Consecration to the Immaculata - Preparation Day 13
Day Thirteen
Allow me to praise you, O Sacred Virgin. Give me strength
against your enemies
But who is her enemy? All that is sullied by sin, which
does not lead to God, which is not love; it is all that comes
from the infernal serpent, who is a lie, and from him
alone: all our faults, then, all our sins. We beseech her to
give us strength against them. In fact, all devotions exist
only for that; that is why there is prayer; for that there
are the holy Sacraments: namely, to obtain the strength
to overcome all obstacles in our path to God, in ever more
ardent love, in becoming like God, uniting with God
Himself.
Just as we came from God through creation, so too we
return to God; all nature speaks to us of that, and wherever
we turn our gaze, we see that an action has an equal and
opposite reaction, as an echo of God’s activity, even of His
activity in creation. On this return path of reaction, a creature
endowed with free will runs into difficulties and
adversities, which God allows in order to increase even more
the impetus with which such creature tends toward Him.
To obtain sufficient strength to achieve that goal, however,
this creature must pray, implore such strength from
50
the One who is the source of all energy and who looks to
the efforts of His own creatures lovingly, wishing that they
sincerely want to come to Him, sparing no assistance toward
them. And even if such creatures, such dear children
of His, happened to stumble along the way, to fall, to be
sullied, to become dirty, this loving Father cannot possibly
sit back before their misfortune. He sends His only begotten
Son, who with His life and His teaching shows them a clear
and safe way. With His Most Holy Blood, which has infinite
value, He washes away the dirt and heals the wounds. And
lest the soul lose hope because of fear, for violating divine
justice, God sends the One who is the personification of His
love, the Bride of the Spirit of motherly love, the Immaculate,
all beautiful, without stain (even though she is the daughter
of a human being), sister of human beings, and appoints her
to distribute generously his mercy toward souls. He appoints
her Mediatrix of the graces merited by His Son, Mother of
grace, Mother of the souls that are reborn through grace.
Spiritual reading:
Chapter: The Task of the Militia Immaculat. in our
Time, p. 262
**********
CHAPTER FOUR
The Task
of the Militia Immaculatæ
in our Time
IN LA SALETTE the Mother of God proclaims to our times:
The precursor of the Antichrist will proceed to battle
with the armies of many peoples against the true Christ,
the sole Redeemer of the world. He will shed much blood
and attempt to destroy the true worship of God, in order
to have himself worshipped as God…. Before this happens,
though, a sort of false peace will prevail on earth; people
will think of nothing but enjoying themselves. The wicked
will indulge in every sort of sin. But the children of Holy
Church, the children of the faith, my genuine followers, will
grow in the love of God and in the virtues that are dearest
to me.… Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of
the Antichrist. The demons of the air will work great sign
263
on earth and in heaven with the Antichrist, and men will
become more and more perverted….1
We are experiencing the Good Friday of the Mystical Bride of Christ,
the Holy Church. As then on Calvary, so too today: Christ is betrayed
and misjudged by most people, only a small remnant is still loyal to
him, a little band gathered around the Mother of Sorrows under the
cross. What does it take to be numbered among her children? What
will they be like, these servants, these slaves, these children of Mary? — asks
St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. The description that he goes on
to give is a great ideal, which we must first recognize, in order then to
imitate it better and ultimately identify ourselves with it completely.
He writes about how we must conduct ourselves in that decisive
battle:
[T]horoughly purified by the fire of great tribulations and
closely joined to God, [t]hey will carry the gold of love in
their heart, the frankincense of prayer in their mind and the
myrrh of mortification in their body. They will bring to the
poor and the lowly everywhere the sweet fragrance of Jesus,
but they will bring the odour of death to the great, the rich
and the proud of this world (cf. 2 Cor. 2:14–16). They will
be like thunder-clouds flying through the air at the slightest
breath of the Holy Ghost. [They will be] attached to nothing,
surprised at nothing, troubled at nothing…. [T]hey will
be true disciples of Jesus Christ, imitating His poverty, His
humility, His contempt of the world and His love. They will
1 A. de Lassus, Le secret de Notre Dame à La Salette, in: “Action Familiale et
Scolaire”, no. 125, Paris 1996.
264
point out the narrow way to God in pure truth according
to the holy Gospel, and not according to the maxims of the
world… they will not spare or heed or fear any man, however
powerful he may be. They will have the two-edged sword of
the Word of God in their mouths (Hebr 4:12, Eph. 6:17) and
the blood-stained standard of the Cross on their shoulders.
They will carry the crucifix in their right hand and the
rosary in their left, and the holy names of Jesus and Mary in
their heart. The simplicity and self-sacrifice of Jesus will be
reflected in their whole behaviour.2
The Mother of God ends her message in La Salette with the
following exhortation:
I address an urgent appeal to the earth; I am calling the
true disciples of the living God who reigns in heaven, of the
sole and genuine Redeemer of mankind; I call on the true
followers of Christ, who became man; I call my children, my
true devotees, who have entrusted themselves entirely to me,
so that I might lead them to my divine Son — the children
that I carry on my arm, so to speak, who live according to my
spirit; finally I am calling on the apostles of the latter times,
the true disciples of Christ, who live in contempt of the world
and of themselves, in poverty and humility, in silence and
in oblivion, in prayer and penance, in purity and unity with
God, in suffering and misunderstood by the world. The time
has come for them to appear and to bring light to the world.
2 St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, paragraphs
56–57, 59.
265
Go and show yourselves to be my beloved children. I am
with you and in you, so that your faith may be a light that
shall enlighten you in these unfortunate days. May the zeal in
you awaken a hunger for the honor and glorification of Jesus
Christ! Fight, O children of light, small in number, but aware
that the age of ages, the end of the end is near.3
The Militia Immaculatæ was founded in this fighting spirit:
The Knight of the Immaculata is not indifferent with
regard to the evil that is spreading through the world, but
rather hates it with all his heart and pursues at every opportunity,
in every place and at every time any sort of evil that is
poisoning souls.4
Now, since the evil spirit is not biding his time but is
working quickly and according to plan, we cannot slacken
for any reason in our work in Niepokalan.w (the City of
the Immaculata); after all, it is a question of souls, of the
conquest of the whole world and of each individual soul for
the Immaculata, of the sanctification of all souls through the
Immaculata, until the end of the ages. It would certainly be
a shame to lose any individual soul.5
The few loyal ones will be especially persecuted by the devil.
An individual in this situation would almost certainly be lost; he could
3 A. de Lassus, op. cit., p. 35.
4 Do ideału MI, Niepokalanów 1996, p. 70.
5 Ibid., p. 77.
266
scarcely withstand the manifold temptations and the cunning of the
serpent. And so the Savior leads his beleaguered children to Mary.
She was given to us for the end times as the victorious general in all
of God’s battles. She bands her loyal children together into a little
army, a spiritual world which is imbued with her presence, her purity,
beauty and power. It is not a question of being enrolled in yet another
sodality, nor of belonging externally to the M.I.; rather everyone who
wants to remain faithful to Christ must consecrate himself to Mary,
in whatever manner, and he must live according to this consecration.
The M.I. places into his hands the means of fighting this battle faithfully:
the example of St. Maximilian, the history of the M.I., but above
all its intrinsic structure, which corresponds so well to the needs of
our time and is also extremely well-suited to modern man.
Ultimately it is a question of the most important thing of all: the
salvation of our souls and those of others. There is hardly any other
movement that helps so much to make it possible to put Christ’s
words into practice: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee
the crown of eternal life!”
“IN THE END MY IMMACULATE HEART WILL TRIUMPH.”
It is revealed, infallible truth that at the end of the ages Christ will
come again to judge the living and the dead, “and His kingdom will
have no end”. This is the final and definitive triumph of our Redeemer,
as St. Paul writes:
Afterwards the end: when He shall have delivered up the
kingdom to God and the Father: when He shall have brought
to naught all principality and power and virtue. For He must
reign, until He hath put all His enemies under His feet. …
267
And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then the
Son also Himself shall be subject unto Him that put all things
under Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:24–28).
But as the morning star precedes the sun, so the triumph of Mary
prepares the way for Christ’s triumph. That is why the first promise
of redemption states: She will crush your head. And the Church in her
liturgy says to Mary: You alone have vanquished all heresies throughout
the world! In Fatima we hear from Mary’s lips the comforting words:
In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph,6 and St. Maximilian gives
expression to this conviction:
Surely it is God’s will that the Immaculata conquer all
souls.7
But when will she reign in the world? When will the
“City of the Immaculata” arise in every land? When will her
Miraculous Medal rest upon every breast and will every heart
throughout the world beat for her? I maintain that there is
no better way of hastening that blessed moment than for
each one of us to strive constantly to live more fully our Total
Consecration to the Immaculata.8
6 Apparition in Fatima on July 13, 1917.
7 Do ideału MI, op. cit., p. 77.
8 Ibid., p. 64.
268
Table of Abbreviations
AAS Acta Apostolicæ Sedis
BMK Błogosławiony Maksymilian Kolbe, wybór pism
[Blessed Maximillian Kolbe, Selected Writings], Warszawa 1973
CDM Fr. J. Domański, Co dzień ze św. Maksymilianem,
Niepokalanów 1994
DS Denzinger-Schoenmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum
et Declarationum
MG J.P. Migne, Patrologiæ cursus completus. Series græca, Paris 1857
RN „Rycerz Niepokalanej“
Allow me to praise you, O Sacred Virgin. Give me strength
against your enemies
But who is her enemy? All that is sullied by sin, which
does not lead to God, which is not love; it is all that comes
from the infernal serpent, who is a lie, and from him
alone: all our faults, then, all our sins. We beseech her to
give us strength against them. In fact, all devotions exist
only for that; that is why there is prayer; for that there
are the holy Sacraments: namely, to obtain the strength
to overcome all obstacles in our path to God, in ever more
ardent love, in becoming like God, uniting with God
Himself.
