Today, the Holy Father did the Consecration of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It seems that every time one of the Popes does a consecration to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart something happens. Keep your eyes on the news. Look carefully at the events of today and the next few weeks. I always expect Our Lady to respond to the cries of her children.

However, it takes much more than the consecration of the world. Each one of us has to be consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. We need to make a proper preparation, either through the traditional preparation of St. Louis De Montfort, the for of Consecration to the Immaculate by St. Maximilian Kolbe or the new “33 Days to Morning Glory” by Fr. Michael Gaitley. You can also do all of them at different times in your life.

Whatever form of preparation and consecration you choose, it can’t just end there. Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary has to become a lifestyle. When you consecrate your life to Our Lady, it means that you are reaffirming your baptismal consecration and going deeper. Consecration isn’t something that you do once and leave aside. Once you consecrate your life to Our Lady, you need to renew it daily and redo it formally annually. If you think that the Holy Father’s consecration is enough, your looking for magic. It will take all of us making our own consecration and living it daily to change the world.

Some are probably saying, “Why do I have to go to Mary, can I just go directly to Jesus?” Of course you can go right to Jesus, but St. Louis De Montfort says that Mary is “the quickest, surest and easiest way” to Jesus.

When you learns to ride a bike, you really don’t need anyone to help. You can pick up a bike and try to ride it on your own. There will be times that you pick up the bike and ride quite a way without help. Other times, you will be going along well and take a good dump. You’ll get a scraped knee, a few bruises here and there and maybe even bang your head. But if your smart, you’ll take the help of someone else, someone who will hold the bike from falling until your ready to ride on your own. Check this out.

That is what consecration to Mary is. Our Lady spiritually holds our bike. We are not going to her. She is helping us peddle to her Son and to our heavenly Father. She will push us along, we might not even know that she is there, but she keeps us from having big falls. And when we are ready, she’ll take the bike and give it a big push toward her Son. She will keep doing this throughout our life, but when the day comes that we close our eyes to this life, she will give us that pus and say, “go child, my Son is waiting.”

This is the power of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Let us go with the saints who wish us to climb the ladder to the kingdom as did they, who held the hand of their mother as they ran to the Kingdom.

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