Let Yourself Be Led By The Immaculate, St Maximilian Maria Kolbe

I've vowed to promote this book this year. It's an absolute gem - for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is the fact that it is quite short (great for lazy Catholics/non-readers) and well translated in very accessible language (good for uneducated Catholics/non-readers) and cheap (on Kindle less than $3/good for skint Catholics).

You don't have to be familiar with St Louis Marie de Montfort's True Devotion or have done any reading on true devotion to The Immaculate to be able to grasp some of St Kolbe's understanding of the mystery by which Jesus gives ALL graces ONLY through her hands and She loves Him back through us. Purifying our works, prayers, sufferings before offering them to Him. He will surely take them from her hands.

A favourite story about St Kolbe is that when looking for land to build Niepokalanow all seemed hopeless and he took a statue of Our Lady and placed it in the middle of the field he wanted but could not afford; consecrating the land to Her.  Shortly afterwards, the landowner gave him the land.

Our Lady of Fatima said 'My Immaculate Heart will triumph'. It's surely no co-incidence that The Immaculate has brought this book to us at this critical time to help bring about that triumph. It's certain that Jesus, Her loving son, will not tolerate for long the world - some even in his Church - deriding and insulting Her on whom He was so utterly dependent and by whom he was so devotedly loved.

If you read no other book about Our Lady but this one, you will have been offered the most eloquent sharing of this mysterious love; understanding it - as St Kolbe says - can come only from prayer.

"With our poor heart she loves her divine son. We become the means through which the Immaculate loves Jesus, and Jesus, seeing us her property, a part, as it were, of his most beloved Mother, loves her in us and through us."

"Do not be afraid at all to love the Immaculate too much since .... you will never love her like Jesus loved her. Now all our sanctity consists in imitating Jesus. He who approaches her, by the very fact approaches God; he just does it by following the shortest, surest, easiest road.. The most holy Mother is Mediatrix of all graces without exception . . .Therefore the life of grace of a soul depends on the degree of its closeness to her."