A Rule of Life: Marian Consecration

I once wrote about the importance of prioritizing our priorities; of making the time and space for the different things that are important in our lives--even when those look different from the priorities and values of other people. In that post, I mentioned that my husband and I practically accomplish this through our Rule of Life (a basic framework for how we want to live). I thought it would be fun to write a small series of posts that dive into a few different elements of our Rule of Life. 

Today, I'd like to share one element of our family's Rule of Life: Marian Consecration

I stepped up to the book-selling vendor at a conference for Catholic families, and spoke hesitantly to the woman who worked there. While the exact words that my teenage self-spoke have faded from memory, they were something like this:

“Excuse me? God told me I need to consecrate myself to Jesus through Mary, so could you please show me what book will help me learn about that?” 

What even was Marian consecration? 

All I knew was that some of the teachers and students in my high school had done this “Marian consecration” thing, and they seemed like pretty cool people. When I had attended a youth conference earlier that summer, I experienced some beautiful, deep prayer…and in the days following the conference, was gripped by the conviction that I needed to consecrate myself to Jesus through the hands of his mother. I figured that I should at least look into it.

I walked away from the vendor that day with two volumes by St. Louis de Montfort: True Devotion to Mary, and Preparation for Total Consecration. Upon reading True Devotion, de Montfort’s love for Christ, his logic, and his clarity pounded the conviction deeper into my soul: I needed to consecrate myself to Jesus through Mary. He discussed how Christ became incarnate in the womb of Mary, and that just as Christ came to us through Mary, we can go to Christ through her. 

"If, then, we establish solid devotion to our Blessed Lady, it is only to establish more perfectly devotion to Jesus Christ, and to provide an easy and secure means for finding Jesus Christ." ~St. Louis de Montfort (True Devotion to Mary, chapt. 2)

That December—after a thirty-three-day preparation period—I offered a prayer of consecration to Jesus through Mary. In the next few years that followed, I continued to renew this practice alone. However, just before our sophomore year of college, my boyfriend began this process, and I chose to join him in this prayer. During our “preparation for consecration” period, we became engaged. A couple months after making our consecration to Jesus through Mary together, we decided to re-start this process so we could re-consecrate ourselves in December, as I had been doing for a few years.

About a decade has now passed, and we continue to prayerfully do this Marian consecration together. As our kids became a little older, we decided to introduce them to this practice as well.  

(some-but not all-of the books on Mary that we've accumulated)

At the wedding feast in Cana, Mary directed the servers to follow the commands of Jesus (cf. Jn 2:5-7). In our world today, Mary continues to direct people to follow Jesus’s commands. In her life and submission to God’s will, Mary shows us how to follow Christ. She's a faithful follower of Christ, who worships God and prays in Heaven, and we can ask her to pray to God for us (this article gives a nice explanation about asking saints for their intercession).

So, Marian consecration has become a natural part of our Rule of Life. Twice a year, my husband and I do our Marian consecration together. An additional time each year, we go through this process with our children. A couple years ago, as our love for Jesus and Mary continued to grow, we began to pray the Rosary as a family each day. Even when our living room looks and sounds like chaos, courtesy of our small children, we’ve continued this practice, and it's brought a lot of peace into our home. 

There are many ways to consecrate ourselves to Jesus through the hands of Mary: my husband and I use the methods presented by St. Louis de Montfort and Fr. Michael Gaitley, and with our kids, we use Colleen Pressprich’s incredible book, and there are plenty of other books out there, too. There are many ways to observe Marian devotion, from celebrating feast days to wearing a Miraculous Medal or scapular to praying the Akathist to the Theotokos, to learning about Marian apparitions. 

Making space in our family life and marriage for Mary has brought us closer to God. We’ve become more prayerful, more peaceful, and learned to rely on God even more. We’ve learned about Mary’s virtues, and how we can practice those virtues and become holier men and women. This is just one aspect of our Rule of Life, but it's been powerful and very important--and I cannot fathom the different ways that God has worked in and through our consecration over the years!

Mary, help of Christians, pray for us!