This Family Consecration Home Retreat will start on November 5. From then on a new post, a new meditation will be offered daily to prepare oneself for the day of Consecration. We've already published Day 1 below to give you an idea how the retreat will be offered to you.
The above picture is a mosaic on the outside facade of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. It is the only image of our Blessed Mother on the outside of the Basilica and was commissioned personally by Pope John Paul II.
This mosaic publicly proclaims Pope John Paul II’s spirituality, which is also depicted on his coat of arms — Totus Tuus Mater Ecclesiae (Totally Yours, Mother of the Church).
At night the image is lit up, along with the great dome. While facing St. Peter’s, this picture is on the right side of the second level above the narrow section of the Master of Papal Protocol’s office.
One picture says a thousand words. This picture is certainly John Paul’s plea to the world to come to Jesus in the most perfect way, the way He chose to come to us, and that is through His Most Immaculate Mother. ------------
Please enjoy below video overview of Total Consecration according to St. Louis de Montfort.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
RECONCILIATIO ET PAENITENTIA (RECONCILIATION AND PENANCE) by Pope John Paul II
15. In the description of the “first sin,” the rupture with Yahweh simultaneously breaks the bond of friendship that had united the human family. Thus the subsequent pages of Genesis show us the man and the woman as it were pointing an accusing finger at each other. Later we have the brother hating his brother and finally taking his life.
According to the Babel story, the result of sin is the shattering of the human family, already begun with the first sin and now reaching its most extreme form on the social level.
No one wishing to investigate the mystery of sin can ignore this link between cause and effect. As a rupture with God, sin is an act of disobedience by a creature who rejects, at least implicitly, the very one from whom he came and who sustains him in life. It is therefore a suicidal act. Since by sinning man refuses to submit to God, his internal balance is also destroyed and it is precisely within himself that contradictions and conflicts arise.
Wounded in this way, man almost inevitably causes damage to the fabric of his relationship with others and with the created world. This is an objective law and an objective reality, verified in so many ways in the human psyche and in the spiritual life as well as in society, where it is easy to see the signs and effects of internal disorder.
The mystery of sin is composed of this twofold wound which the sinner opens in himself and in his relationship with his neighbor. Therefore one can speak of personal and social sin: From one point of view, every sin is personal; from another point of view, every sin is social insofar as and because it also has social repercussions.
TRUE DEVOTION TO MARY by St. Louis de Montfort, Chapter I
Through the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ came into the world. Through her He will reign over the world.
Mary lived in obscurity during most of her life. Her humility was so great that she desired to hide, not only from all other creatures, but even from herself, so that only God should know her. She asked Him to conceal her, and to make her poor and humble. God delighted to hide her; in her conception, in her birth, in her mysteries, in her resurrection and assumption.
Her own parents did not know her. And the angels asked “Who is she?” The Most High, though He revealed something of her perfection to the angels, kept infinitely more from them.
God the Father willed she should work no miracle—at least no striking one—in her life. Yet He had given her the power to work tremendous miracles.
God the Son was content she should speak but a few words.Yet He had endowed her with His wisdom.
And God the Holy Spirit arranged that His apostles and evangelists should say little about her—no more than enough to make Christ known. Yet she was His beloved spouse.
Mary is God’s masterpiece whose full splendor He has reserved for Himself.
MATTHEW 5:14-16
"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
RECONCILIATIO ET PAENITENTIA (RECONCILIATION AND PENANCE) by Pope John Paul II
16. Sin, in the proper sense, is always a personal act, since it is an act of freedom on the part of an individual person and not properly of a group or community. This individual may be conditioned, incited and influenced by numerous and powerful external factors.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
VERITATIS SPLENDOR (SPLENDOR OF TRUTH) by Pope John Paul II
118. No human sin can erase the mercy of God, or prevent him from unleashing all his triumphant power, if we only call upon him. Indeed, sin itself makes even more radiant the love of the Father who, in order to ransom a slave, sacrificed his Son: his mercy towards us is Redemption.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
CHRISTIFIDELIS LAICI
(ON THE VOCATION AND THE MISSION OF THE LAY FAITHFUL IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD)
by Pope John Paul II
20. One and the same Spirit is always the dynamic principle of diversity and unity in the Church. Once again we read in the Constitution Lumen Gentium, “In order that we might be unceasingly renewed in him (cf. Eph 4:23), he has shared with us his Spirit who, existing as one and the same being in the head and in the members, gives life to, unifies and moves the whole body. This he does in such a way that his work could be compared by the Fathers to the function which the soul as the principle of life fulfills in the human body.”
