Our Lady of Fatima and True Devotion: Part II
Fr. Roger M. Charest , SMM
Perhaps no modern Saint
is better qualified
to interpret
the Message of Fatima
than St. Louis Mary de Montfort!
Third Request: CONSECRATION TO MARY’S IMMACULATE HEART
THE CENTRAL THEME of Fatima’s message is undoubtedly devotion or consecration to Mary’s Immaculate Heart. And not until men shall have “gained her heart” (to use Fr. de Montfort’s own expression), will Fatima be carried out to its full extent.
The message was clear: “Our Lord wishes that devotion to my Immaculate Heart be established in the world.” (3rd APP) How revealing and highly significant too are these words of little Jacinta, a few days before her death, to her cousin Lucy: “You must remain here below, to make the world know Our Blessed Lord wishes devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary established in the world. Tell everybody that God gives graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Tell them to ask graces from her and that the Heart of Jesus wishes to be venerated together with the Immaculate Heart of His Mother.”
If we inquire now into the nature of this devotion, how it is to be practiced, Mary‘s wish is no less manifest: ”I come to ask the consecration of the world to my Immaculate Heart.” (3rd APP)
This consecration – it will be readily conceded – must not only be collective but also individual in its scope; nor must it be a vague, sentimental, meaningless formula ”as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean!” No, it must be nothing short of a purposeful and effective “unconditional surrender” to Mary’s Immaculate Heart!
Our Holy Father, Pope Pius XII, speaking about a true consecration to Mary, to a group of French pilgrims, on November 22, 1946, stressed this point when he said in part, “It (the consecration) is a complete gift-of-self, for life and for eternity; not a mere formal or purely sentimental gift, but an effective gift-of-self carried out in the intensity of the Christian and Marian life.”
Statue of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
… we strike at the very roots of St. Louis Mary de Montfort’s perfect act of consecration to Mary. The formulas are identical. Notice that the Holy Father says, “It is a complete gift-of-self.” St. Louis says, “This devotion consists in giving ourselves entirely and altogether to Our Lady.” (TD. No. 121) The Pope then adds: “for life and for eternity.” In, his, formula of consecration to Mary, Fr. de Montfort writes: “in time and in eternity.”
Here, dear readers, we strike at the very roots of St. Louis Mary de Montfort’s perfect act of consecration to Mary. The formulas are identical. Notice that the Holy Father says, “It is a complete gift-of-self.” St. Louis says, “This devotion consists in giving ourselves entirely and altogether to Our Lady.” (TD. No. 121) The Pope then adds: “for life and for eternity.” In, his, formula of consecration to Mary, Fr. de Montfort writes: “in time and in eternity.”
The Sovereign Pontiff goes on to say that it must not be “a mere formal or purely sentimental gift, but an effective gift-of-self carried out in the intensity of the Christian and Marian life.” Fr. de Montfort’s total consecration is no less explicit on this point when he writes, “I renew and ratify today in thy hands the vows of my Baptism; I renounce forever Satan, his pomps and his works; and I give myself entirely to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry my Cross after Him all the days of my life, and to be more faithful to Him than I have ever been before.” (formula of consecration)
It is precisely on this formula of Christian life and perfection that Saint Louis de Montfort grafts his whole system of Marian life. His consecration tends to render a soul ”interiorly dependent on Mary and on Jesus through her,” by placing that soul under the complete sway and domination of her maternal heart. And this is perfect imitation of Christ. ”O, how highly we glorify God, when, to please Him, we submit ourselves to Mary, after the example of Jesus, our sole exemplar!” (T.D. No. 18) This is Christianity at its best. “Make for me, if you will, a new toad to go to Jesus, and pave it with all the merits of the Blessed, and adorn it with all their heroic virtues, illuminate and embellish it with all the lights and beauties of the angels, and let all the angels and saints be there themselves, to escort, defend and sustain those who are ready to walk there; and yet in truth, in simple truth, I say boldly, and I repeat that I say truly, I would prefer to this new perfect path the Immaculate Way of Mary.” (TD. No. 158)
From all this it stands out clearly that St. Louis Mary de Montfort’s perfect consecration to Mary – known today as True Devotion to Mary – answers fully to the pattern set by our Holy Father, Pius XII, and hence to Fatima’s pressing demands.
Indeed, the full import and far-reaching consequences of Fr. de Montfort’s consecration to Mary cannot possibly be encompassed within the limits of our present article. Suffice it for me to refer our readers to Montfort’s own Treatise on True Devotion to Mary, and to his smaller work The Secret of Mary.
4th Request: COMMUNION OF REPARATION
This brings us to the fourth and final request in Fatima’s true devotion program which is: Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays.
Showing her heart to Lucy, the Lady said: “My child, behold my Heart surrounded with the thorns which ungrateful men place therein at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitudes. Do you at least strive to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to Confession and receive Holy Communion, say the Rosary and spend a quarter of an hour in meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the object of making reparation to me.” (3rd app.)
Were we to expatiate on the amazing resemblance between Fatima and Fr. de Montfort’s message on this point, we should be forced to quote the entire closing chapter of his Treatise on True Devotion, which is entitled, “Manner of practicing this devotion to Our Lady when we go to Holy Communion.” We cannot refrain, however, from adducing a few excerpts for the edification of our readers.
Out Saint tells us, for instance, that before Holy Communion, “you must implore that good Mother to lend you her Heart, that you may receive her Son there with the same dispositions as her own.” A little further on he adds: “You will ask her for her heart by these tender words: ‘I take thee for my all, give me thy Heart, O Mary!” At the moment of receiving Holy Communion he invites us to make reparation for our sins by a full acknowledgment of our own sinfulness, and so praying Jesus ”to have pity on you, that you may introduce Him into the house of His own Mother whose bosom is as pure and whom Heart as burning as ever.” Finally, after Holy Communion, “While you are inwardly recollected and holding your eyes shut, you will introduce Jesus into the Heart of Mary.” Decidedly, it would be difficult to find a better formula for a Communion of Reparation to Mary, and to Jesus through her!
This brings to a close our all-too-brief exposition of the intimate relationship between Fatima and true devotion to Mary as taught by St. Louis Mary de Montfort, between the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the consecration to Mary, Queen of All Hearts!
It has been our contention that Fatima contains in itself “a complete four-point true devotion program” which, to be fully carried out (lived) needs but to be explained in the light of St. Louis de Montfort’s writing.
More, one cannot help but wonder if the Saint’s prophetic words do not have a direct bearing on Fatima itself: ”When will that happy time, that age of Mary, come, when souls, losing themselves in the abyss of her interior (her Immaculate Heart!), shall become living copies of Mary, to love and glorify Jesus?” (T.D. No 217) If these words are prophetic – and we have all reason to believe they are – then it is high time for us to weigh seriously the rest of the prediction: “That time will not come until men shall know and practice this devotion which I am teaching.” (T.D. No 217)
