Montfortian Quote

I am all yours

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.
This devotion consists in giving oneself entirely to Mary in
order to belong entirely to Jesus through her. It requires us to give:
1. Our body with its senses and members;2. Our soul with its faculties;
3. Our present material possessions and all we shall acquire in the future;
4. 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.
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.
I have said that this devotion could rightly be called a perfect
renewal of the vows and promises of holy baptism. Before baptism,
Christians were slaves of the devil because they belonged
to him. At baptism they have either personally or through their
sponsors solemnly renounced Satan, his seductions and his
works. They have chosen Jesus as their Master and sovereign
Lord and undertaken to depend upon him as slaves of love.
This is what is done in the devotion I am presenting to you. We
renounce the devil, the world, sin and self, as expressed in the
act of consecration, and we give ourselves entirely to Jesus
through Mary. We even do something more than at baptism,
when ordinarily our godparents speak for us and we are given
to Jesus only by proxy. In this devotion we give ourselves personally
and freely and we are fully aware of what we are doing.
In holy baptism we do not give ourselves to Jesus explicitly
through Mary, nor do we give him the value of our good
actions. After baptism we remain entirely free either to apply that
value to anyone we wish or keep it for ourselves. But by this
consecration we give ourselves explicitly to Jesus through
Mary’s hands and we include in our consecration the value of
all our actions.

From ‘The Treatise on True Devotion to Mary’ of
Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort nn. 120-121.125-126

Scroll to Top