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
CHRISTIFIDELIS LAICI
(ON THE VOCATION AND THE MISSION OF THE LAY FAITHFUL IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD)
by Pope John Paul II
56. ...the Synod Fathers have commented, “The Holy Spirit stirs up other forms of self-giving to which people who remain fully in the lay state devote themselves”.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
DIVES IN MISERICORDIA (ON THE MERCY OF GOD)
by Pope John Paul II
13. It is precisely because sin exists in the world, which “God so loved...that he gave his only Son,” that God, who “is love,” cannot reveal Himself otherwise than as mercy. This corresponds not only to the most profound truth of that love which God is, but also to the whole interior truth of man and of the world which is man’s temporary homeland.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
SOLLICITUDO REI SOCIALIS
(ON SOCIAL CONCERN)
by Pope John Paul II
28. Side-by-side with the miseries of underdevelopment, themselves unacceptable, we find ourselves up against a form of superdevelopment, equally inadmissible, because like the former it is contrary to what is good and to true happiness.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
DIVES IN MISERICORDIA (ON THE MERCY OF GOD)
by Pope John Paul II
11. Thus, in our world the feeling of being under threat is increasing. There is an increase of that existential fear connected especially, as I said in the encyclical Redemptor hominis, with the prospect of a conflict that in view of today’s atomic stockpiles could mean the partial selfdestruction of humanity.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
SOLLICITUDO REI SOCIALIS (ON SOCIAL CONCERN)
by Pope John Paul II
38. For Christians, as for all who recognize the precise theological meaning of the word “sin,” a change of behavior or mentality or mode of existence is called “conversion,” to use the language of the Rihle (cf. Mk 13:3, 5, Is 30:15).
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
NOVO MILLENNIO INEUNTE (AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM)
by Pope John Paul II
32. This training in holiness calls for a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer... But we well know that prayer cannot be taken for granted.We have to learn to pray: as it were learning this art ever anew from the lips of the Divine Master himself, like the first disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray!” (Lk 11:1).
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
NOVO MILLENNIO INEUNTE
(AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM)
by Pope John Paul II
33. Is it not one of the “signs of the times” that in today’s world, despite widespread secularization, there is a widespread demand for spirituality, a demand which expresses itself in large part as a renewed need for prayer?
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please awaken us to all you have in mind for us during these days of renewal and help us to let go of all sin, of the “spirit of the world,” and of all else that leads to sin so that we can truly live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
FIDES ET RATIO (THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FAITH AND REASON)
by Pope John Paul II
107. I ask everyone to look more deeply at man, whom Christ has saved in the mystery of his love, and at the human being’s unceasing search for truth and meaning.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please grant us true humility so that we may truly see ourselves as you see us and fully live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
Formation in the truth of the total giving of oneself to Jesus through Mary in union of St. Joseph enables us to realize what true love is.
REDEMPTOR HOMINIS (REDEEMER OF MAN)
by Pope John Paul II
10. Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please grant us true humility so that we may truly see ourselves as you see us and fully live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
VERITATIS SPLENDOR
(SPLENDOR OF TRUTH)
by Pope John Paul II
“Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?” (Mt 19:16)
8. The question which the rich young man puts to Jesus of Nazareth is one which rises from the depths of his heart. It is an essential and unavoidable question for the life of every man, for it is about the moral good which must be done, and about eternal life.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please grant us true humility so that we may truly see ourselves as you see us and fully live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
EVANGELIUM VITAE (GOSPEL OF LIFE)
by Pope John Paul II
36. Unfortunately, God’s marvellous plan was marred by the appearance of sin in history. Through sin, man rebels against his Creator and ends up by worshipping creatures: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom 1:25).
