The Second Vatican Council does not explicitly mention St. Louis de Montfort (1673-1716), but St. John Paul II discussed his act of entrustment/consecration in the Marian Year encyclical Mother of the Redeemer.
“In this regard, I would like to recall, among the many witnesses and teachers of this [Marian] spirituality, the figure of Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, who proposes consecration to Christ through the hands of Mary as an effective means for Christians to live their baptismal commitments faithfully” (48). In addition to this official recommendation, John Paul II also took his papal motto — Totus Tuus (“I am all thine … Mary”) — from Montfort’s work True Devotion to Mary,
And gave personal testimony to Montfort’s teaching:
“My life reached a decisive turning point when I read this book. I say ‘turning point’ although in fact it was part of an interior journey that coincided with my secret preparation for the priesthood. It was then that this singular book fell into my hands, one of those books for which ‘having read’ is not enough. I remember carrying it with me for a long time, even to the soda works, until there were lime stains all over its beautiful cover. I realized right away that something fundamental lay at the heart of the baroque style. From that point on, the devotion of my childhood and even of my adolescence to the Mother of God gave way to a new attitude, a devotion arising from the depths of my faith, as if from the very heart of Trinitarian and Christological reality.
Whereas previously I had held back for fear that devotion to Mary would obscure Christ rather than give him precedence. I understood with the light of Grignion’s book that, in truth, it was entirely different. Our interior relationship to the Mother of God is the organic outgrowth of our connection to the mystery of Christ. So it is impossible that one should prevent us from seeing the other.”
Here, I will give a brief synopsis of St. Louis de Montfort’s consecration to Mary from True Devotion:
“It is through the most Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is through her that He must reign in the world.”
“Mary has, til now, not been known as she should, and this is one of the reasons Jesus Christ is not known as He should be. She who first brought Him into the world will make Him known to the world.”
“This devotion consists in giving oneself entirely to the Blessed Virgin Mary to belong entirely to Jesus Christ through her. It may rightly be called a perfect renewal of our baptismal consecration.”
From the above quotes, it is clear that Montfort believed that true devotion to Jesus is founded on devotion to His Mother. The first of these above quotes is, in fact, the first sentence of the book and bears repeating:
“It is through the most Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is through her that He must reign in the world.”
This quote sums up Montfort’s entire vision of consecration to Mary. It climaxes with what he calls the “Reign of Mary,” which he prophesied would come in the “latter times.” This “Reign of Mary” dovetails uncannily with Mary’s prophecy at Fatima: “Finally, in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” In fact, Plinio Correa de Oliveira, the Brazilian professor and intellectual, claimed Montfort’s “Reign of Mary” will be the Reign of the Immaculate Heart.
However, Montfort is not the only proponent of consecration to Mary. The great Franciscan Marian saint and martyr, Maximilian Maria Kolbe, put forth ideas on devotion to Mary similar to those of Montfort. He never wrote a book on the subject, but his personal writings are filled with pearls of Marian wisdom; he even noted in a letter to his brother that his Marian spirituality and Montfort’s were essentially the same.
Kolbe’s Marian vision can also be tied to Fatima. He founded the Militia of the Immaculata on Oct. 16, 1917, while still a seminarian in Rome, just days after the miracle of the sun at Fatima. While Kolbe founded the Militia in response to his witnessing Masonic protests at the Vatican, providentially, the two events must be linked. The purpose of the Militia is to win the world over to Mary through personal consecration of everyone to her as soon as possible, so that she may become the Queen of all Hearts and usher in the kingdom of the Most Sacred Heart. Occurring three days apart and sharing the same goal, the Militia of the Immaculata can be viewed as an instrument for the accomplishment of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart.
At Fatima, Mary emphasized the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart for its conversion, underscoring the importance and purpose of such consecration. Montfort and Kolbe propose personal consecration to her to accomplish the same end. At Fatima, Mary announced the devotion to the Immaculate Heart and that Jesus wanted it established throughout the world. Her requests at Fatima, found in the Blue Army pledge that Lucia helped formulate, make up the devotion and parallel Montfort’s teachings on how to live a personal consecration to Mary.
The “Reign of Mary” must come about through her reign in each heart. Consecration, as lived by St. John Paul II and proposed by Mary’s directives at Fatima, is the model and official expression of this truth. By each of us following this example and making Mary the Queen of our own hearts through personal consecration, I believe we can help bring about the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart more speedily.
Note: Pope John Paul II used the words “consecration” and “entrustment” interchangeably. So, one might easily say Entrustment to Mary rather than Consecration and retain the same meaning. In fact, Vatican II used the word “entrust” regarding Mary: “Everyone should have a genuine devotion to her and entrust his life to her maternal care (Chapter 1, #4, The Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People).”
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