fatima triduum: 3rd day: consecrate

On this third day of our meditation on the messages of Our Blessed Mother in Fatima let us turn our attention to the word consecration.  Mary asks us to consecrate ourselves to her Immaculate Heart.  What does this mean?  What does consecration mean?  What shall we do to make this consecration?

Many times we only think of consecration as a prayer – a prayer of consecration. So we just kneel and pray the prescribed prayer and then bingo we are now consecrated.  But a prayer of consecration is like a prayer before meals.  A prayer before meals is not yet the meal.  You still have to eat.  So also with the prayer of consecration.  A prayer of consecration does not consecrate us.  It does not work like magic.  So how do we consecrate ourselves then to the immaculate heart?

The word consecrate means to make holy, to make sacred.  And so primarily it is God who makes us holy.  Consecration therefore is the work of God.  That is why Jesus has to die for us, because God makes us holy.

However consecration can also mean our response to God.  We consecrate ourselves when we cooperate with God in making us holy.  We consecrate ourselves when we respond wholeheartedly to what God is doing in our lives so that we can be made holy.

Only God can make me holy, he alone can consecrate me.  But I must cooperate with God in making me holy – first I have to respond to his call for me to become a priest because that is his will for me, and then I have to respond everyday of my life in order that I can persevere in the priesthood – doing my responsibilities as a priest, doing my duties as rector, preparing my homilies, praying for people.  These are all my acts of consecration because this is my response to God who making me holy, who is at work in me in making me holy each day.

The same applies to you, as religious.  When you fight the temptation of boredom, when you resist the urge to defy your superior, when you resist the urge to be lazy and to stop praying or to avoid your community duties, when you resist all these, then you are consecrating yourself to God.  How?  by cooperating in God's act of making you holier, and holier, and holier each day.

When the bishop appointed me rector six years ago timing gid mapa-america ako.  Ang tatlo ka semana supposedly gin-extend ko sa isa ka bulan kag tunga.  Indi na ko tani magbalik.  If I allowed that and did not cooperate by humbly submitting to my superior, God could not make me holy and God could not make me holy because I was escaping my responsibility, I was running away from the cross he was inviting me to carry.  The temptation not to cooperate on my part destroys God's work of consecration in me.

The same applies to you as husband and wife.  You consecrate yourself, you make yourself holy by clinging to your wife or husband, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.  Each time you forgive each other, each time you appreciate each other's presence, each time you sacrifice time and want for the sake of your children, when you remain faithful to each other . . . you are consecrating yourself because you are cooperating in the work of God in making you holy. 

So consecration is not a prayer or at the very least it does not remain only a prayer.  It is a daily struggle to cooperate with God who makes us holy, who makes us sacred every day.

So why consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary?  Because Mary has a beautiful heart, a very cooperative heart, a heart so generous to God's call, to God's mysterious ways in shaping her life and making her holy. From her yes to the invitation of the angel to her courage in following him all the way even standing bravely beneath the cross of her Son on Calvary.  She shows us what real consecration is by cooperating wholeheartedly to God who alone consecrates us, who alone makes us holy.