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please grant us true humility so that we may truly see ourselves as you see us and fully live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
VERITATIS SPLENDOR (SPLENDOR OF TRUTH)
by Pope John Paul II
17. We do not know how clearly the young man in the Gospel understood the profound and challenging import of Jesus’ first reply: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments”.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please grant us true humility so that we may truly see ourselves as you see us and fully live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
EVANGELIUM VITAE (GOSPEL OF LIFE)
by Pope John Paul II
25. The blood of Christ, while it reveals the grandeur of the Father’s love, shows how precious man is in God’s eyes and how priceless the value of his life.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please grant us true humility so that we may truly see ourselves as you see us and fully live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
DOMINUM ET VIVIFICANTEM (ON THE HOLY SPIRIT)
by Pope John Paul II
10. In his intimate life, God “is love,” the essential love shared by the three divine Persons: personal love is the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Therefore he “searches even the depths of God,” as uncreated Love-Gift.
COME HOLY SPIRIT,please grant us true humility so that we may truly see ourselves as you see us and fully live this Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph.
LETTER TO FAMILIES
by Pope John Paul II
20. The history of “fairest love” begins at the Annunciation, in those wondrous words which the angel spoke to Mary, called to become the Mother of the Son of God. With Mary’s “yes”, the One who is “God from God and Light from Light” becomes a son of man.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please help us to know, understand and see Mary as you want us to. Please teach us to fully live our Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph, and thus truly live as her children.
VERITATIS SPLENDOR (SPLENDOR OF TRUTH)
by Pope John Paul II
120. Mary shares our human condition, but in complete openness to the grace of God. Not having known sin, she is able to have compassion on every kind of weakness. She understands sinful man and loves him with a Mother’s love. Precisely for this reason she is on the side of truth and shares the Church’s burden in recalling always and to everyone the demands of morality.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please help us to know, understand and see Mary as you want us to. Please teach us to fully live our Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph, and thus truly live as her children.
EVANGELIUM VITAE (GOSPEL OF LIFE)
by Pope John Paul II
102. At the end of this Encyclical, we naturally look again to the Lord Jesus, “the Child born for us” (cf. Is 9:6), that in him we may contemplate “the Life” which “was made manifest” (1 Jn 1:2). In the mystery of Christ’s Birth the encounter of God with man takes place and the earthly journey of the Son of God begins, a journey which will culminate in the gift of his life on the Cross. By his death Christ will conquer death and become for all humanity the source of new life.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please help us to know, understand and see Mary as you want us to. Please teach us to fully live our Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph, and thus truly live as her children.
REDEMPTORIS MATER (MOTHER OF THE REDEEMER)
by Pope John Paul II
13. As the Council teaches, “‘The obedience of faith’ (Rom. 16:26; cf. Rom. 1:5; 2 Cor. 10:5-6) must be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man entrusts his whole self freely to God.” This description of faith found perfect realization in Mary. The “decisive” moment was the Annunciation, and the very words of Elizabeth: “And blessed is she who believed” refer primarily to that very moment.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please help us to know, understand and see Mary as you want us to. Please teach us to fully live our Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph, and thus truly live as her children.
ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA (ON THE EUCHARIST IN ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE CHURCH)
by Pope John Paul II
53. If we wish to rediscover in all its richness the profound relationship between the Church and the Eucharist, we cannot neglect Mary, Mother and model of the Church. In my Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, I pointed to the Blessed Virgin Mary as our teacher in contemplating Christ’s face, and among the mysteries of light I included the institution of the Eucharist. Mary can guide us towards this most holy sacrament, because she herself has a profound relationship with it.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please help us to know, understand and see Mary as you want us to. Please teach us to fully live our Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph, and thus truly live as her children.
ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE (ON THE HOLY ROSARY)
by Pope John Paul II
41. As a prayer for peace, the Rosary is also, and always has been, a prayer of and for the family. At one time this prayer was particularly dear to Christian families, and it certainly brought them closer together. It is important not to lose this precious inheritance. We need to return to the practice of family prayer and prayer for families, continuing to use the Rosary.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please help us to know, understand and see Mary as you want us to. Please teach us to fully live our Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph, and thus truly live as her children.
REDEMPTORIS MATER (MOTHER OF THE REDEEMER)
by Pope John Paul II
18. This blessing reaches its full meaning when Mary stands beneath the Cross of her Son (cf. Jn. 19:25). The Council says that this happened “not without a divine plan”: by “suffering deeply with her only-begotten Son and joining herself with her maternal spirit to his sacrifice, lovingly consenting to the immolation of the victim to whom she had given birth,” in this way Mary “faithfully preserved her union with her Son even to the Cross.”
COME HOLY SPIRIT, please help us to know, understand and see Mary as you want us to. Please teach us to fully live our Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary in union with St. Joseph, and thus truly live as her children.
ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE (ON THE HOLY ROSARY)
by Pope John Paul II
14. Christ is the supreme Teacher, the revealer and the one revealed. It is not just a question of learning what he taught but of “learning him”. In this regard could we have any better teacher than Mary? From the divine standpoint, the Spirit is the interior teacher who leads us to the full truth of Christ (cf. Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:13). But among creatures no one knows Christ better than Mary; no one can introduce us to a profound knowledge of his mystery better than his Mother.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, fill us and animate us. Please help us to know, understand and see Jesus as you want us to. Help us to believe in Him and in His love for us, to trust in Him and commit ourselves to Him, and to return His love with all our love and persevering service so that we will in fact live our total consecration to Him through Mary in union with St. Joseph more and more faithfully everyday.
SALVIFICI DOLORES (ON THE CHRISTIAN MEANING OF HUMAN SUFFERING)
by Pope John Paul II
16. In his messianic activity in the midst of Israel, Christ drew increasingly closer to the world of human suffering. “He went about doing good”, and his actions concerned primarily those who were suffering and seeking help.
He healed the sick, consoled the afflicted, fed the hungry, freed people from deafness, from blindness, from leprosy, from the devil and from various physical disabilities, three times he restored the dead to life. He was sensitive to every human suffering, whether of the body or of the soul.
And at the same time he taught, and at the heart of his teaching there are the eight beatitudes, which are addressed to people tried by various sufferings in their temporal life. These are “the poor in spirit” and “the afflicted” and “those who hunger and thirst for justice” and those who are “persecuted for justice sake”, when they insult them, persecute them and speak falsely every kind of evil against them for the sake of Christ.... (cf. Mt. 5:3-11). Thus according to Matthew; Luke mentions explicitly those “who hunger now”(cf. Lk. 6:12).
At any rate, Christ drew close above all to the world of human suffering through the fact of having taken this suffering upon his very self.
During his public activity, he experienced not only fatigue, homelessness, misunderstanding even on the part of those closest to him, but, more than anything, he became progressively more and more isolated and encircled by hostility and the preparations for putting him to death.
Christ is aware of this, and often speaks to his disciples of the sufferings and death that await him: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise” (Mk. 10:33-34).
Christ goes towards his Passion and death with full awareness of the mission that he has to fulfill precisely in this way. Precisely by means of this suffering he must bring it about “that man should not perish, but have eternal life”.
Precisely by means of his Cross he must strike at the roots of evil, planted in the history of man and in human souls. Precisely by means of his Cross he must accomplish the work of salvation. This work, in the plan of eternal Love, has a redemptive character.
And therefore Christ severely reproves Peter when the latter wants to make him abandon the thoughts of suffering and of death on the Cross. And when, during his arrest in Gethsemane, the same Peter tries to defend him with the sword, Christ says, “Put your sword back into its place... But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Mt. 26:52, 54).
