however, lay the foundation for that devotion which I wish you to practice. Devotion to My Mother is something so important, so beneficial to you, so acceptable to her and to Me, that you cannot be satisfied with something mediocre, or good enough, or even very good, but solely with what is perfect.

3. Do you know the most perfect kind of devotion to Mary?

Search in books, consult theologians, ask the greatest servants of Mary that the earth has ever produced for the secretand you will find nowhere a devotion more perfect than the one which I am going to teach you and which consists in sharing in My own filial love for My Mother .

Does not perfection for My disciples consist in being like their Master? Have I not given them the example, that, as I have done, they should also do? Did not My Apostle Paul repeat again and again that everything, for them, consists in imitating Christ, in clothing themselves with Christ, in taking on the dispositions of Christ, in living no longer their own life but the life of Christ?

Tell Me, can you imagine any more perfect dispositions toward My Mother than Mine?

T HE F AITHFUL S OUL :

O Jesus, what a supremely charming prospect: to share in Your filial love for Your Mother! But, poor sinner that I am, how can I attain such an ideal? How can I even understand it?

II

I Am Marys Son Because I Willed It!

J ESUS :

My brother, to understand My filial love for My Mother, you must understand, first of all, that I am the Son of Mary because I deliberately chose that condition.

I did nothing by constraint, or by chance, or without a purpose.

When I decided to restore the glory of My Father and to save humanity, an infinite number of ways lay open before Me. To all others, however, I preferred the way of Mary.

I freely and deliberately created Mary to be My Mother, for she would not have been brought into existence had I not willed to confide this office to her: freely and deliberately I made her what she is, so that she might in turn make Me what I am.

In all truth I am her Child and I willed to be formed of My Mothers substance like every other child. I wanted to be nursed by her; I wanted to be brought up and cared for by her; I wanted to be entirely subject to her.

I am her Child much more truly than you are your mothers child, for from her alone I willed to derive My whole humanity.

I am her Child entirely, God and Man, because the One to whom she gave birth forms a single, undivided Person.

Now, I want you to realize that in choosing to be her Child I was motivated by love: first of all, by love for My Heavenly Father, whom I could glorify more and whom men would understand and love more because of her; then, too, by love for My Mother, who was to give Me more joy than all angels and men together; and also, by love for menin particular for you, My beloved brother.

III

Contemplate and Admire

J ESUS :

Contemplate now what My filial love has inspired Me to do for My Mother.

1. From all eternity I thought of her and loved her, for from all eternity I saw in her My future Mother.

I thought of her when creating the heavens and the angels; I thought of her as I formed the earth and the human race.

I thought of her as I pronounced sentence against your first parents; I thought of her as I revealed Myself to the ancient patriarchs and prophets.

2. Out of love I heaped privileges upon her, each of which exceeds the greatest of My bounties toward all other creatures. I exempted her from laws to which the whole human race is subject: her alone did I make Immaculate in her Conception, free from all concupiscence, unsullied by any imperfection, more full of grace than all the angels and Saints, Mother of God and ever a Virgin, glorified in her body, even as I was, before the general Resurrection.