"To live our consecration requires the sacrifice of our own will, so that His will may be done in us. We are asked to become holy and good, to be the example of this for all to witness, to be the light of truth, of simplicity and purity, the true imitation of Our Lady's Immaculate Heart, and the beacons of Christ on the path to sanctification. Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary we are gathered and formed to bring to the world the example of this response to her call. The Triumph of her Immaculate Heart shall bring into our midst the glorious Reign of His Sacred Heart. It is for this purpose, we pledge our consecration."
*** Two Hearts United ***
Prayer to The Lady of All Nations
Lord Jesus, Son of the Father,
send now your Spirit over the earth.
Let the Holy Spirit live
in the hearts of all nations
that they may be preserved
from degeneration, disaster and war.
May the Lady of All Nations,
the Blessed Virgin Mary,
be our Advocate.
“There will always be many, like John, who are led to the Mother through the Son; but also many others, like Joseph, who are led to the Son through the Mother. These two movements, which in the beginning are very clearly emphasized in certain individuals, will later be the paths on which many can wander.”
[Adrienne von Speyr, Handmaid of the Lord]
In The End My Immaculate Heart Will TriumphConsecration Preparation for the Triumphant Victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Available from: Aquinas and More Catholic Goods
Mary, Mother of God (Solemnity). Theme: veneration of Mary, Mother of God, and adoration of her newborn Son.
Your name, O Mother of God, is filled with all graces and Divine blessings. You have contained Him Who cannot be contained, and nourished Him Who nourishes all creatures. He Who fills heaven and earth, and is the Lord of all, was pleased to be in need of you, for it was you who clothed Him with that flesh which He did not have before. Rejoice, then, O Mother and handmaid of God!
Rejoice, because you have made Him a debtor Who gives being to all creatures. We are all God’s debtors, but He is a debtor to you. That is why, O most holy Mother of God, you have greater goodness and greater charity than all the other Saints, and have freer access to God than any of them, for you are His Mother. Remember us, we beseech you, in our miseries, who celebrate your glories and know how great your goodness is.
This video entitled “A Prayer for Peace” is filled with beautiful Marian images by artist Jan Oliver. Check out the goal she has set for herself at the end of the video!
Today at Contemplative Haven I also posted two other videos of art by Jan Oliver, one entitled “A Celebration of Faith” and the other is of Jan telling us a bit about herself and showing some time-lapse photography of when she painted her picture called “Renewal”. Enjoy!
The Immaculate Conception, celebrated December 8th, is a Solemnity in the Catholic Church. This feast is one of only three Solemnities, and thus is one of the highest ranking Marian celebrations in our liturgical year (the other two being the feast of Mary, Mother of God on January 1st and the feast of the Assumption on August 15th.)
God’s preservation of Mary not only from personal sin but from original sin from the moment of her conception is a dogma of faith in the Catholic Church. It wasn’t always so, and from the 7th century through to St. Thomas Aquinas and on to Blessed John Duns Scotus right up to Pope Pius IX the discussions continued.
Since the entire Marian month of December is devoted to the Immaculate Conception, I would like to delve a little more deeply into this topic in a few upcoming posts, to follow the discussion as it evolved through the centuries and to highlight subject matter such as Mary’s pre-redemption.
But for today, on Mary’s beautiful feastday, I leave you with this passage from Henri Nouwen’s, “The Genesee Diary” - an entry he wrote on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1974:
In this feast it seems that all the quiet beauty of Advent suddenly bursts forth into exuberance and exultation. In Mary we see all the beauty of Advent concentrated. She is the one in whom the waiting of Israel is most fully and most purely manifested; she is the last of the remnant of Israel for whom God shows his mercy and fulfills his promises; she is the faithful one who believed that the promise made to her by the Lord would be fulfilled; she is the lowly handmaid, the obedient servant, the quiet contemplative. She indeed is the most prepared to receive the Lord.
It seems that there is no better time to celebrate this feast than during these Advent days. It is the celebration of the beauty of her who is ready to receive the Lord. It is like admiring the palace where the King will enter, the room to which the bridegroom will come, the garden where the great encounter will take place.
Today marks the second anniversary of my having started this blog, Consecrated to Mary. I cannot tell you the joy it has brought me. I’ve learned so much in terms of Mariology over the last two years while reading and researching for my posts, and have discovered so many beautiful Marian songs, videos and artwork; but even better, I know I have grown closer to Mary herself.
I am privileged to know that since starting this blog, three people for certain have already been consecrated to Mary, while one is making her consecration to Mary this very day, and one is in the wings for this upcoming February. This was the main reason, I believe, that Mother Mary inspired me to start this site, and I so appreciate the gentle way she has of entering people’s hearts, placing within them the desire for a closer relationship with her.
Apart from the consecration material on this site, I have noticed over the months (from statistics made available to me on my dashboard) that the three posts that consistently receive the most visitors are the Prayer to St. Gabriel the Archangel, the Feastday of Our Lady of Fatima and St. Catherine of Siena’s Prayer to Mary.
So, dear readers, thank you for making my last two years here such a pleasure. Thank you, Carol, for your faithful comments and support; thank you to all the commentors during the past two years, and to those who emailed me from time-to-time to send info/suggestions or just to chat. You have all blessed my life with encouragement and prayer, for which I am deeply grateful.
The Memorial of the Presentation of Mary is celebrated on November 21st. The theme of this Memorial is: total consecration to the Lord through Mary.
