Totally Yours!

Totus Tuus! I used to joke that this sounded like a line from the Wizard of Oz ("Toto,too?"). No more. It will be one year tomorrow since I made my own total consecration to our Lord Jesus through our Mother the Blessed Virgin Mary. Totally Yours!

While I was at EWTN in July 2006 to appear on "The Journey Home," I "happened" to end up at a silent retreat rooming with a young man from Florida. Before the retreat started he eagerly shared with me his experience of St. Louis de Montfort's total consecration. He gave me his copies of Preparation for Total Cosecration Acording to Saint Louis Marie de Montfort and also True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

I started reading the book and- whamo- it hit me like a ton of bricks.... this was what I was supposed to do. By then it was the middle of the silent retreat, and during mealtime I was so overwhelmed with the loving Presence of Christ that I had to leave the table. I fled, holding back tears, to the Sacrament Chapel and purposed there to complete the 28 day cycle of meditations leading up to the consecration. Very un-Phil like, but very powerful.

One reason I had become Catholic in 1998 was because of Mary. It was not so much the doctrine about her that drew me, but more the loving support I felt through Her as I knelt in prayer in the Mary Chapel at the Basilica or in the Grotto at Notre Dame. Those were tough days... doctoral studies, separation and divorce, the decision to leave the Lutheran Church, search for a new career, relocation.

I can still feel the graces I received then and also last year. It's funny, they don't feel like HER graces, they are graces FROM Christ, and she is the channel through which all this glory and grace flows. So any discussion of Mary's mediatorship "taking away" from the sole mediatorship of Christ will fall on deaf ears in my case. Now that I have experienced it for myself, I understand that anything that happens through Mary happens, by definition, through her Son Jesus. It's all Him, and She is all His. and we are all His through Her.

Here's a prayer for the Eve of the great Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's the closing prayer for the Little Crown of the Virgin, a set of prayers given to his religious by St Louis de Montfort. It expresses my perfect joy this night:

Hail, Mary, Daughter of God the Father;
Hail, Mary, Mother of God the Son;
Hail, Mary, Spouse of the Holy Ghost;
Hail, Mary, Temple of the most Holy Trinity;
Hail, Mary, my Mistress, my treasure, my joy, Queen of my heart;
my Mother, my life, my sweetness, my dearest hope ---- yea, my heart and my soul!
I am all thine and all that I have is Thine, O Virgin blessed above all things!
Let thy soul be in me to magnify the Lord;
let thy spirit be in me to rejoice in God.
Set thyself, O faithful Virgin, as a seal upon my heart,
that in thee and through thee I may be found faithful to God.
Receive me, O gracious Virgin,
among those whom thou lovest and teachest,
whom thou leadest, nourishest and protectest as thy children.
Grant that for love of thee I may despise all earthly consolations
and ever cling to those of Heaven until,
through thee, His faithful spouse,
Jesus Christ thy Son be formed in me for the glory of the Father.
Amen.