Devotion and Devotions
1.
With reference to what is meant by devotion, with many there is a delusion to which Father Segneri, in his treatise on devotion to the ever blessed Mother of God, alludes. Persons are supposed to be devoted to Our Lord, to the Blessed Virgin — taking these for examples — who are known to say prayers in their honor, go to holy communion on their great feasts, etc. Now Segneri says, with truth, that prayers, communions, pilgrimages, and such works may be helps to devotion, or the consequences of devotion, but they are not devotion in its real and true meaning. Devotion is something personal. Devotion to a person supposes great esteem, if not love, of that person — a sensitive feeling as to hurting or displeasing, a desire to gratify and please, a wish to be one as much as possible with such a person. Hence JohnI son, in his Dictionary," defines devotion to a person: Strong attachment and ardent love, such as makes the lover the sole property of the person loved" — one, as it were, vowed away and consecrated to another. Now it is quite possible that some Cath-
