Claret felt very protected by the Blessed Virgin Mary (as he nearly always says) during all of his life and in several dangerous situations. He speaks of this and enumerates the graces and favours obtained from Mary, in which he felt loved by the Virgin and in turn with what intensity he loved her since childhood.,
There were many Marian devotions that Claret practiced, the Marian prayers which he wrote and the Marian groups which he founded; to all of these he advised them to love Mary. And together with this we see excellent intuitions of Claret regarding Mary. He contemplated her as “Daughter of the Father, wife of the Spirit and Mother of the Son.” He saw her as the Mother of the Apocalypse in a fight against all evil, and he placed this fight in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Claret celebrated with delight the proclamation as dogma of the Immaculate Conception and he asked Pius IX to also proclaim that of the Assumption. (Pius XII would do so in 1950.) Mary was for Claret “the best imitator of Jesus …”
That fruitful Marian and Cordimarian disposition of Claret orients and directs us to the place and the active presence which the figure of Mary and her heart must have in our Christian spirituality.
We should “liberate” Mary in our church from the neglect of many Christians and also of the exaggerated deification of many others. To that end, each of us should review the place which Mary occupies in our Christian life, and ask ourselves: isn’t “the Mary of the Gospel” the best model for hearers and faithful servants of the Word of God, for all the disciples of Jesus?