Consecration to Mary: What and Why

by Howard Q. Dee

Let us begin with a definition of Consecration. According to Webster, to consecrate is to dedicate to a sacred purpose.

For instance, when the Bishop consecrates a Church, it is to dedicate it to the sacred purpose of the worship of God. What, then, does it mean for us, as believers and followers of Jesus, to be consecrated to the Blessed Mary?

For the answer, I shall use the authoritative definition given by St. Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort, the great Marian saint to whom the late Pope John Paul the Great gives credit for his own lifetime devotion to Mary, and from whom His Holiness borrowed the Papal motto Totus Tuus that marked his pontificate.

St. Louis de Montfort said that Consecration to Mary consists then in giving ourselves entirely to the Blessed Virgin, in order to belong entirely to Jesus through her. Consecration to Mary means that we dedicate ourselves, our lives, our work, our hearts and minds, our bodies and our souls, for a sacred purpose: that God may be glorified in us, by us, and through us, as in the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Montfortian formula of Consecration to Mary, even our goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of our good deeds, past, present and future, are entrusted to Mary in consecration to her, for her to dispose as she wishes, for the greater glory of God.