Although by no means a private revelation, this labor of love, written by Saint John Eudes almost seventeen hundred years after the holy events, reads as if the mind of the saint was guided and protected from error by the Mother of God herself. Never, in the history of the Church, had any tribute to Our Lady's childhood been composed which so marvelously applies so many texts of holy scripture with sound Catholic doctrine and the wisdom of her confessors. Where do we begin if we are ever to become like the little children God wishes us to emulate? Why not begin by contemplating the immaculate life of the precious and most humble maiden of Nazareth.

Saint John Eudes was born at Ri, a country parish near Caen, Normandy, in 1601. Endowed with extraordinary talents and filled with burning zeal for the salvation of souls, he devoted 50 years of life, until his death in 1680, to the preaching of missions and to the organization of ecclesiastical seminaries. He founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, generally known as the Eudist Fathers, for missionary and seminary work; the Order of Our Lady of Charity with its two observances of the Refuge and of the Good Shepherd; the Society of the Most Admirable Heart for lay persons aspiring to perfection in the world; and lastly, Confraternities of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary for the propagation among the faithful of the devotion, of which he was the first apostle. He wrote the first Mass and Office for the special feast in honor of the Sacred Heart and of the Holy Heart of Mary, which he established thirty years before the revelations of the Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary.