What is “Consecration”

It is the heart of our faith, because it is the concrete expression of the first and only commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Mt 22, 37-40)

Jesus, the Saviour, in order to free us from the evil which has taken root in the heart of man, redeemed us by offering His life to the Father. He then invited His apostles to do the same.

St. Paul repeats stresses this concept: “I fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church” (Col 1,24) and invites us to follow his example: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service” (Rm 12,1).

Our Lady of Fatima repeats this invitation to the three shepherd children: “Do you wish to offer yourselves to God, ready to accept all the sufferings He wishes to send you, in reparation for the sins with which He is offended, and as a supplication for the conversion of sinners?”

Everything was contained in a single word: consecration.
In order to thoroughly understand the spiritual meaning of “consecration”, St. Louis Mary Grignion de Monfort helps us in his writings in the Treatise on True Devotion, referring to Mary: “If a person gives himself to Mary without reserve, she gives herself also without reserve to that person” (no. 181). "Consequently, the Holy Spirit will find his dear Spouse present again in that soul and will come down into her with an abundance of his gifts by which they will produce wonders of grace” (id. 217).

Consecration and children

When on May 13, 1917, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta answered “yes” to Our Lady’s invitation, she opened her arms and from her hands came forth a Light which struck the children’s chest and entered inside of them; subsequently Lucia wrote: “That Light was God”.

In a visible manner, Mary gave them the Holy Spirit of which she is the temple, bestowing on them her power of intercession and mediation. Thanks to the “yes” pronounced by these three children, Portugal was spared from World War II and from communism.
With the “yes” of millions of children Mary will save the world.

In this perspective the words which St. Pio of Pietralcina repeated many times become significant: “Children will save the world!” They are “the wine of the last hour” which Mary made flow from the Heart of the Father to give a new divine lymph to the wedding of Cana with the Church.

But where will they get this power from?

• From consecration, that is, in the offering of themselves to God
• From the Rosary, recited alone or in small groups;
• From the Eucharist, by receiving Jesus at the age of reason and by adoring Him in the Most Holy Sacrament.