And he also says, “Shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?” (Jn. 18:11). This response, like others that reappear in different points of the Gospel, shows how profoundly Christ was imbued by the thought that he had already expressed in the conversation with Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
Christ goes toward his own suffering, aware of its saving power; he goes forward in obedience to the Father, but primarily he is united to the Father in this love with which he has loved the world and man in the world. And for this reason Saint Paul will write of Christ: “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
TRUE DEVOTION TO MARY
by St. Louis de Montfort, Chapter IV
Jesus Christ, our Savior, true God and true Man, must be the aim and end of all our devotions, otherwise they would be false. Christ to us is the beginning and end of all things; or, as scholars say, using the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.
He is our Alpha and Omega. Our sole work, the Apostle reminds us, is to make every man perfect in Jesus Christ; because in Him is all the fullness of divinity, all graces, all virtues, all perfections.
Christ alone is our Master, our Lord, our Head, our Model, our Physician, our Shepherd. He is the Way we must follow, the Truth we must believe, the Life that gives us life. He is our All in all things. He alone is enough.
No other name under heaven has been given for our salvation than the name of Jesus. God has given us no other foundation for our redemption, our perfection, our glory. Any edifice not built on this strong Stone is built on quicksand and cannot endure. Any Christian who is not united to Him, as a branch to the vine, will wither and fall away—fit for nothing but burning.
If we are in Jesus Christ, and He in us, we need not fear damnation. No creature in heaven or earth or hell can harm us, and none can separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ. Through Christ, in Christ, and with Christ, we can do all things. We can render homage to the Father in unity with the Holy Spirit, we can make ourselves perfect, we can be a good influence on our neighbor leading him to eternal life.
If, then, we wish to establish a strong true devotion to Mary, it is only that we may the better establish a perfect devotion to her Son.
We wish only, through Mary, to find a sure and easy way of finding Jesus. If devotion to Mary could in any way lessen devotion to her Son we should have to reject it. But the contrary is true, as I have shown, and as I will show more clearly. Devotion to Mary is vital if we should discover, know, love, and faithfully serve Jesus Christ.
[We look to St. Joseph as a perfect model for this devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. We ask to be caught up in the current of love in the Holy Family where Joseph is the virgin father of Jesus who protects him and his true spouse. He is truly the protector of the “domestic Church,” the family.]
JOHN 15:4-5
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."
COME HOLY SPIRIT, fill us and animate us. Please help us to know, understand and see Jesus as you want us to. Help us to believe in Him and in His love for us, to trust in Him and commit ourselves to Him, and to return His love with all our love and persevering service so that we will in fact live our total consecration to Him through Mary in union with St. Joseph more and more faithfully everyday.
DOMINUM ET VIVIFICANTEM (ON THE HOLY SPIRIT)
by Pope John Paul II
19. Even though in his hometown of Nazareth Jesus is not accepted as the Messiah, nonetheless, at the beginning of his public activity, his messianic mission in the Holy Spirit is revealed to the people by John the Baptist. The latter, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, foretells at the Jordan the coming of the Messiah and administers the baptism of repentance.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, fill us and animate us. Please help us to know, understand and see Jesus as you want us to. Help us to believe in Him and in His love for us, to trust in Him and commit ourselves to Him, and to return His love with all our love and persevering service so that we will in fact live our total consecration to Him through Mary in union with St. Joseph more and more faithfully everyday.
REDEMPTORIS MISSIO (THE MISSION OF THE REDEEMER)
by Pope John Paul II
13. Jesus of Nazareth brings God’s plan to fulfillment. After receiving the Holy Spirit at his Baptism, Jesus makes clear his messianic calling: he goes about Galilee “preaching the Gospel of God and saying: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel’” (Mk 1:14-15; cf. Mt 4:17; Lk 4:43).
COME HOLY SPIRIT, fill us and animate us. Please help us to know, understand and see Jesus as you want us to. Help us to believe in Him and in His love for us, to trust in Him and commit ourselves to Him, and to return His love with all our love and persevering service so that we will in fact live our total consecration to Him through Mary in union with St. Joseph more and more faithfully everyday.
