After years of prayer and discernment, I did St. Louis de Montfort’s total consecration to Mary (like Pope St. John Paul II) on December 8, 2014. I have been trying to live it to the best of my ability. I pray the Rosary every day (I don’t always manage 5 decades, but even when I’m too tired, I don’t let a day go by without a decade unless I fall asleep before I can finish), I do my best to love and trust her as a mother (because I am a member of the Body of Christ, I know that she is as much my mother as my earthly mother), I picture her by my side throughout the day, I keep my favorite picture of her (in which she looks like my earthly mother when she was younger) by my bed, I have various devotions to her (e.g. Our Lady of Sorrows), and I make sure not to pray to God without her. (For those who might think I make too much of Mary–and I’m not just talking about Protestants–I am also very devoted to Scripture and to the Eucharist.)
However, I’m the only person I know who has even heard of the total consecration (even my mother has only heard about it through me), and I only know about it from reading True Devotion to Mary. So, I would like to know, how do those of you who have done the total consecration live it out? St. Louis de Montfort gives instructions, but I would like to know how people today actually live it out.
Dear mathematoons,
Thanks so much for beginning this thread. It is so important for those of us who have been given the desire to offer ourselves completely to God by praying an Act of Consecration, to continue praying for His Grace to LIVE the words we have prayed.
Thank you also for praying St. Louis De Montfort’s Act of Consecration and for continuing to seek to live it daily. I went to your profile page and discovered you are Catholic (and an ex-atheist) that is a miracle of Grace is it not? God has called you back to Himself and through Mary’s intercession.
From my own experience, the treatise
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is a book which needs to be read more than once. I am 78 years old and cannot tell you how many times I have been blessed by reading the words of St. Louis De Montfort. I first prayed the words of his Act of Consecration when I was a sophomore in high school at the invitation of a Dominican Nun who was the Spiritual Director of our Legion of Mary.
I do not think I had read the book before I consecrated myself but the copy I have now is almost falling apart and is well underlined. I bought a new copy recently because our Legion of Mary group is reading it together since it really is the foundation of the Legion. The founder of the Legion, Servant of God Frank Duff, said that reading the book changed his life. Much the same as St. John Paul II said that reading it was a “turning point” in his life. You may know that St. John Paul II chose for his papal motto, “Totus Tuus” (All Yours) taken from “True Devotion”.
Living our Marian Consecration is a “total giving” of all we are and have to God through Mary, by the power of the Holy Spirit. St. Louis and all the saints who have been transformed by Grace and grew into the maturity of life in Christ have grown in stages. We need to be patient but persistent in listening to Jesus in order to be as Mary was on this earth, a “perfect disciple”. Scripture is very important in learning Christ. Like Mary we need to keep His Word in our heart and ponder slowly, depending on the power of the Holy Spirit to bring us into the complete truth. I began a thread yesterday which you may want to read and perhaps respond to; see
HERE. If you also want to visit my profile page, the “statistics” list other threads I’ve started on Mary and Consecration.
I could say more but this is already long. Just one last thing to comment on our brother Googler’s response to you. The Militia Immaculata or MI founded by Maximilian Kolbe, somewhat like the Legion of Mary, is founded on God’s gift of Life given to us in Jesus through Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. I have prayed both the Act of Consecration written by St. Louis de Montfort (and try to renew it with the short form daily) and much later prayed the Act of Consecration written by St. Maximilian Kolbe. They are very similar and I felt St.Maximillian’s words completed in some way my Consecration written by St. Louis de Montfort. It gave me an “apostolic thrust” I needed. St. Louis certainly was an avid “soldier” for Jesus and Mary and he inspired Frank Duff to begin the Legion a “spiritual army” for sure, but somehow St. Maximilian was used by God in a mysterious way, at a time when I needed to hear something more than I had heard.
We have all been consecrated by our Baptism and Confirmation. Yet it is good for us all to re-consecrate and renew our gift of ourselves in union with Jesus and Mary. The 33 day Preparation taught by St. Louis de Montfort is as he wrote a perfect renewal of our Baptismal promises. If you follow the link I’ve given above to my thread you’ll read that I’m going to begin the 33 Day Preparation this month on Aug. 14 (Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe) and renew my Total Consecration on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, Sept. 15.
