Blueprint of Holy Slavery
Fr. Lionel Gamache, SMM
A BLUEPRINT is not enjoyable reading for everyone. Most people (I think) prefer looking at an architect’s rough sketch without any precise dimensions. On the other hand, a contractor could hardly get started on a new school if all he had seen of the project was that elementary sketch. Even before ground has been broken an architect’s drawing appears in the newspapers. That is what it will look like even with its fluffy rose-colored clouds soaring over-head.
The builder wants more than this drawing. He wants to see the blueprints, the hundreds of blueprints that tell him the height of the walls and the size of the doors. Blueprints are chuck-full of details that would bore you and me but without them, the carpenters and the masons and the plumbers and the electricians just stand around and wait.
Anyone deeply interested in the ”True Devotion” cannot be satisfied with a general description of the terms of our consecration. He is like the builder. He wants details, and as many as possible.
What the Consecration Says
The short form of the consecration to the Blessed Virgin tells us everything we want to know about Holy Slavery – but so much is implicit. ”I am all Thine and all I have is Thine.” Invariably a question will be asked: “Do you really mean all?” In the more elaborate formula, St. Louis de Montfort took care to include specific details. ”In the presence of all the heavenly court I choose thee this day for my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and consecrate to thee, as thy slave, my body and soul, my goods both interior and exterior and even the value of all my good actions, past, present and future.”
Further light to these words is added both by the ”Secret of Mary” and the ”Treatise on the True Devotion.” The Secret enumerates house, family, income, merits, graces, virtues and satisfactions as yielded to Mary. (No. 29) The Treatise summarizes our donation in these words: ”In a word, we must give her all we have in the order of nature and in the order of grace, and all that may become ours in the future, in the orders of nature, grace and glory. . . .” (T.D. 121).
Anything Excluded?
Is anything that we possess excluded from this surrender? Were is possible to find something of ours not listed here at least implicitly, then it could be excluded. The ”past, present and future,” in the ”orders of nature, grace and glory” cover just about everything. Exteriorly, though, nothing about us seems changed after the consecration. A religious, at least, from the hour of his profession assumes a new name, wears a special habit, lives in a convent or monastery. But it is not so for us. Because of this our radical self-surrender seems so unreal, ideal, maybe meaningless. Every transfer of ownership, however, does call for a noticeable exterior alteration.
A short while ago the Knights of Columbus, newspapers told us, purchased a baseball field (stadium) and a Bridgeport Conn., rolling mill. The ownership of the baseball field and of the factory is now in K. of C. hands. They can decide on the use to which these two properties will serve. The stadium could be turned into – let’s say – a swimming pool and the mill into a gymnasium. Actually there is no reason to fear that the mill will interrupt its brass production. Through a rental contract the former owners have been granted permission to use the field and mill as in the past.
Center Panel (cropped) of the Altar of Isenheim: German Renaissance Painter: Matthias Grünewald: 1515
The painting resides in the Unterlinden Museum, Colmar, France.
That is what a . . . blueprint of total consecration reveals: complete dispossession, total surrender . . . ” . without the reserve of so much as one farthing, one hair, or one good action . . . without pretending to, or hoping for any other recompense . . . except the honor of belonging to Jesus Christ through Mary and in Mary. . . .”
Return to The Queen: Articles
Order of Nature
We should interpret the meaning of our consecration in a similar manner. A change of ownership is as real here as it is for the ball field and mill. It may be true that we have no perfect right over our life, our body, our senses, that we are mere guardians of these for God. But without getting involved in distinctions between perfect and imperfect dominion, we can say that whatever rights of ownership have been given us by God over ourselves and what we possess are placed in Mary’s domain. They now belong to her. We still retain their use. But whatever be the use, it must always conform with Our Lady’s will.
Further still, in the sight of God, whatever is accomplished by these faculties is necessarily Marian in character. Whether I think of it or not, by virtue of an intention expressed in my consecration, the fingers punching these keys belong to Mary. The hands that raise the Host in the Sacrifice of the Mass, the knee that bends in adoration before the Sacred Species, are Mary’s hands and Mary’s knee. These are instruments whereby she can reach into this [(and every)] year and through these accomplish a few of her numberless tasks as Mediatrix of All Graces.
Spiritual Faculties
The faculties of the soul are the intelligence and the will. The intelligence is a faculty of knowing, the will of loving. These too are hers after my consecration. I still retain their use, though the radical possession is not mine. It is true, I can no longer use my intelligence for any purpose that Mary would not allow. I must love only that which she loves, hate only that which she hates. I am not free to choose what to love and what to hate.
Material Goods
Whatever material things I happen to own on the day of my dedication to Mary are no longer mine from that day forward. Under that general heading one includes real estate, house furnishings, clothes, money, automobile, etc. A physical surrender of ownership could be effected if Our Lady were so present on earth. Since this cannot be, then we must use the things enumerated above ”as if” they had been loaned to us. This is not a child’s game of make-believe. It rather de-cribes the psychology that must be ours to live the real change brought about by a free act of our will. I now have another motive to keep my home clean, to practice poverty, to avoid superfluities. All these things belong to Mary.
Order of Grace
My wealth is not a matter to be computed only by a genuine C.P.A. At baptism the virtues of Christ and the gifts of the Holy Ghost were lavished freely upon my soul. With the first breath of supernatural life, Faith, Hope, Charity and a host of moral virtues were infused into me, all real faculties, as real as my faculty of speech and hearing and feeling. By these faculties, under the prodding of grace, I can accomplish divine actions. These supernatural gifts are also surrendered to the Blessed Virgin by my consecration. They are placed in her hands for safe-keeping. ”We give her all our merits, graces and virtues – not to communicate them to others, for our merits, graces and virtues are, properly speaking incommunicable . . . but we give them to keep them, augment them and embellish them for us. ” T.D. 122).
Incommunicable
Every good action done while in the state of grace pays back a hundredfold. Since we are Mary’s slaves, using her faculties to do these actions, she should reap the full benefit of our efforts. She should collect the pay-check. Every such action merits an increase of charity and a strict right to eternal life. No matter how generous and unselfish we might feel, these merits are so personal to us that even though we place them in her hands, she has to hold them for us. She cannot communicate them to another soul.
Not So Personal
A good action also draws satisfactory and impetratory pay. Through the first I satisfy for the sins of my life and thus cut the time that I might stay in purgatory. The satisfactory and impetratory values of a meritorious action are communicable. We are often generous with these in spiritual bouquets. After the consecration, Mary takes these communicable treasures and does with them whatever she selects. They belong to her. They can be applied by her to some poor soul in purgatory.
The impetratory value can mean the grace of conversion for some poor vagrant sinner. ”It would be no wonder if, at the hour of death, it should be found that a person faithful to this practice should by means of it have delivered many souls from purgatory and converted many sinners, though he should have done nothing more than the ordinary actions of his state of life.” (T.D. 172).
A Spiritual Bouquet
The consecration turns our life into a sort of perpetual spiritual bouquet not limited to a number of rosaries, visits etc. All our meritorious actions past, present and future make up this bouquet. And the beneficiary is our neighbor . . . anyone Our Lady chooses to help, souls in purgatory, sinners whom we do not know, our relatives or perfect strangers, even ourselves.
That is what an imperfect blueprint of total consecration reveals: complete dispossession, total surrender . . . ” . without the reserve of so much as one farthing, one hair, or one good action . . . without pretending to, or hoping for any other recompense . . . except the honor of belonging to Jesus Christ through Mary and in Mary. . . .” (T.D. 121).