DIVES IN MISERICORDIA (ON THE MERCY OF GOD)
by Pope John Paul II
13. The Church must profess and proclaim God’s mercy in all its truth, as it has been handed down to us by revelation. We have sought, in the foregoing pages of the present document, to give at least an outline of this truth, which finds such rich expression in the whole of Sacred Scripture and in Sacred Tradition.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, fill us and animate us. Please help us to know, understand and see Jesus as you want us to. Help us to believe in Him and in His love for us, to trust in Him and commit ourselves to Him, and to return His love with all our love and persevering service so that we will in fact live our total consecration to Him through Mary in union with St. Joseph more and more faithfully everyday.
REDEMPTOR HOMINIS (REDEEMER OF MAN)
by Pope John Paul II
13. When we penetrate by means of the continually and rapidly increasing experience of the human family into the mystery of Jesus Christ, we understand with greater clarity that there is at the basis of all these ways that the Church of our time must follow, in accordance with the wisdom of Pope Paul VI, one single way: it is the way that has stood the test of centuries and it is also the way of the future.
Christ the Lord indicated this way especially, when, as the Council teaches, “by his Incarnation, he, the Son of God, in a certain way united himself with each man”. The Church therefore sees its fundamental task in enabling that union to be brought about and renewed continually.
The Church wishes to serve this single end: that each person may be able to find Christ, in order that Christ may walk with each person the path of life, with the power of the truth about man and the world that is contained in the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption and with the power of the love that is radiated by that truth.
Against a background of the ever increasing historical processes, which seem at the present time to have results especially within the spheres of various systems, ideological concepts of the world and regimes, Jesus Christ becomes, in a way, newly present, in spite of all his apparent absences, in spite of all the limitations of the presence and of the institutional activity of the Church. Jesus Christ becomes present with the power of the truth and the love that are expressed in him with unique unrepeatable fullness in spite of the shortness of his life on earth and the even greater shortness of his public activity.
Jesus Christ is the chief way for the Church. He himself is our way “to the Father’s house” and is the way to each man. On this way leading from Christ to man, on this way on which Christ unites himself with each man, nobody can halt the Church. This is an exigency of man’s temporal welfare and of his eternal welfare.
Out of regard for Christ and in view of the mystery that constitutes the Church’s own life, the Church cannot remain insensible to whatever serves man’s true welfare, any more than she can remain indifferent to what threatens it. In various passages in its documents the Second Vatican Council has expressed the Church’s fundamental solicitude that life in “the world should conform more to man’s surpassing dignity” in all its aspects, so as to make that life “ever more human”.
This is the solicitude of Christ himself, the good Shepherd of all men. In the name of this solicitude, as we read in the Council’s Pastoral Constitution, “the Church must in no way be confused with the political community, nor bound to any political system. She is at once a sign and a safeguard of the transcendence of the human person” (Gaudium et Spes, 91).
Accordingly, what is in question here is man in all his truth, in his full magnitude. We are not dealing with the “abstract” man, but the real, “concrete”, “historical” man. We are dealing with “each” man, for each one is included in the mystery of the Redemption and with each one Christ has united himself for ever through this mystery. Every man comes into the world through being conceived in his mother’s womb and being born of his mother, and precisely on account of the mystery of the Redemption is entrusted to the solicitude of the Church. Her solicitude is about the whole man and is focussed on him in an altogether special manner.
The object of her care is man in his unique unrepeatable human reality, which keeps intact the image and likeness of God himself. The Council points out this very fact when, speaking of that likeness, it recalls that “man is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself.”
Man as “willed” by God, as “chosen” by him from eternity and called, destined for grace and glory—this is “each” man, “the most concrete” man, “the most real”; this is man in all the fullness of the mystery in which he has become a sharer in Jesus Christ, the mystery in which each one of the four thousand million human beings living on our planet has become a sharer from the moment he is conceived beneath the heart of his mother.
TRUE DEVOTION TO MARY
by St. Louis de Montfort, Chapter XV
Slaves of Jesus in Mary will have a special devotion to the great mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, March 25th. This is the mystery proper to true devotion because it has been inspired by the Holy Spirit.
