The First Tool: Total Consecration to Our Lady
Devotion to Our Lady has taken many forms during the history of the Church, but Total Consecration is more modern that most Catholics realize.
I will try to take seven tools that the Lord has given to the Church for surviving and thriving during the current crisis in roughly historical order. The oldest of these modern tools is Total Consecration to Our Lady, first promoted under that title by St. Louis de Montfort who lived from 1673 to 1716, although the devotion only became known to the wider world in 1842.
De Montfort, a priest and preacher to the very poor, had a deep devotion to Our Lady which arguably went above and beyond previous devotees while remaining orthodox Catholicism. Yet in his little book True Devotion to Mary, he argues that Total Consecration was practiced by Christians from the earliest times. In fact, the first person to completely and utterly entrust Himself to Mary was Christ Himself, Who made Himself dependent on her for the first nine months of His life in the womb and submitted to her for the first thirty years of His life. Aside from that mysterious episode known as the Finding in the Temple, Christ “was obedient” to His Mother and her husband St. Joseph until He began His ministry at the age of 30. For His saving ministry of three years, He prepared Himself by three decades of Total Consecration to Mary. As followers of Christ, says De Montfort, we would be wise to do as Jesus Himself did.
In his surprisingly readable treatise, De Montfort argues through many examples from Church history and the lives of the saints that Total Consecration is:
a smooth, short, perfect and sure way of attaining union with our Lord, in which Christian perfection consists.
It is an easy way: It is the path which Jesus Christ opened up in coming to us and in which there is no obstruction to prevent us from reaching Him. It is quite true that we can attain to divine union by other roads, but these involve many more crosses and exceptional setbacks and many difficulties that we cannot easily overcome.
It is a short way: This devotion is a short way to discover Jesus, either because it is a road we do not wander from, or because, as we have just said, we walk along this road with greater ease and joy, and consequently with greater speed. We advance more in a brief period of submission to Mary and dependence on her than in whole years of self-will and self-reliance.
It is a perfect way: This devotion is a perfect way to reach our Lord and be united to Him, for Mary is the most perfect and the most holy of all creatures, and Jesus, Who came to us in a perfect manner, chose no other road for His great and wonderful journey. The Most High, the Incomprehensible One, the Inaccessible One, He who is, designed to come down to us poor earthly creatures who are nothing at all. How was this done? The Most High God came down to us in a perfect way through the humble Virgin Mary, without losing anything of His divinity or holiness. It is likewise through Mary that we poor creatures must ascend to almighty God in a perfect manner without having anything to fear.
It is a secure way: This devotion to our Lady is a secure way to go to Jesus and to acquire perfection by uniting ourselves to Him. The devotion which I teach is not new: it is a safe means of going to Jesus Christ because it is Mary’s role to lead us safely to her Son.
In the first chapters, De Montfort prophesied that this little book would be lost until its time had come, writing with a foresight that today seems even more uncanny:
I clearly foresee that raging beasts shall come in fury to tear with their diabolical teeth this little Writing and him whom the Holy Ghost has made use of to write it, or at least to smother it in the silence of a coffer, that it may not appear. They shall even attack and persecute those who shall read it and carry it out in practice. But what matter? On the contrary, so much the better! This very foresight encourages me, and makes me hope for a great success; that is to say, for a great squadron of brave and valiant soldiers of Jesus and Mary, of both sexes, to combat the world, the devil, and corrupted nature in those more than ever perilous times which are about to come!
And De Montfort prophesied correctly. After his death, the manuscript was lost and literally buried until it was miraculously rediscovered in 1842 in a France that had lost its faith and crushed its religiosity in bloody revolution. A more perfect way of smuggling weapons behind enemy lines could not be imagined: Our Lady prepared the weapon and cocked it, ready for use when its time had come. And that time is now.
Kolbe weighs in
St. Maximilian Kolbe could not agree more. If De Montfort pushes Marian devotion to its limits, Kolbe dances on the swaying line between orthodoxy and heresy. His ideas are so wild that some Catholics have a hard time believing it’s authentically Catholic.
This Polish martyr and apostle of Our Lady absorbed True Devotion and founded a new order specifically to promote it. Hours before he was arrested by the Nazis for his work in hiding Jews, he penned the words of what would become his contribution to Catholic doctrine: Christ was the uncreated Incarnation of God the Father. Our Lady was the quasi-Incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Her union with the Third Person of the Trinity at the moment of her conception made her the created Immaculate Conception, the Holy Spirit being the uncreated Immaculate Conception. She remained in complete union with her Spouse throughout her life, and He conceived the Second Person of the Trinity in her womb, so that she could give birth to Our Savior. He later came to her and to the apostles at Pentecost, giving birth to the Church. A Christian wishing to be the instrument of the Holy Spirit could not do better than to completely and totally consecrate himself or herself to Mary, the Immaculata, a union that has the power to change history.
