The Characteristic Commitments of Its Spirituality
Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
We are living in difficult, insecure and painful times. Today the Red Dragon is ruling in the world and has succeeded in building up an atheistic civilization. Man, puffed up by technical and scientific progress, has put himself in the place of God and has built up a new secular civilization. This radical rejection of God is the real chastisement of modern-day society.
As God is the Savior and Jesus Christ alone the Redeemer of man, humanity of today can only be saved on the condition that it returns to the Lord. Otherwise it runs the danger of destroying itself by its own hands.
But how can it be saved if it obstinately continues to reject God who alone can lead it to salvation? It is here that Mary’s role, in view of her motherhood, enters in. Mary is the Mother of Jesus and has been constituted by Jesus as the true Mother of all men. And therefore Mary is also Mother of the men of today, of this rebellious humanity, so far away from God.
Her motherly task is that of saving it. And Our Lady, in order to be able to save it, wishes to become the way of its return to the Lord. She acts in all manner of ways and gives herself much to do in order to bring about this return. This is the reason for her many extraordinary manifestations, which have become so numerous today: she wants to make us understand that our heavenly Mother is present and is at work in the midst of her children.
She wishes to act in person, but not directly. She is able to act through those children who consecrate themselves to her Immaculate Heart, who entrust themselves to her completely, in such a way that she can live and martifest herself in them. She wants above all to work through the priests, because they are her sons of predilection.
It is typical of the spirituality of the M.M.P. not to formulate a doctrine of the consecration which is, in any case, already known in the Church, but to suggest that one learn it by the experience of everyday life. For this purpose, it sets out an itinerary which leads to the perfection of entrustment to Our Lady and which develops through four successive stages: that of accustoming oneself to living with Mary, of allowing oneself to be interiorly transformed by her, of entering with her into a communion of hearts, and lastly of reliving Mary.
It is typical of the spirituality of the M.M.P. not to formulate a doctrine of the consecration which is, in any case, already known in the Church, but to suggest that one learn it by the experience of everyday life. For this purpose, it sets out an itinerary which leads to the perfection of entrustment to Our Lady and which develops through four successive stages: that of accustoming oneself to living with Mary, of allowing oneself to be interiorly transformed by her, of entering with her into a communion of hearts, and lastly of reliving Mary.
The consecration to Our Lady (which is demanded as the first commitment for belonging to the M.M.P.) is therefore the path which leads to a specific goal, that of allowing Mary to live and work in us. "I want to love with your heart, to gaze with your eyes, to console and encourage with your lips, to assist with your hands, to walk with your feet, to follow your bloodied footprints and to suffer with your crucified body." (July 1, 1981)
Now we can understand why Our Lady asks for consecration to the Immaculate Heart for anyone who wishes to belong to her cohort. She herself wants to live and act in her consecrated children, in such a way that they become an expression of her sorrow and of her motherly love, and work untiringly to lead all men back to God.
Thus present-day humanity will be able to reach salvation along the road of the motherly love of Mary, who becomes the channel through which the merciful love of Jesus can reach all people. The consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is directed solely to the consecration of the world, that is to say to the complete return of the world to the perfect glorification of the Lord.
From this we can also understand why Pope John Paul II sees, in the act of consecration or entrustment to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the most efficacious means of obtaining the gift of divine mercy upon the Church and upon all humanity. (Dives in Misericordia, 15)
Thus light is also shed upon the profound significance of that act, often criticized by some, which he frequently repeats with fervor and intimate joy of soul; the act, that is, of his personal consecration to Mary. We understand, then, what he is doing in every part of the world when, during his frequent apostolic pilgrimages, he goes to the most famous shrines in order to consecrate to the Immaculate Heart of Mary the local Church in which he finds himself.
The profound reason is that the Pope sees, in the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the most powerful means of obtaining the precious gift of the merciful love of Jesus upon the world of today!
