Montfort’s Spirituality: Call and Response to Happiness: Part VI: The Act of Consecration

THE ACT OF CONSECRATION

E xpressing the theocentrism of the French School, Montfort first and most fundamentally expresses his loving adoration – a term Montfort unequivocally reserves for God alone – for Jesus both “in the splendor of your Father from all eternity and in the virginial womb of Mary . . . at the time of your Incarnation”.  The majestic prayer then immediately turns to an expression of thanks to Jesus. Thanks “for having emptied yourself in assuming the condition of a slave to set me free from the cruel slavery of the devil.”

After admitting his sinfulness, the saint acknowledges his lowliness.  “I do not deserve to be called your child or even your slave”.  He therefore has recourse to “Mary Immaculate, the living Tabernacle of God”. Recourse to the “Queen of heaven and earth”, the “Refuge of sinners”.  Addressing himself to Mary, he pronounces the core of the consecration; “I . . . an unfaithful sinner, renew and ratify today through you my baptismal promises. I renounce forever Satan, his empty promises and his evil designs. And I give myself completely 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. In the presence of the heavenly court, I choose you today, Mary, as my Mother and Mistress.

I surrender and consecrate myself to you, body and soul, as your slave with all that I possess, both Spiritual and material, even including the value of all my good actions, past present and to come. I give you the full right to dispose of me and all that belongs to me without exception, in whatever way you please, for the greater glory of God in time and ln eternity”.  (LEW 223-225).

AN ACT OF ADORATION

The Consecration as Saint Louis de Montfort envisages it, is an act of adoration, an expression of latria. Not only is it addressed to the “Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, most lovable and adorable Jesus,” but it entails the profound truth that the “I” must freely empty itself into the “Thou” so that the “I” may be its true self. The act of consecration is not so much the pronouncement of a formula as the pronouncement of the self; a total and definitive loving “pouring out” into the All-Holy. In the Act of Consecration, man finds his identity. Not in the pride of posing as being-of-itself. But in the realistic humility of a loving, lived-out relationship with the awesome yet so close “Other,” Love Itself.

Saint Louis de Montfort makes it clear that Jesus, Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom, is in His very Person, the Consecration to the Father. But he also insists with the word of God as preached, taught and prayed by the Church that this incarnational Consecration takes place in Mary through God’s grace and her divinely willed consent. It is, then, utterly impossible to separate the Consecration of this universe – the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom – from the woman whose faith-consent is intrinsic to the Incarnation of Eternal Wisdom. Her salvific fiat brings about the ontological Consecration of this world, in-as-much as her faith gives entry to the Incarnation of the Eternal Wisdom who is in His Person, the Consecration of this universe to God.

MARIAN

Consecration to Jesus Christ, must, therefore, be also Marian. There are not, in Montfort’s thinking, two consecrations, one to Jesus and one to Mary. He insists that there is but one consecration; we freely enter into the Holy One of God, Incarnate Wisdom.  Enter into His full reality – the fruit of the faith-filled womb of Mary. “We consecrate ourselves,” Saint Louis de Montfort stresses, “at one and the same time to the most Holy Virgin and to Jesus Christ . . . to Our Lord as our Last End, to whom as our Redeemer and our God, we owe all we are”.  (TD 125). “The more we are consecrated to Mary, the more one is consecrated to Jesus . . . perfect consecration to Jesus is but a perfect and complete consecration of oneself to the Blessed Virgin“ (TD 120).

To consecrate ourselves to Christ and to exclude Mary is to consecrate ourselves to a figment of our imagination. For there is no such person. In her, through her representative consent, our Consecration in Christ comes to be. We are called to enter freely and lovingly into that mystery; such is the Consecration proposed by Saint Louis de Montfort.

BAPTISMAL . . .

For this great saint, the two concepts, perfect renewal of the promises of our Baptism and perfect consecration, are synonymous.  (LEW 223, 225; TD 120, 126-130).  Baptism is our immersion, our fundamental Consecration into Christ Jesus. It is evident that a willing, loving act of perfect consecration to Christ Jesus can be nothing but a renewal of our Baptismal life.

The Second Vatican Council re-calls that “already by baptism, [the Christian] was dead to sin and is consecrated to God”.  (LG 44). It is through Baptism that man enters into the sphere of the Holy, for he is baptized into the death and resurrection of the Consecrated One, Jesus the Christ. By Baptism, the Christian is consecrated, anointed by the power of the Holy Spirit; he participates in the essential Consecration of Christ. With Christ and by Christ, he is ordained to the glory of God and the salvation of the world. He no longer belongs to himself. He belongs to the Lord, Who shares with Him His own Divine Life.

Montfort, following his sources, uses the term “slave” to illustrate the meaning of this fundamental and radical act of Baptism.  (TD 68-73, 126). For the saint, “slave of Jesus in Mary” is love-language. “Slave,” is stripped of all connotations of oppression and servility and expresses solely the totality of “belonging to” another. It is apparent that in some contemporary cultures, the word is so inextricably bound with horrendous injustice that other expressions may be needed as substitutes or as clarifications of what Montfort means by “holy slavery.”

Return to The Queen: Articles