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120. As all perfection consists in our being conformed, united
and consecrated to Jesus it naturally follows that the most
perfect of all devotions is that which conforms, unites, and
consecrates us most completely to Jesus. Now of all God's
creatures Mary is the most conformed to Jesus. It therefore
follows that, of all devotions, devotion to her makes for the
most effective consecration and conformity to him. The more
one is consecrated to Mary, the more one is consecrated to
Jesus.
That is why perfect consecration to Jesus is but a
perfect and complete consecration of oneself to the Blessed
Virgin, which is the devotion I teach; or in other words, it
is the perfect renewal of the vows and promises of holy
baptism.
121. This devotion consists in giving oneself entirely to Mary
in order to belong entirely to Jesus through her. It requires
us to give:
- Our body with its senses and members;
- Our soul with its faculties;
- Our present material possessions and all we shall
acquire in the future;
- Our interior and spiritual possessions, that is, our
merits, virtues and good actions of the past, the present and
the future.
In other words, we give her all that we possess both in
our natural life and in our spiritual life as well as
everything we shall acquire in the future in the order of
nature, of grace, and of glory in heaven. This we do without
any reservation, not even of a penny, a hair, or the smallest
good deed. And we give for all eternity without claiming or
expecting, in return for our offering and our service, any
other reward than the honour of belonging to our Lord through
Mary and in Mary, even though our Mother were not - as in fact
she always is - the most generous and appreciative of all
God's creatures.
122. Note here that two things must be considered regarding
our good works, namely, satisfaction and merit or, in other
words, their satisfactory or prayer value and their
meritorious value. The satisfactory or prayer value of a good
work is the good action in so far as it makes condign
atonement for the punishment due to sin or obtains some new
grace. The meritorious value or merit is the good action in so
far as it merits grace and eternal glory. Now by this
consecration of ourselves to the Blessed Virgin we give her
all satisfactory and prayer value as well as the meritorious
value of our good works, in other words, all the satisfactions
and the merits. We give her our merits, graces and virtues,
not that she might give them to others, for they are, strictly
speaking, not transferable, because Jesus alone, in making
himself our surety with his Father, had the power to impart
his merits to us. But we give them to her that she may keep,
increase and embellish them for us, as we shall explain later,
and we give her our acts of atonement that she may apply them
where she pleases for God's greater glory.
123. It follows then:
(1) that by this devotion we give to Jesus all we can
possibly give him, and in the most perfect manner, that is,
through Mary's hands. Indeed we give him far more than we do
by other devotions which require us to give only part of our
time, some of our good works or acts of atonement and
penances. In this devotion everything is given and
consecrated, even the right to dispose freely of one's
spiritual goods and the satisfactions earned by daily good
works. This is not done even in religious orders. Members of
religious orders give God their earthly goods by the vow of
poverty, the goods of the body by the vow of chastity, their
free will by the vow of obedience, and sometimes their freedom
of movement by the vow of enclosure. But they do not give him
by these vows the liberty and right to dispose of the value of
their good works. They do not despoil themselves of what a
Christian considers most precious and most dear - his merits
and satisfactions.
124. (2) It follows then that anyone who in this way
consecrates and sacrifices himself voluntarily to Jesus
through Mary may no longer dispose of the value of any of his
good actions. All his sufferings, all his thoughts, words, and
deeds belong to Mary. She can then dispose of them in
accordance with the will of her Son and for his greater glory.
This dependence, however, is without detriment to the duties
of a person's present and future state of life. One such duty,
for example, would be that of a priest who, by virtue of his
office or otherwise, must apply the satisfactory or prayer
value of the Holy Mass to a particular person. For this
consecration can only be made in accordance with the order
established by God and in keeping with the duties of one's
state of life.
125. (3) It follows that we consecrate ourselves at one and
the same time to Mary and to Jesus. We give ourselves to Mary
because Jesus chose her as the perfect means to unite himself
to us and unite us to him. We give ourselves to Jesus because
he is our last end. Since he is our Redeemer and our God we
are indebted to him for all that we are.
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