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Consecration to Mary
3. Consecration to Mary
God created heaven and earth and each human being out of love, because God is LOVE. Every human person is invited to share in this love in abundance, and every human person is sacred because we are all made in God’s image. In creating us, God has given us all dignity, for God considers every human life to have infinite value. The word consecration means: to make a something or someone sacred. In this sense, all of creation, and each human being in particular is consecrated..
For the disciples of Christ, consecration has a special meaning. Baptism is the fundamental Consecration that permits us to give our entire life to God in thanksgiving and love. Confirmation and the other sacraments root us into the life of Christ so that we might participate in the Consecration of Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit. .
Consecration can renew us in a more personal way as well. Baptism expresses our wholehearted willingness to give ourselves to God in truth. As a personal action, this act of consecration is an extension of our baptismal consecration. It is not a “magic formula” that brings automatic results. Rather, it is an act of love which has meaning and value if we respond concretely to God in our day to day life.
The only one we can consecrate ourselves to is God because God alone is our Father, full of love and compassion. Just as God gives us everything out of love, through our love and the gift of the Holy Spirit received at Baptism, we can give ourselves in return as Jesus Christ did.
There also exists in the Church something called Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Strictly speaking, the word “consecration” is not used in this case in its truest sense, but it expresses the idea of a total and ongoing offering of oneself to God through the hands of Mary. To do this is to do what God did first in the person of Jesus, when God placed Jesus in the hands of Mary! In fact, consecration to Mary consists of imitating Jesus Christ in the initial act of his Incarnation, since the first action that He did in coming to earth was to choose Mary as his Mother!
In consecrating ourselves to Mary, we have recourse to the help of the Mother of God, who is also our Mother. In this way, by following her example, we can be open to the Holy Spirit and live in fidelity to the promises of our Baptism.
Just as Mary participates by her divine motherhood in the mission of Christ, consecration to Mary is simply a manner of consecrating ourselves to Christ as she did, and cultivating Mary’s virtues of faith, humility and purity.
Consecration is not an end in itself, but rather a means of living in fidelity to Jesus Christ, in fidelity to our baptismal promises.
It is possible to consecrate oneself to Jesus through Mary or to renew one’s consecration in order to become authentic witnesses to Jesus Christ in imitating Mary.