Just as we came from God through creation, so too we
return to God; all nature speaks to us of that, and wherever
we turn our gaze, we see that an action has an equal and
opposite reaction, as an echo of God’s activity, even of His
activity in creation. On this return path of reaction, a creature
endowed with free will runs into difficulties and
adversities, which God allows in order to increase even more
the impetus with which such creature tends toward Him.
To obtain sufficient strength to achieve that goal, however,
this creature must pray, implore such strength from
50
the One who is the source of all energy and who looks to
the efforts of His own creatures lovingly, wishing that they
sincerely want to come to Him, sparing no assistance toward
them. And even if such creatures, such dear children
of His, happened to stumble along the way, to fall, to be
sullied, to become dirty, this loving Father cannot possibly
sit back before their misfortune. He sends His only begotten
Son, who with His life and His teaching shows them a clear
and safe way. With His Most Holy Blood, which has infinite
value, He washes away the dirt and heals the wounds. And
lest the soul lose hope because of fear, for violating divine
justice, God sends the One who is the personification of His
love, the Bride of the Spirit of motherly love, the Immaculate,
all beautiful, without stain (even though she is the daughter
of a human being), sister of human beings, and appoints her
to distribute generously his mercy toward souls. He appoints
her Mediatrix of the graces merited by His Son, Mother of
grace, Mother of the souls that are reborn through grace.
Spiritual reading:
Chapter: The Task of the Militia Immaculat. in our
Time, p. 262
**********
CHAPTER FOUR
The Task
of the Militia Immaculatæ
in our Time
IN LA SALETTE the Mother of God proclaims to our times:
The precursor of the Antichrist will proceed to battle
with the armies of many peoples against the true Christ,
the sole Redeemer of the world. He will shed much blood
and attempt to destroy the true worship of God, in order
to have himself worshipped as God…. Before this happens,
though, a sort of false peace will prevail on earth; people
will think of nothing but enjoying themselves. The wicked
will indulge in every sort of sin. But the children of Holy
Church, the children of the faith, my genuine followers, will
grow in the love of God and in the virtues that are dearest
to me.… Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of
the Antichrist. The demons of the air will work great sign
263
on earth and in heaven with the Antichrist, and men will
become more and more perverted….1
We are experiencing the Good Friday of the Mystical Bride of Christ,
the Holy Church. As then on Calvary, so too today: Christ is betrayed
and misjudged by most people, only a small remnant is still loyal to
him, a little band gathered around the Mother of Sorrows under the
cross. What does it take to be numbered among her children? What
will they be like, these servants, these slaves, these children of Mary? — asks
St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort. The description that he goes on
to give is a great ideal, which we must first recognize, in order then to
imitate it better and ultimately identify ourselves with it completely.
He writes about how we must conduct ourselves in that decisive
battle:
[T]horoughly purified by the fire of great tribulations and
closely joined to God, [t]hey will carry the gold of love in
their heart, the frankincense of prayer in their mind and the
myrrh of mortification in their body. They will bring to the
poor and the lowly everywhere the sweet fragrance of Jesus,
but they will bring the odour of death to the great, the rich
and the proud of this world (cf. 2 Cor. 2:14–16). They will
be like thunder-clouds flying through the air at the slightest
breath of the Holy Ghost. [They will be] attached to nothing,
surprised at nothing, troubled at nothing…. [T]hey will
be true disciples of Jesus Christ, imitating His poverty, His
humility, His contempt of the world and His love. They will
1 A. de Lassus, Le secret de Notre Dame à La Salette, in: “Action Familiale et
Scolaire”, no. 125, Paris 1996.
264
point out the narrow way to God in pure truth according
to the holy Gospel, and not according to the maxims of the
world… they will not spare or heed or fear any man, however
powerful he may be. They will have the two-edged sword of
the Word of God in their mouths (Hebr 4:12, Eph. 6:17) and
the blood-stained standard of the Cross on their shoulders.
