Consecration to Mary

We consecrate ourselves to Mary to belong fully to her; to entrust ourselves and all our worries and needs into her maternal care. Mary and the Holy Spirit formed Jesus in her womb. The more we belong to Mary the more the Holy Spirit and Mary will form Jesus in you.

At the Cross, Jesus says to the Beloved Disciple, “Behold your mother!” and the Disciple responds by taking Mary into “his own home” (John 19:27). St. John, the Beloved Disciple, is a model of discipleship for the rest of us to follow. Jesus gives Mary as the mother of not only the Beloved Disciple, but all “those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). And so, like John, we must take Mary into our own homes. As John Paul II points out, bringing Mary into his home means that John “brings her into everything that makes up his inner life” (Redemptoris Mater 46).

So how do we follow this example? How do we make our homes, and our hearts, a place for Mary? John Paul II pointed Christians to the example of St. Louis de Montfort, “who proposes consecration to Christ

through the hands of Mary, as an effective means for Christians to live faithfully their baptismal commitments” (RM 48). In other words, we make the intentional act of giving ourselves to Jesus through Mary, taking as our own the mother than Jesus gave us, and then listening to her when she points us to Christ and says “Do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5).

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