In the union of the Holy Spirit with her, not only does love unite these two Beings, but the first one of them is all the love of the Most Holy Trinity, while the second is all the love of creation. Thus, in this union Heaven meets earth, all of Heaven with all of the earth, all Uncreated Love with all created love: it is the highest expression of love.
Kolbe, with Polish passion, wishes to leave his human will behind entirely, so in his version of Total Consecration, he asks to become an instrument, a mere unconscious tool of Our Lady.
Let us disappear in her! May she alone remain, and we in her, a part of her. …She alone must instruct each one of us at every moment, lead us, transform us into herself, so that we may no longer live, but she may live in us, just as Jesus lives in her and the Father in the Son
He was to call for “transubstantiation into the Immaculata.”
We have heard of persons who are obsessed, possessed by the devil, through whom the devil thought, spoke, and acted. We want to be possessed in this way, and even more, without limits, by her: may she herself think, speak, and act through us. We want to belong to such an extent to the Immaculate that not only nothing else remains in us that isn’t hers, but that we become, as it were, annihilated in her, changed into her, transubstantiated into her, that she alone remains, so that we may be as much hers as she is God’s.
“No limits!” was his cry. In a world that wants to believe “anything is possible” when we all know it’s not, Kolbe channels our desire for the the impossible. “Aim higher!” he urges Christians. He reminds us that an archer who aims at a faraway target will miss it: he must aim higher in order to hit it. A Christian who aims at nothing less than the conversion of the entire world to Christ as soon as possible isn’t aiming high enough.
It is not enough to become the Immaculate’s within some defined limit. In every respect, we must desire to radiate her, so as to draw to her the souls of all others who are, will be, and might be—without restriction. In a word, we are to become hers, more and more ready to sacrifice self entirely for her, to the last drop of blood in the conquest of the whole world and every soul in particular—as soon as possible, as soon as possible, as soon as possible.
Kolbe, fired by his vision of a world completely surrendered to Christ, began to found Cities of the Immaculata, patches of earth completely dedicated to her where his orders of friars carried out a media apostolate that continues today. He founded two of them before he died: one in his native Poland and one in Nagasaki, Japan, within what became ground zero of the atomic bomb. The City of the Immaculata survived the blast intact.
For those who worry that all this consecration to Mary will obscure or distract their love for Christ, I point to these words of Paul VI:
The result will never be “Mariolatry,” just as the sun will never be darkened by the moon; nor will the mission of salvation specifically entrusted to the ministry of the Church ever be distorted if the latter honors in Mary an exceptional Daughter and Spiritual Mother.
Both Kolbe and De Montfort recommend spending 33 days in preparation for consecration and then renew it annually (Kolbe: daily!). It’s good to do your consecration on a Marian feast day: it helps you remember to renew it.
A devotion whose moment has come
Many of the familiar Marian sacramentals we take for granted – the Rosary, the scapular, the Miraculous Medal -- are actually artifacts of civilizations separated by centuries. Total Consecration is the gift that was given to our age, but it in now way replaces any of the previous ones. We tend to lump all Marian devotions into one, yet each represents a distinct gift from past ages of the Church.
The garb of Elijah
The Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel is taken from the garb of Jewish hermit prophets who lived on Mount Carmel. The prophet Elijah is said to have founded this order of prophets on Mount Carmel. The Carmelites still wear a habit inspired by him, substituting wool or brown fabric for the camel’s hair tunic, but retaining Elijah’s signature leather belt. (So in the contest for the oldest religious orders, the Carmelites win…) The Christian descendants of Elijah’s order fled to Europe as a result of the Muslim conquests, some of them coming as far as England.
There, an English Carmelite known to history as St. Simon Stock, received a vision in 1251 of Our Lady holding the Carmelite scapular—the work apron that covers the shoulders of a religious—promising that members of the order who persevered in their vocation would be saved. In their generosity, the Carmelite religious began to offer this scapular to lay people outside the order, with the promise attached that whoever dies wearing a scapular will not suffer the fires of hell. Subsequent Church tradition affirmed this practice, which is why Catholics (including myself) typically wear one (Here’s my favorite kind!). (Ok, the Brown Scapular also probably wins for the oldest of the Marian traditions in the Western Church.)