It was inspired that we might see—and honor and imitate—the utter dependence of God on the Virgin Mary for His Father’s glory and for our salvation.
We must certainly use this occasion to thank God for the incomparable graces He has granted Mary in choosing her for His Mother—the choice celebrated in this feast day.
These are the two principal ends of the slavery of Jesus Christ in Mary.
(1) Since we live in a proud century among a great number of puffed-up scholars, and proud and critical minds, men who find fault with the best established customs of piety, it is better to say “slavery of Jesus in Mary” and to call oneself a slave of Jesus rather than a slave of Mary—naming the devotion after its Last End, Jesus, and not after the way to arrive at that End, Mary.…
(2) As the principal mystery celebrated in this devotion is that of the Incarnation—Jesus made flesh in the womb of Mary—it is more fitting we should say “slavery of Jesus in Mary.” By this we signify the mystery of Jesus abiding and reigning in Mary. And there is the prayer recited by so many great souls; “O Jesus living in Mary, come and live in us, in Thy spirit of sanctity....”
Slaves of Jesus in Mary will have a great love for the recitation of the Hail Mary, the Angelical Salutation. Few Christians, no matter how enlightened, know the excellence, the merit, and the value of this prayer. Nor are they aware of the necessity of saying it often.
JOHN 15:15-17
"No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. This I command you, to love one another."
COME HOLY SPIRIT, fill us and animate us. Please help us to know, understand and see Jesus as you want us to. Help us to believe in Him and in His love for us, to trust in Him and commit ourselves to Him, and to return His love with all our love and persevering service so that we will in fact live our total consecration to Him through Mary in union with St. Joseph more and more faithfully everyday.
NOVO MILLENNIO INEUNTE (AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM)
by Pope John Paul II
24. This divine-human identity emerges forcefully from the Gospels, which offer us a range of elements that make it possible for us to enter that “frontier zone” of the mystery, represented by Christ’s self-awareness. The Church has no doubt that the Evangelists in their accounts, and inspired from on high, have correctly understood in the words which Jesus spoke the truth about his person and his awareness of it.
COME HOLY SPIRIT, fill us and animate us. Please help us to know, understand and see Jesus as you want us to. Help us to believe in Him and in His love for us, to trust in Him and commit ourselves to Him, and to return His love with all our love and persevering service so that we will in fact live our total consecration to Him through Mary in union with St. Joseph more and more faithfully everyday.
ECCLESIA DE EUCHARISTIA
(On the Eucharist in Its Relationship to the Church)
by Pope John Paul II
15.The sacramental re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice, crowned by the resurrection, in the Mass involves a most special presence which – in the words of Paul VI – “is called ‘real’ not as a way of excluding all other types of presence as if they were ‘not real’, but because it is a presence in the fullest sense: a substantial presence whereby Christ, the God-Man, is wholly and entirely present” (Mysterium Fidei).
This sets forth once more the perennially valid teaching of the Council of Trent: “the consecration of the bread and wine effects the change of the whole substance of the bead into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. And the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called this change transubstantiation”.
Truly the Eucharist is a mysterium fidei, a mystery which surpasses our understanding and can only be received in faith, as is often brought out in the catechesis of the Church Fathers regarding this divine sacrament: “Do not see – Saint Cyril of Jerusalem exhorts – in the bread and wine merely natural elements, because the Lord has expressly said that they are his body and his blood: faith assures you of this, though your senses suggest otherwise”.
Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, we shall continue to sing with the Angelic Doctor. Before this mystery of love, human reason fully experiences its limitations. One understands how, down the centuries, this truth has stimulated theology to strive to understand it ever more deeply.
These are praiseworthy efforts, which are all the more helpful and insightful to the extent that they are able to join critical thinking to the “living faith” of the Church, as grasped especially by the Magisterium’s “sure charism of truth” and the “intimate sense of spiritual realities” which is attained above all by the saints.
There remains the boundary indicated by Paul VI: “Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, must firmly maintain that in objective reality, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the consecration, so that the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus from that moment on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine”.
