My Consecration Journey: I Didn't Choose Her, Jesus Gave Her

As a Catholic I’ve always had a devotion to Mary. My family used to pray the rosary together regularly and we always prayed it in the car on trips. But I had never heard of consecration to Jesus through Mary. Once I found out about it and did some investigation I was skeptical. As I’ve heard Jewish friends of mine say “Why do you need Jesus to get to God”, or Protestant friends say “Why do you need Mary to get to Jesus”, my misunderstanding of this devotion was with the idea that Mary is a middle man.

My intro to consecration to Jesus through Mary started back in high school. My youth minister and many other youth ministers I saw always had these chain bracelets around their wrists. I noticed it but I never asked what it was. A few years ago I finally asked someone, and they told me it was for their consecration.

Unbeknownst to myself,I actually started the journey a couple years before when I was enrolled in the brown scapular. In the summer of 2014,however, I saw people with the consecration chain everywhere. I felt drawn to the devotion, but I don’t just do things to do them. I decided to investigate further. I decided that if I met someone with the chain I’d ask them why they did it and how their experience was. Even my sister had done the devotion and renewed it, though she doesn’t wear the chain. Of course, after I said this I went to the Life Teen Catholic Youth Ministry Conference and many of the attendees wore that very chain. So, I got plenty of stories and they pretty much all lined up. Everyone had a similar story of how their journey in the devotion just intensified as it went on and that the graces received during the devotion journey just fell upon them as if they were specifically made way in advance for that time and for what the person was going through. I finally decided to take the plunge when a new friend I made told me her  story and then said “Oh wait, I have a St. Louis de Montfort’s Total Consecration to Jesus Through Mary right here in my bag. You can keep it.” Sometimes God is very in your face. I got the message.

I had the booklet, but I still wasn’t ready. I found the website, www.fisheaters.com and they suggested reading St. Louis de Montfort’s “True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary” before going through the consecration. “Perfect”, I thought. This was the key to everything for me. I’ll be honest, like many people, it was the extreme statements made about Mary that seemed to lift her to heights even above Jesus. But, this book tears down those notions without any question. First off, Mary deserves our veneration. She is the pinnacle of creation. She is the new Eve that brings life into the world thwarted by death that the original Eve brought into the world (Gen. 3:15, 1 Cor. 15:45) Jesus is said to be the new Adam) . She is the  Ark of the New Covenant. But, instead of carrying a gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff, and the stone tablets bearing the 10 Commandments, she bore the Son of God in her womb and delivered him to the world. She is the Queen Mother as Bathsheba to King Solomon (1 Kings2: 19-20).She is prefigured as the woman who, with her Son, will crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15) as foreshadowed by women in the Old Testament crushing the heads of the enemies of Israel. One of those heroic women is Jael as she nails a tent spike through a Canaanite general's head (Judges 4:17-22).

And if there is any doubt after all of this that Mary is NOT held to a higher status than Jesus, St. Louis de Montfort goes on to say this:

Mary, being a mere creature that has come from the hands of the Most High, is in comparison with his infinite Majesty, less than an atom; or rather she is nothing at all, because He is “He Who Is”, consequently that grand Lord, always independent and sufficient to  Himself, never had, and has not now an absolute need for the Holy Virgin, for the accomplishment of His will, and for the manifestation of His Glory. True Devotion – No. 14
 Jesus Christ our Savior, true God and true Man, ought to be the last end of all our devotions, else they are false and delusive. True Devotion – No. 61

If then we are establishing sound devotion to our Blessed Lady, it is only in order to establish devotion to our lord more perfectly, by providing a smooth but certain way of reaching Jesus Christ. If devotion to our Lady distracted us from our Lord, we would have to reject it as an illusion of the devil. True Devotion – No. 62

Consecration is all about accepting what Jesus left for us as he was dying on the cross, his mother. (John 19: 26-27). And, she is the Queen Mother, going back to Bathsheba and King Solomon. We offer ourselves to Jesus through the hands of his beloved mother. He would not deny his Mother (John 2:3-11). Mary’s whole role in salvation is to point us to Christ.