They will carry the crucifix in their right hand and the
rosary in their left, and the holy names of Jesus and Mary in
their heart. The simplicity and self-sacrifice of Jesus will be
reflected in their whole behaviour.2
The Mother of God ends her message in La Salette with the
following exhortation:
I address an urgent appeal to the earth; I am calling the
true disciples of the living God who reigns in heaven, of the
sole and genuine Redeemer of mankind; I call on the true
followers of Christ, who became man; I call my children, my
true devotees, who have entrusted themselves entirely to me,
so that I might lead them to my divine Son — the children
that I carry on my arm, so to speak, who live according to my
spirit; finally I am calling on the apostles of the latter times,
the true disciples of Christ, who live in contempt of the world
and of themselves, in poverty and humility, in silence and
in oblivion, in prayer and penance, in purity and unity with
God, in suffering and misunderstood by the world. The time
has come for them to appear and to bring light to the world.
2 St. Louis-Marie de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, paragraphs
56–57, 59.
265
Go and show yourselves to be my beloved children. I am
with you and in you, so that your faith may be a light that
shall enlighten you in these unfortunate days. May the zeal in
you awaken a hunger for the honor and glorification of Jesus
Christ! Fight, O children of light, small in number, but aware
that the age of ages, the end of the end is near.3
The Militia Immaculatæ was founded in this fighting spirit:
The Knight of the Immaculata is not indifferent with
regard to the evil that is spreading through the world, but
rather hates it with all his heart and pursues at every opportunity,
in every place and at every time any sort of evil that is
poisoning souls.4
Now, since the evil spirit is not biding his time but is
working quickly and according to plan, we cannot slacken
for any reason in our work in Niepokalan.w (the City of
the Immaculata); after all, it is a question of souls, of the
conquest of the whole world and of each individual soul for
the Immaculata, of the sanctification of all souls through the
Immaculata, until the end of the ages. It would certainly be
a shame to lose any individual soul.5
The few loyal ones will be especially persecuted by the devil.
An individual in this situation would almost certainly be lost; he could
3 A. de Lassus, op. cit., p. 35.
4 Do ideału MI, Niepokalanów 1996, p. 70.
5 Ibid., p. 77.
266
scarcely withstand the manifold temptations and the cunning of the
serpent. And so the Savior leads his beleaguered children to Mary.
She was given to us for the end times as the victorious general in all
of God’s battles. She bands her loyal children together into a little
army, a spiritual world which is imbued with her presence, her purity,
beauty and power. It is not a question of being enrolled in yet another
sodality, nor of belonging externally to the M.I.; rather everyone who
wants to remain faithful to Christ must consecrate himself to Mary,
in whatever manner, and he must live according to this consecration.
The M.I. places into his hands the means of fighting this battle faithfully:
the example of St. Maximilian, the history of the M.I., but above
all its intrinsic structure, which corresponds so well to the needs of
our time and is also extremely well-suited to modern man.
Ultimately it is a question of the most important thing of all: the
salvation of our souls and those of others. There is hardly any other
movement that helps so much to make it possible to put Christ’s
words into practice: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee
the crown of eternal life!”
“IN THE END MY IMMACULATE HEART WILL TRIUMPH.”
It is revealed, infallible truth that at the end of the ages Christ will
come again to judge the living and the dead, “and His kingdom will
have no end”. This is the final and definitive triumph of our Redeemer,
as St. Paul writes:
Afterwards the end: when He shall have delivered up the
kingdom to God and the Father: when He shall have brought
to naught all principality and power and virtue. For He must
reign, until He hath put all His enemies under His feet. …
267
And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then the
Son also Himself shall be subject unto Him that put all things
under Him, that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:24–28).
But as the morning star precedes the sun, so the triumph of Mary
prepares the way for Christ’s triumph. That is why the first promise
of redemption states: She will crush your head. And the Church in her
liturgy says to Mary: You alone have vanquished all heresies throughout
the world! In Fatima we hear from Mary’s lips the comforting words:
In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph,6 and St. Maximilian gives
expression to this conviction:
Surely it is God’s will that the Immaculata conquer all
souls.7
But when will she reign in the world? When will the
“City of the Immaculata” arise in every land? When will her
Miraculous Medal rest upon every breast and will every heart
throughout the world beat for her? I maintain that there is
no better way of hastening that blessed moment than for
each one of us to strive constantly to live more fully our Total
Consecration to the Immaculata.8
6 Apparition in Fatima on July 13, 1917.
7 Do ideału MI, op. cit., p. 77.
8 Ibid., p. 64.
268
Table of Abbreviations
AAS Acta Apostolicæ Sedis
BMK Błogosławiony Maksymilian Kolbe, wybór pism
[Blessed Maximillian Kolbe, Selected Writings], Warszawa 1973
CDM Fr. J. Domański, Co dzień ze św. Maksymilianem,
Niepokalanów 1994
DS Denzinger-Schoenmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum
et Declarationum
MG J.P. Migne, Patrologiæ cursus completus. Series græca, Paris 1857
RN „Rycerz Niepokalanej“