REDEMPTOR HOMINIS
(Redeemer of Man)
by Pope John Paul II
20. It is an essential truth, not only of doctrine but also of life, that the Eucharist builds the Church, building it as the authentic community of the People of God, as the assembly of the faithful, bearing the same mark of unity that was shared by the Apostles and the first disciples of the Lord. The Eucharist builds ever anew this community and unity, ever building and regenerating it on the basis of the Sacrifice of Christ, since it commemorates his death on the Cross, the price by which he redeemed us. Accordingly, in the Eucharist we touch in a way the very mystery of the Body and Blood of the Lord, as is attested by the very words used at its institution, the words that, because of that institution, have become the words with which those called to this ministry in the Church unceasingly celebrate the Eucharist.
... Indeed, the Eucharist is the ineffable Sacrament! The essential commitment and, above all, the visible grace and source of supernatural strength for the Church as the People of God is to persevere and advance constantly in Eucharistic life and Eucharistic piety and to develop spiritually in the climate of the Eucharist. With all the greater reason, then, it is not permissible for us, in thought, life or action, to take away from this truly most holy Sacrament its full magnitude and its essential meaning. It is at one and the same time a Sacrifice-Sacrament, a Communion-Sacrament, and a Presence-Sacrament. And, although it is true that the Eucharist always was and must continue to be the most profound revelation of the human brotherhood of Christ's disciples and confessors, it cannot be treated merely as an "occasion" for manifesting this brotherhood. When celebrating the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord, the full magnitude of the divine mystery must be respected,as must the full meaning of this sacramental sign in which Christ is really present and is received, the soul is filled with grace and the pledge of future glory is given
SECRET OF MARY (part I)
by St.Louis de Montfort
Faithful soul, living image of God, redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, it is the will of God that you be holy like Him in this life and glorious like Him in the next. Your sure vocation is the acquisition of the holiness of God; and unless all your thoughts and words and actions, all the sufferings and events of your life tend to that end, you are resisting God by not doing that for which He has created you and is now preserving you.
Oh, what an admirable work! To change that which is dust into light, to make pure that which is unclean, holy that which is sinful, to make the creature like its Creator, man like God! Admirable work, I repeat, but difficult in itself, and impossible to mere nature; only God by His grace, by His abundant and extraordinary grace, can accomplish it. Even the creation of the whole world is not so great a masterpiece as this.
Predestinate soul, how are you to do it? What means will you choose to reach the height to which God calls you? The means of salvation and sanctification are known to all; they are laid down in the Gospel, explained by the masters of the spiritual life, practiced by the saints, and necessary to all who wish to be saved and to attain perfection. They are: humility of heart, continual prayer, mortification in all things, abandonment to Divine Providence, and conformity to the will of God.
To practice all these means of salvation and sanctification the grace of God is absolutely necessary. No one can doubt that God gives His grace to all, in a more or less abundant measure. I say in a more or less abundant measure, for God, although infinitely good, does not give equal grace to all, yet to each soul He gives sufficient grace.
The faithful soul will, with great grace, perform a great action, and with less grace a lesser action. It is the value and the excellence of the grace bestowed by God and corresponded to by the soul, that gives to our actions their value and their excellence. These principles are certain. I tall comes to this, then: that you should find an easy means for obtaining from God the grace necessary to make you holy; and this means I wish to make known to you. Now, I say that to find this grace of God, we must find Mary.
JOHN 1:16-18
And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.
After spending some time learning about the Spirit of the World, let's now watch a presentation about how to apply True Devotion with Fr. Hugh Gillespie.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them,“Thus it is written,that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
'For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and he you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children whitin you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation.'
His divine power has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature. For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these things are yours and abound, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be the more zealous to confirm your call and election, for if you do this you will never fall; so there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
THE SEVEN DIMENSIONS OF THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRESENT MOMENT (#77) (by Jerome F. Coniker) sections 13 - 16 JOHN 1:10-12 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; above all taking the shield of faith, with which you can quenchall the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my mouth boldy to proclaim the mystery of the gospel,for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.
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