And with this, my dear reader and brother, lover of our Mother Mary, I take my leave of you and say: Go on cheerfully to honor and love this good Lady, and strive also to make her loved by all whom you can; and do not doubt, but be confidently assured that, if you persevere until death in true devotion toward Mary, your salvation will be certain.
I bring this to an end, not because I lacked matter still to tell of the glories of this great Queen, but in order not to weary you any further. The little I have written may well suffice to make you fall in love with this great treasure, devotion to the Mother of God, which she will surely repay with her powerful protection.
Accept kindly, then, the desire I have had in this work of mine—to see you saved and made holy, and to see you become a loving and devoted child of this most lovable Queen. And if you find that this book of mine has been of some little help to you in this, I beg you, for charity’s sake, to commend me to Mary and to ask of her for me that same grace which I ask of her for you: namely, that we may one day see one another in paradise together, at her feet, united with all her other beloved children.
And turning to you at the last, O Mother of my Lord and my own Mother Mary, I pray you to welcome these poor labors of mine and the desire I have had to see you praised and loved by all. You know already how greatly I have longed to complete this little work upon your glories before my life should end—a life that is now drawing near its close. And now I say that I die contented, leaving upon earth this book of mine, which will go on praising you and proclaiming you, as I have striven always to do in these years since my conversion, which through you I obtained from God.
O Mary immaculate, I commend to you all those who love you, and especially those who shall read this book of mine; and most particularly those who shall do me the charity of commending me to you. O Lady, give them perseverance, make them all holy, and so lead us all to praise you together in heaven.
O my most sweet Mother, it is true that I am a poor sinner; but I glory in loving you, and I hope great things from you, and among the rest to die loving you. I hope that, in the anguish of my death, when the devil sets my sins before me, first the Passion of Jesus and then your intercession will give me strength to pass out of this wretched life in the grace of God, and to come to love him and to thank you, my Mother, forever and ever. Amen. So I hope; so may it be.
O Lady, plead for us with your Son: They have no wine (John 2:3). How glorious is the cup of this inebriating wine! The love of God inebriates us to the contempt of the world; it warms us, it makes us strong, drowsy toward things temporal, and prompt toward things unseen. —St. Bernard, or whoever wrote the sermons on the Salve Regina, from whom the two prayers that follow are also taken.
You are a field full, full of virtues, full of graces. You came forth like the dawn, bright and rosy; for, original sin overcome, you were born bright with the knowledge of truth, and rosy with the love of virtue. In nothing at all does the enemy prevail against you, since a thousand shields hang upon you, and all the armor of the valiant. For there is no virtue that does not shine forth in you, and whatever the saints possessed singly, you alone possessed entirely.
O our Lady, our mediatrix, our advocate, commend us to your Son. Grant, O blessed one, by the grace you have merited, that he who through you deigned to become a partaker of our weakness and misery may, through your intercession also, make us partakers of his blessedness and glory.
Lovely rose, if in your mercy
you now love me, make me long
for so great a love, that my heart
may one day die for you.
O my Lady, grant me this lot:
that I may ever love you, and in death
breathe out my soul calling upon you.
Sweet Mary, my hope,
you indeed are that happy star
who must guide me to the harbor, to heaven.
Long live Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Teresa.