Roses and Silver Bullets
The Rosary sprouted from the desire of the working laity of the Middle Ages to pray the 150 Psalms as the monastic orders did, but since few of them knew the Psalms, they prayed prayers like the Ave Maria and the Pater Noster 150 times, using bags of pebbles to keep count, and eventually the pebbles became strings of beads. Then in a vision to St. Dominic, Our Lady united these prayer beads to meditations on the life of Her Son, forging a spiritual combat weapon against heresy that was also a glorious crown of flowers in heaven.
Making circles of heavenly roses is something that can be done by the merest children as well as the learned, and it united the laity and clergy as the hierarchy affirmed this devotion, which stands beside the Eucharist as the prophetic pillar of our faith to lead us through these times. If the Eucharist represents the labor of the hierarchy, the Rosary represents the labor of the laity: the Church today needs both.
The Miraculous Medal came from the 1830s, so it’s a post-Enlightenment devotion which became famous for inspiring 180° conversions and other favors. In the apparitions of St. Catherine Labouré, she saw graces pouring from rings on Our Lady’s hand like rays of light, but some of the rings gave forth no light. When the saint asked why, Our Lady responded, “These are the graces God has made available but which no one has yet prayed for.” It is sobering to reflect on what those graces might be, if we only dared to ask for them. Maximilian Kolbe famously called the Miraculous Medal his “silver bullet” against the devil.
Which brings us back to Total Consecration, the gift of God to the Church in the modern age. Never required by our faith, it is nevertheless highly recommended by Church leaders, including John Paul II, whose motto was “Totus Tuus Maria”: “I am all Yours, Mary.” He remarked that making his Total Consecration to Mary represented a significant turning point in his spiritual life.
It is also interesting that God gave John Paul II a gift that no one in history that I know of had yet received: the gift of setting an entire country free from its enemies with a minimum of bloodshed. Perhaps he asked Our Lady for some of those graces.
Total Consecration to Our Lady is easily combined with consecration to her Spouse, the Holy Spirit. Decades ago, two prophetic priests predicted in this book that the way forward for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal was found in the Kolbe consecration to Our Lady, since charismatics have a great devotion to the Holy Spirit. I read their book—one of the three most important books I have ever read—and was led to make the Kolbe Total Consecration as soon as I finished it. This was amazing, because I, being a rather Protestantized Catholic, did not even really believe Our Lady had a role in my faith. Even though I didn’t know it, that was about to change.
Why is Total Consecration so important for Culture Recovery?
My Total Consecration occurred in 1988. Looking back over the years, here is some of the fruit I’ve seen in my own life and reflected in the lives of others, which makes me certain that this devotion is key for any efforts towards culture recovery.
Total consecration refines your instincts to more truly recognize the wisest choice in any situation. The ways to do good are multitudinous: the virtue of wisdom is learning to choose among the goods wisely. Many choices which are “good” in a vacuum may, given the situation, be imprudent, or even stupid, which is kind of useless. You can learn to choose the right good for any situation through common sense or experience, but for those of us who lack experience (and for myself, common sense), praying for wisdom is the best resort. In my own life, I have seen how consecration to Our Lady, the Seat of Wisdom, has so many time guided me against the odds to make the best choice. It is not a magic tool, but it is the closest thing I know towards a technology that keeps you on the right path and your heart in the right place.
Consecration to Our Lady keeps your love towards Christ warm. In the latter days Christ warns that many will become cold in their charity as lawlessness increases. (Matthew 24:12) We are in great danger of this happening in our society. Consecration to Our Lady helps in keeping your love towards her tender and your love towards Christ aflame. Plus it involves your heart in your Catholicism, not merely your mind or your intellect. I used to be pretty much a Catholic snob, reveling in my own brand of Catholic tribalism: artistic, ecumenical, intellectual, sophisticated. Now, since my consecration, I have found that I have moved from toleration of Marian piety to an affectionate understanding of how it works in the heart of so many believers. Yes, this means I’m no longer embarrassed by old ladies with rosary beads or scruffy men with handfuls of holy cards. I don’t know to what else to attribute this softening of my own heart except Total Consecration.
Total Consecration has the side effect of freedom from fear. More than any other sin, we live in an age dominated by fear and anxiety. I believe all true devotion to Mary increases your courage and drives out demons—after all, it is she who crushes the serpent’s head. But Total Consecration can take away all fear completely, save your fear of God. Consider the moment of Maximilian Kolbe’s sacrifice in Auschwitz: how he approached the commandant and asked to take the place of a condemned man, how he endured the starvation bunker with equanimity and how he peacefully strengthened his fellow death row inmates until he was killed by lethal injection. His Nazi executioners had no hold over him: they could not take anything from him: he had given it all to Our Lady and in exchange, Christ gave him the promised peace that passes understanding. In an age that feels at times dominated by the demonic, we need this kind of courage.
