The Marian Movement is made up of all the faithful and religious who are not ordained priests, who have committed themselves to live a life of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in serene union with their priests and their bishops. They are not bound together by any kind of juridical bond and can freely carry on their work within those ecclesiastical associations to which they belong.

As members of the Marian Movement, they commit themselves to the experience of a life totally entrusted to Our Lady, that they may be assisted by her to remain faithful to their own baptismal consecration and to become witnesses of communion and of unity, constantly striving for conversion through prayer and penance.

 

Living Their Baptism

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In the act of consecration for the members of the Marian Movement found at the end of the book, we read:

«By this act of consecration we intend to live, with you and through you, all the obligations assumed by our baptismal consecration».

 

These words bring out clearly how a member of the faithful, who makes the consecration to the Immaculate Heart, is assisted by Our Lady especially in living out today the obligations assumed at the time of baptism.

It is natural that, in these times, the Christian, immersed in a world which is so secularized, finds it very difficult to live out his baptismal consecration. Baptism brings about a radical transformation: it communicates grace and divine life itself and configures us to Jesus Christ, whose brothers we become and whose life we must relive in our own.

At the present time, through all the means of social communication, the Christian is easily made use of and even manipulated by the world in which he lives in such a way that often, almost without noticing it, he absorbs and shares the values which are opposed to those taught by Christ.

Thus today how many baptized persons there are who, in their everyday life, come to betray their baptismal consecration! And so Our Lady asks that the faithful consecrate themselves to her Immaculate Heart, as a specific commitment of the Marian Movement and then, as a mother, she gently leads them to live out their baptism in complete fidelity to Jesus and to his Church.

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Witnesses of Communion and of Unity

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Again, it is said in the act of consecration of the laity: “We promise you to be united with the Holy Father, with the hierarchy and with our priests, in order thus to set up a barrier to the growing confrontation directed against the Magisterium, that threatens the very foundation of the Church.”

 

The above is a characteristic commitment which gives every member of the faithful who belongs to the Movement the grace to become in the Church always an instrument seeking communion, peace and unity. 

In this period of its purification, the Church is living through times of great suffering. The M.M.P. desires above all to share fully in the sufferings of the Church, drinking together with her the chalice of much bitterness. For this reason it is never called to act by way of criticism or judgment and, much less, by way of condemnation. And therefore, it has nothing to do with, and in fact totally rejects, those means taken by many today who publicly, even through the press, criticize Holy Mother Church in a bitter and negative way. We must never pour vinegar on open and bleeding wounds.

The only help the Movement wants to give to the Church is that of love, a filial and merciful love.

“I will bring you to love the Church very much. Today the Church is going through times of great suffering because it is loved less and less by its own children. Many would like to renovate it and purify it solely by criticism and by violent attacks on its institution. Nothing is ever renewed

or purified without love!” (November 9, 1975)

The specific commitment of the Marian Movement consists in leading the faithful to be witnesses of love for the Church today: a love which must become concrete in a faithful and passionate presence, to share in its sorrow and bear with it its great cross; a love which above all brings us to

be, in every circumstance, instruments of coherence and of unity, and thus to contribute to healing the Church of its many deep and painful lacerations.

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Commitment to Conversion

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In the act of consecration for the laity, it is further affirmed: “We pledge to bring about in ourselves that interior conversion so urgently demanded by the Gospel.”

 

Our Lady asks, also of the faithful who belong to the Movement, a daily commitment to conversion along the road of prayer and penance.

For this, as an attentive and concerned mother, she helps them flee from sin, to live in the grace of God, invites them to frequent confession, to an intense Eucharistic life, to always observe the Law of God, with a particular commitment to live the virtue of purity especially on the part of young people and those who are engaged to marry, and conjugal chastity within the sacrament of Matrimony, according to the doctrine of Christ, recently reaffirmed by the Magisterium of the Church.

 

And this becomes so necessary in our day in order to counteract a shameless impurity which has spread everywhere and in order to help make the world cleaner and more beautiful.

Let the faithful be a good example “...by an austere manner of life, by repudiating styles which are ever increasingly provocative and indecent, by opposing in every way possible the spread of immoral literature and entertainment and this continual flooding from a sea of filth that is submerging everything. Let them be an example to all by their purity, their sobriety and their modesty. Let them flee all those places where the sacred character of their person is defiled. Let them form about the priests my faithful cohort, my great ‘White Army.’ ” (November 1, 1973)

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There are now tens of millions of lay people from every part of the world who have joined the Marian Movement, and often it is from them that the priests receive good example, concrete assistance and precious encouragement.

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The Marian Movement and the Youth

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“Thank God for the World Youth Days! Thanks be to God for all the young people who have been involved in them in the past sixteen years! Many of them are now adults who continue to live their faith in their homes and work places. I am sure, dear friends, that you too will be as good as those who preceded you. You will carry the proclamation of Christ into the new millennium.

When you return home, do not grow lax. Reinforce and deepen your bond with the Christian communities to which you belong. From Rome, from the City of Peter and Paul, the Pope follows you with affection and, paraphrasing Saint Catherine of Siena’s words, reminds you: “If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze!”    (Pope St. John Paul II, XV World Youth Day – Tor Vergata, August 20, 2000)

 

“In these difficult and painful years, I open, especially to my young people, the refuge of my Immaculate Heart.  My motherly Heart thus becomes for you your secure refuge. (…)

My Immaculate Heart is your refuge, in which I gather you together, as in a new spiritual cenacle, to obtain for you the gift of the Holy Spirit, who would transform you into apostles of the second evangelization.”  (To the Priests, Our Lady's Beloved Sons, June 11, 1994, 522 b,i)

 

In all of the countries of the world, there are Cenacles organized by youth for youth.

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Download the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the Youth