Consecration Aids: 10: Letting Mary Direct Your Prayer!
This article was originally entitled: Harp Strings
Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM
L et’s make no bones about it: the first duty of a slave of Jesus and Mary is to be habitually mindful of his condition as a slave of love. Now this simply means that he must lead a life of complete dependence on Jesus and Mary. And that goes for everything he does, says or thinks.
In theory, you will admit, this sounds quite simple. In practice, well for this writer at least, it took a mighty long spell before it finally registered. But, … I assure you, it was worth waiting for. Here’s how I stumbled across the solution that was to give me a whole new outlook on Holy Slavery.
For quite some time I had been eagerly searching for reading matter on Mary’s exact role in mental prayer; wondering where to find a suitable explanation of her place in my daily meditation. Somehow I had the feeling I was not meditating as a slave of Mary should, but I didn’t know just why. To be honest with you, I didn’t know just how to meditate with Mary, until …
One day – not too long ago – as I was re-reading for the umptieth time my little Secret of Mary, I came upon these words that made me sit up and take notice. “We must place ourselves as instruments in the hands of Mary that she may act in us, and do with us and for us whatever she pleases … so that the whole work of our interior life and of our spiritual perfection is accomplished only by dependence on Mary.” (No. 47)
Why, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for, I told myself. Strange how it had never before occurred to me to apply these words to my daily meditation! “We must place ourselves as instruments in the hands of Mary so that she may act in us and do with us, etc. . .” Surely, I thought, there is no better occasion to let Mary act in me than during my morning meditation! Besides, St. Louis says that “the whole work of our interior life … must be accomplished only by dependence on Mary.” This includes, if anything, meditation or mental prayer!
Why was it, I wondered, that these words had never struck home this way before? Was it because I was still too “personal” in my ways (and in my case, the word “personal” was probably synonymous with “egocentric”)? Or was it because I still labored under the illusion that I was the principal agent of my sanctification and not God’s grace given me through Mary?
At any rate, it had never before been clearly brought home to me that, as a slave of Mary, I had placed the entire edifice of my spiritual life in her hands; that, with Christ and subordinate to Him, she was the architect, she was the builder – I was to be a mere instrument in her hands. A free and intelligent one, it is true, but nevertheless a humble and obedient one.
Yet all this while, I reflected, I have been doing my own praying, or rather, praying in my own independent way. Here I had been all these years priding myself on being Mary’s slave of love the while I prayed and meditated as if all depended on me alone; proclaiming myself a slave and acting as an independent agent in one of the most important acts of my interior life: my daily meditation.
Author: Fr. Christopher Lee, SMM
This is the tenth in a series of articles covering Consecration Aids.
Surely, I thought, there is no better occasion to let Mary act in me than during my morning meditation! Besides, St. Louis says that “the whole work of our interior life … must be accomplished only by dependence on Mary.”
I must grant, however, that my consecration had already helped me to acquire the habit of invoking Mary more frequently during mental prayer. But the thought of letting her, day by day, teach me how to pray; the idea of letting her take over completely in my daily meditation and of uniting myself with her in such a way that I might be “like an instrument” in her hands, why this had never even skimmed the surface of my mind!
And yet by my consecration, I now realized, I had given over to Mary my soul with all its faculties, such as, my memory, my imagination, my intelligence and my will. What else could this mean but that I should let her guide these faculties according to her good pleasure and loving will. I recalled, now, how I had been taught to exercise these different faculties separately and corporately, during my daily meditation. Thus, my memory was to serve to recall a certain truth; my imagination, to compose or construct the scene of action; my intelligence, to consider its different aspects and draw practical conclusions; and finally, my will, to produce affections and formulate resolutions.
But all this, it was now evident to me, was in a sense more Mary’s work than my own, since these faculties had been delivered to her completely and unconditionally. Therefore, I reasoned, there was only one logical thing to do: place these faculties in her hands – like so many chords of a harp in the hands of a skilled player – before, during and even after my daily meditations.
How foolish I have been all these years, I thought, to have placed the harp of my soul in her virginal hands and not to have encouraged her to play on each one of its strings! How slow I had been to realize that she – for whom prayer is both a state of being and a continual function – was the very one I needed to teach me how to meditate and pray! How stupid I had been to content myself with giving her a back-seat so to speak, in my mental prayer, when all the while she should have been up front with me in the driver’s seat! Just how blind can a person be, I wondered.
But why rant over past mistakes? I had learned my lesson. From then on, like a good slave of love, I promised to be more faithful to my consecration by depending on Jesus and Mary for everything – yes, even for the very thoughts and resolutions of my daily meditation.
