Catholic Dictionary

Find accurate definitions of over 5,000 Catholic terms and phrases (including abbreviations). Based on Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

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CONSECRATION TO MARY

An act of devotion, promoted by St. Louis de Montfort (1673-1716), that consists of the entire gift of self to Jesus through Mary. It is, moreover, a habitual attitude of complete dependence on Mary in one's whole life and activity. In making the act of consecration, a person gives himself or herself to Mary and through her to Jesus as her slave. This means that a person performs good works as one who labors without wages, trustfully hoping to receive food and shelter and have other needs satisfied by the master, to whom one gives all one is and does, and on whom one depends entirely in a spirit of love. The act of consecration reads:

"I, [Name], faithless sinner, renew and ratify today in your hands the vows of my baptism; I renounce forever Satan, his pomps and 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.

"In the presence of all the heavenly court I choose you this day for my mother and queen. I deliver and consecrate to you, as your slave, my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past, present, and future; leaving to you the entire and full right of disposing of me, and all that belongs to me, without exception, according to your good pleasure, for the greater glory of God, in time and in eternity. Amen."