I can think of no better tool than Total Consecration that you need as a husband, wife, homemaker, artist, or faithful Catholic in any field. In many ways Total Consecration means becoming a prophet like Elijah, but one who follows the quiet whisper of the Holy Spirit and acts in hidden ways, like Mary.
It is also a fantastic way to form your children. Our family picked Christmas Day as our consecration day and we try to renew it annually on Christmas, right before opening our Christmas gifts.
If you have never done the Total Consecration before (or have not renewed it for many years) and if you have a family that includes teenagers, I highly recommend the book 33 Days to Morning Glory. When we first consecrated our family to Our Lady, we would read each day’s selection aloud at the supper table and I was surprised at how much our children responded. If you have mainly toddlers and younger children, check out Marian Consecration For Children.
Karol Wojtyla's Totus Tuus. Maximilian Kolbe's awe before "The Immaculata." Louis Marie de Montfort's Total Consecration. I've always found these approaches daunting. It's the "totus" I think, the totality of it that crowds me.
I'm on a smaller path. My dailiness is lesser. A beginner perhaps? A disciple? Sometimes. Sometimes something even smaller. I do turn to Jesus's mom and mine in my morning prayers, my morning decade.
Half the prayers, I pray in Spanish. Spanish slows me into the meaning. The Hail Mary is interesting in Spanish. Not "Ave" to someone on high, but "Dios te salve, Maria" - God save you, Mary. Almost certainly, that is a greeting-cum-blessing to friend and foe alike in a very Catholic culture, almost a figure of speech - "Hi there in Christ our Savior!" But look how it greets Mary as one of us, in need of saving. As she was, proleptically.
Recently, I visited with a friend, a Regnum Christi consecrated woman. She was raised in the Chaldean church. (I now know how to pronounce Chaldean!) She speaks Aramaic at home. In church too of course when she visits home. She told me the Hail Mary in Aramaic. It begins, "Shalom, Mary!" (my transliteration). Just as any Aramaic speaker would greet his neighbor. Not, hail, oh exalted one - but peace, my friend. Peace, Mary.
So, I'm thinking of a little way. Seeking Mary's help in a special intention, I remind her what she told Juan Diego, "No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?" Then in espanol, "Dios te salve, Maria - llena eres de gracia . . ."
Here's another instance of a smaller scale. Anthony Esolen's rich piece on Mary in this months' Magnificat brings parts of our highest understandings of Marian theology down to little, direct simplicities.
Example: "For without any taint on your purity" becomes "without any touch on your chastity." Another example, ". . . her light touch when the boy Jesus perplexed her, and her calm words when the man Jesus seemed, at Cana, to refuse her."
In a similar vein, I liked what you quoted from Louis Marie de Montfort. This, for example: "It is an easy way: It is the path which Jesus Christ opened up in coming to us." Everything you quoted from de Montfort resonated with me in fact; and I remember my mom putting "True Devotion" into my hands when I was a teen. Lo, those many years ago. I wasn't much interested then. Your post is yet another embarrassing case of, "Doggone it. Was Mom ALWAYS right?"
Again, in the way of little ways, I liked your "In fact, the first person to completely and utterly entrust Himself to Mary was Christ Himself, Who made Himself dependent on her for the first nine months of His life in the womb and submitted to her for the first thirty years of His life." Thirty years. Count 'em. 1, 2, 3, . . . 30. That's a while! Mel Gibson creates a nice moment of imagining it when Jesus shows her the table he carpentered, and she pronounces, "That will never catch on."
Little moment, little way.
Another moment. You wrote, "Aside from that mysterious episode known as the Finding in the Temple, . . ." Mysterious? My wife has always maintained that Jesus then was a smart, holy, uppity teen, and that that's what teens do - run off, then criticize mom and dad for even looking. I've never found a better exegesis. But then, as you can see, I start with ordinary ways of understanding. Who am I to guess otherwise.
Clearly, Luke talked with Mary. And she had lots to say. Thank goodness. Thank God. It is down at that level - the plainest of plain conversations - that I seek Mary out. As, perhaps, Luke did. I ask her to pray for me and mine. I kneel before her image, la Guadalupana. Madre mia. But all on a very small scale, hardly arising to the level of totus tuus.
You've been writing about Christian music in a pop vein. I'm more at the level of "What a friend we have in Jesus!"
But we do. Don't we?
Please don't take my comments as criticism. We're in the same songbook. Sometimes on different pages. The interstices may be where we learn and grow. And if you heard me trying to sing, you might lighten up on the music. :-)