Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in the middle of the long green seasons of ordinary time. It's one of the Marian feast days on which it is traditional to make one's total consecration to Jesus through Mary. I made my consecration to Jesus through Mary way back in Lent, March 25, the Annunciation. The day you said yes. I decided that would be a good day for me to start saying yes, too.
I'm not sure what moved me even to think about taking such a step. I suppose it's not a what so much as a who.....was it you? The Holy Spirit? I don't think I need an answer to the question, really, but I know it was relationship and not intellect that caused me to pick up the consecration books and pray my way though them. Now I find myself in the long, reflective period of the Church year, trying to think through the past months, wondering just a little what difference that prayer of consecration has made in my daily life. Hence these "letters," a way of sifting through, sorting out, thinking through. Total consecration is supposed to be the easiest route to holiness, and really, Mother, I don;t feel all that holy most of the time.
My still-Protestant friends would, I am sure, be horrified at the concept of growing in holiness because of a relationship with you. To them you are still a mystery, somehow a competition to your Son, not much more than a convenient uterus. In fact, some of them would deny you even that. When I was trying to explain how important you have become to me to one of my friends, he declared--with great certainty--that Jesus didn't share even a molecule of DNA with you! He denies you even the barest minimum of motherhood....
I have to confess, as I worked my way through the preparation, I had to wrestle with those Protestant doubts. I was surprised that they were still there. St. Louis De Montfort's purple language didn't help...you have to admit, Mother, that some of your best friends get so overcome by their love for you that they end up sounding...well...a little strange to less accustomed ears. I remember the first time I asked you for help, my first Hail Mary. I think I prefaced it with the caveat I'm not sure I'm doing this right, but here goes... It took a long time before I was at ease with that prayer, longer still until I could pray the rosary in comfort.
That's as it should be, I suppose. In a way, I was like a child adopted away at birth, making the first tentative steps toward coming to know the woman who bore her. More than 50 years of absence meant that there was a lot I had to overcome, not the least of which was my own skittishness. What if she's not what I expect?
Well, you weren't, mostly because I had no idea what to expect. I prayed a long time, many Hail Marys, many rosaries, because it was a part of my Catholic patrimony that I wanted to claim. That and the convinced knowledge of those around me who already knew you that this was powerful, powerful prayer. Did you smile at my earnestness? I do. It's just like me to fall back on formulas, mathematical and scientific precision, when all else fails. Fortunately, I've learned that is the beginning, not the end. It's my entry into something larger for it's the way God gets my attention.
It was many months before I realized that I had come to know you as a person, as my mother. It happened when I was exercising another of my God-given talents, discussing (debating? arguing about?) you with a staunchly Presbyterian friend. In the middle of scriptural duels and apologetic points, I realized: I wasn't just talking about an abstract point of doctrine. I was talking about someone I knew. Not well, perhaps, certainly not as well as I wished, but someone I knew. Knowing about had given way to knowing, intellect to relationship. All without my realizing it, but isn't that always the way?
I suppose it was natural that I would pick up the Total Consecration as another of those pieces of patrimony I wanted to claim. It didn't hurt that some of my favorite older brothers and sisters took that path. After all, St. Maximilan Kolbe, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Blessed John Paul II all trusted the development of their holiness to your intercession. Still, at the edges of my mind, it worried me, until I read something that pulled it all into focus: the first Person to entrust Himself completely to Mary was God the Father....
Over the last few years, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the mystery of the Incarnation and that solid little truth eluded me. The Creator of the Universe entrusted Himself to you in the Incarnation...trusted your yes, trusted you to bring Grace into the world with your Son, trusted you to raise HIm and care for Him and walk with Him all the way to the foot of the cross, where Jesus entrusted us to you.
But no!, I can hear my Protestant friends objecting. That didn't require trust. God knew what Mary would say before she said it. God knew what she'd do before she did it.
True enough, I suppose. True enough to shout from the rooftops. He knows what you will do and He entrusted me to you. And you will do what you always do: show me Jesus, and show me how to love Him.
All I have to do is say yes.....
