Therefore I am your servant (servus) because your Son is my Lord. Therefore you are my Lady (Domina) because you are the handmaid of my Lord. Therefore I am the servant of the handmaid of my Lord because you have become the mother of my Maker … O Lady, before you today we take our stand. Lady, I call you Virgin Mother of God and to your hope, as to the surest and strongest anchor, we bind ourselves. To you we consecrate our mind, our soul, our body, all that we are. We honor you as much as we can.
During the Second World War, in light of the tragedies unfolding of the Nazis’ murderous campaign, Pope Pius XII issued a new form of consecration to Our Lady. He directed the faithful to address the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, declaring that, “In thee and in thy Immaculate Heart, at this grave hour of human history, do we put our trust; to thee we consecrate ourselves, not only with all of the Holy Church … but also with the whole world, torn by discords, agitated with hatred, the victim of its own iniquities.”
Pope Pius XII made this act of consecration twice in the same year. The first time, he spoke by radio in Portuguese. His audience was the thousands of pilgrims who had come to Fatima on October 13, 1942, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the closing apparition of Our Lady.
Pope Pius XII repeated the consecration in St. Peter’s Basilica on December 8, 1942. In both acts of consecration, the Pontiff was openly responding to the most formal revelation of God’s will at Fatima, to establish devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart throughout the world. Moreover, in the act of consecration in Rome, the Pope made an allusion to Russia.
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Heart of a compassionate Mother
Glade Park, CO (Catholic Online) - In the opening paragraph of his Letter on the Blessed Virgin Mary (Signum Magnum), Pope Paul VI reminded the faithful of the reality of the Blessed Mother’s position as the mother of all men: “The great sign which the Apostle John saw in heaven, ‘a woman clothed with the sun,’ is interpreted by the sacred Liturgy, not without foundation, as referring to the most blessed Mary, the mother of all men by the grace of Christ the Redeemer.”
Some twenty-centuries ago, it was this most blessed Mother of ours who, concerned for those who attended the marriage feast at Cana, turned to her Son and simply mentioned “They have no wine.” Although Jesus responded, “My hour is not yet come,” the Mother of our Lord, of course, knew her Son would listen to her, and, in a display of complete confidence, advised the servants to “Do whatever he tells you” (see Jn 2:1-5). Those were the final words of Our Lady recorded in the New Testament, and, with those words, the Immaculate Heart of Mary continues to reach with warm love into the future, speak to her children, and imprint upon them an everlasting profession of what it means to be Christian.
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