As I embarked on my journey of consecration it was breathtaking. I was going through a very hard time. I was extremely stressed with work and building new ministries and core teams along with supporting my wife after our second daughter’s birth. There were a few months where after I would wake up I would feel like I was never fully awake, always tired and sluggish. But during this time, every single day, the things I read during my consecration were spot on and the things I needed to hear. Throughout the whole 33 days I was continuously invigorated and God moved in so many different ways to pull me out of my funk through this long process. It was not easy, and some weeks were harder than others especially the week where I had all of the prayers that built up PLUS a rosary to go along with them. But the work of making time for prayer was extremely fruitful. I remember after finishing the consecration missing my daily prayer time.

I was consecrated on September 15, 2014, the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. It was a Monday and I went to daily mass with my family. It was such a powerful experience. In a way, this long arduous process of consecration saved me. The weeks of prayer, the struggle and commitment I made to prayer, I think, were what I needed to get out from the funk I was stuck in for so long and set me on a new, energized path, especially during the kickoff of our new ministries. God’s timing is impeccable.

An option of a physical sign of consecration is to wear a chain around one’s wrist symbolizing one’s connection, one’s linking one’s self to Christ, or as scripture sometimes puts it my enslavement to Christ (Holy Slavery is another title of the consecration, Ooooh how taboo) (Romans 1: 1, 1Cor. 7:21-23). I asked one of our young men who I know has a hobby making items with metal wiring to make me a chain. I wanted him to put his own style and creativity into it rather than going to the hardware story and getting a chain link. He came to my office the day before he left for seminary to size it and give it to me. What an honor!

I’ll end with this, I know  a lot of people struggle with Mary, just Mary, not even mentioning consecration. All I know is that through my years of study and growing to know what scripture and the Church, from its beginnings, teaches about her; I have only grown closer and closer to her son. If you have questions about Total Consecration to Jesus Through Mary I’m an open book.

St. Louis de Montfort's Way of Total Consecration

Why I Left Verizon Wireless

A couple months ago my wife brought an article to my attention that really bothered her. She showed me an article at Fight The New Drug. It was an article about the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s annual Dirty Dozen List. This is a list of companies that profit from sexual exploitation and then it provides action items that you can take to make a change. The 2015 list had come out and there was a decision we needed to make.

Verizon, the umbrella company that Verizon Wireless is under (which I’ve been patron of since ~2002) was on the list. The list states that, 

“Verizon profits from sexual exploitation by pushing porn into homes through multiple ways, including pay-per-view movies on their FIOS TV, as an Internet service provider, and as a wireless carrier. They have even defended child-themed, incest-themed, and trafficking-themed pornography as a benefit to their consumers. It’s time Verizon had a change in policy.” 

As if the fact that they provide these options isn’t enough, their attempt at defending their choice to continue provide them is disgusting and really compelled us to leave.

So, as of February 16^th, we are no longer Verizon Wireless customers. Now, it is almost impossible to not take part in some exchange of goods with only companies that do not on their part contribute to something we disagree with morally. If you look at a pro-life boycott list pretty much everybody is on it. And honestly, we’re probably so far from the source of the evil of providing pornographic material that we are minimally culpable if at all culpable. But, the defense that Verizon took in trying to justify their actions was too much to look past.

Our choice in phone companies is not a fixed situation. And though we are only taking part in what they do in a materially cooperative fashion (thanks ethics class), we find that their choice to formally take part and offer options for millions of others to take part in this evil a motive to leave. We decided that this was worth having to pay our cancellation fee. We could not wait until my contract was up. And actually, in the long run, we are now saving money.

Now, there are other companies, like Facebook, that we use on the list, but these companies actually have policies in place to ward off pornographic abuses. We need to do our part to get them to implement them better.

With good conscience we could not stay with Verizon Wireless knowing what we were supporting in however small a way.

At what point do we get tired enough to start speaking out and taking action against the evil that trickles through our daily lives and attempts to desensitize us. To paraphrase a statement Matt Fradd made at a talk I witnessed last night, “The hardcore porn we used to watch is now boring. Soft-core porn we now call Game of Thrones.”  

If I claim to be a faithful Catholic with a well formed conscience I had to act. Thomas More explains why beautifully, “When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then-he needn't hope to find himself again. Some men aren't capable of this, but I'd be loathe to think your father one of them.” - A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More

Check out the 2015 Dirty Dozen List and see what action you can take: 2015 Dirty Dozen List

Verizon's Defense Statement