Although not mentioned in the Bible, this ancient feast is based on information taken from one of the apocryphal Gospels, the Protevangelium of James. In it we are told that at the age of three, Mary was taken by her parents to the Temple of Jerusalem, where she was presented and would remain until the age of marriage, in the company of other young girls in the charge of holy women.
The Dictionary of Mary [Catholic Book Publishing Co.] gives us some informaiton about the actual history of the Memorial:
This event was already commemorated in the 6th century in the East. Gregory XI in 1372 heard of the feast, kept in Greece on November 21, and instituted it at Avignon. In 1585, Sixtus V extended it to the Universal Church.
If you’re anything like me, you may have wondered how Mary’s parents could possibly have given up their baby girl at the age of three to complete strangers; you may have felt very badly for Mary, assuming she would have felt very abandoned, lonely and frightened – traumatized, in fact. We have a tendency to forget that Mary’s human life was like no other, that she was imbued with mystical knowledge from the time she was within the womb of her mother, and from that very time within her mother’s womb she had no desire other than to serve God and be in complete union with His Will. Venerable Mary of Agreda shares her mystical visions of this time in Mary’s life [The Divine Life of the Most Holy Virgin, from the Mystical City of God]:
When the time arrived for the accomplishment of the vow which her parents had made, of consecrating her to the service of the Temple, she herself was the first to beg them, with all humility, to fulfill their promise without delay, and she most fervently entreated God to inspire them to do it promptly. The Lord granted the humble prayer of His beloved, and her parents, obedient to the heavenly inspiration, parted with their amiable child, though not without the deepest sorrow.
The grief of St. Ann, in particular, exceeded even that of Abraham when commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac. At the expiration of the three years St. Joachim and St. Ann, accompanied by many of their relations and by a great number of angelic spirits, who, during the journey, sang hymns of praise to the Most High, left Nazareth and journeyed to Jerusalem, bearing in their arms their young and happy child.
{I found the image at the Australian EJournal of Theology, which has some lovely artwork, as well as very interesting subject-matter.}
Readers have provided me with a couple of excellent links to sites where you can not only learn about the Rosary, but also pray it online.
My friend Carol highly recommends the Virtual Rosary site, and recent commentor Diane let me know about this excellent resource on Father Corapi’s website.
For the past couple of years I have been using the Rosary resources offered by Rosary Army, whose wonderful consecration podcasts I embedded on this site as well. I downloaded their Rosary recordings onto my iPod, and am able to pray along with them as I ride the bus to and from work.
The resources available to us now are seemingly endless; you can locate many other wonderful sites through your own search engines. If you spend some time on the sites I’ve linked to here, you will see that they provide information on many topics, along with the Rosary.
Thanks again, Carol and Diane, for sharing your finds, and thank you to all those who are behind the scenes setting up these resources for us. They are much appreciated.
Today is Wednesday. Would you like to pray the Glorious Mysteries with me (it doesn’t matter when you may be reading this, does it? After all, with God, there is no time) – together with Greg and Jennifer of Rosary Army? Let’s.
In his book, “The Whole Truth about Fatima. Science and the Facts” (pgs. 293-303), Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité writes that while the crowd was watching the miraculous spectacle of the sun moving around in the sky, Lucy, Jacinta and Francisco were witnessing something else as well.
The three seers were given a sequence of three pictures, and Lucy describes each one:
The Vision of the Holy Family: “After Our Lady had disappeared into the immense distance of the firmament, we beheld St. Joseph with the Child Jesus and Our Lady robed in white with a blue mantle, beside the sun. St. Joseph and the Child Jesus appeared to bless the world, for they traced the Sign of the Cross with their hands.”
The Vision of Our Lady of Sorrows: “When, a little later, this apparition disappeared, I saw Our Lord and Our Lady; it seemed to me that it was Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lord appeared to bless the world in the same manner as St. Joseph had done.”
The Vision of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: “This apparition also vanished, and I saw Our Lady once more, this time resembling Our Lady of Mount Carmel.”
Now, it was on this day, October13, 1917, that the Blessed Virgin first introduced herself as Our Lady of the Rosary. Frère Michel makes a connection between the three apparitions noted above and the rosary; he writes that the three visions are “three living images of the mysteries of the rosary.”
He sees the vision of the Holy Family and the blessing being given as illustrative of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary; the second vision, of Our Lady of Sorrows (and as Lucy later informed a priest, the Lord in this vision was dressed in red, “no doubt to remind us of the purple mantle in which he was dressed in the pretorium, during the scene of the outrages and the crowning with thorns”) he relates to the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary; the third vision, of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, he connects with the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary, because Mary was holding the scapular in her hand, offering it to the world.
Isn’t it wonderful that Jesus and Mary leave nothing undone; they leave no loose ends. As I was reading this interpretation by Frère Michel, of course the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary introduced by Pope John Paul II came to mind – and what would they correspond to on this special day of October 13, 1917? Why, the main spectacle, of course – the Miracle of the Sun!
Lord Jesus, Son of the Father,
send now your Spirit over the earth.
Let the Holy Spirit live
in the hearts of all nations
that they may be preserved
from degeneration, disaster and war.
May the Lady of All Nations,
the Blessed Virgin Mary,
be our Advocate.
Consecration Preparation for the Triumphant Victory of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Available from: 
