The Different Consecrations

To consecrate is the act of totally dedicating a person, an object, or a Good, by devoting them to the service of God.

Many people, women and men, consecrate their lives to God. Some receive the sacrament of consecration, others pronounce religious vows, others, like many mystics, consecrate their lives in a particular and personal act. This is the case of Maria Valtorta.

This does not mean that other faithful (the laity) are not consecrated, quite the opposite: by virtue of their Baptism and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, they receive "the admirable vocation" to consecrate to God "the world itself," through "all their activities, their prayers and apostolic endeavors, their conjugal and family life, their daily labors, their spiritual and corporeal relaxations, if they are lived in the Spirit of God, and even the trials of life, provided they are patiently endured".

The figures encountered in The Gospel as Revealed to Me often humbly bear witness to this life lived in the Spirit of God. However, others will have to live it more intensely, answering their Call and vocation.

• Annaleah, a young fiancée saved from death by Jesus, discovers the best on this occasion: "to live like the Angels." She becomes the first of the consecrated virgins, soon followed by a few others.

• Johanna of Chuza will live her life as wife and mother with a husband more concerned about his career than his spiritual destiny and the happiness of his Family.
• Matthias, the apostle chosen by the Holy Spirit in place of Judas, feels overwhelmed with compassion for Jesus about to live His Sacrifice and offers himself in following and imitating Christ.
• Syntyche, a runaway slave, makes herself a servant of Christ and asks Him to consecrate her life to this, the prelude to all those who devote themselves to the Doctrine of Christ and to those who follow Him, out of love for Him.

No one asks for their consecration lightly, because it is a contract made with God.

Consecrations in The Gospel as Revealed to Me

Annaleah, the first of the consecrated virgins

She is 16 years old and already engaged to Samuel of Jerusalem. She is healed by Jesus of a rapidly advancing tuberculosis that should have taken her quickly. It is the apostle John who acted as intercessor. This experience, which transforms Annaleah, makes her seek Jesus whom she finds again in Nazareth. She is first welcomed by the Virgin Mary who introduces her to Jesus.

"But what do you want exactly? What can I do for you?»

«Lord, I would like… I would like a great thing. And only You, the Donor of life and health, can give it to me, because I think that what You can give, You can also take away… I would like You to take the life You gave me, during the year of my vow, before it ends…»

«Why? Are you not grateful to God for the life you received?»

«So grateful! Infinitely! But for one thing only: because by living by His grace and by Your miracle I have understood what is best.»

«Which is?»

«Which is to live like angels. As Your Mother, my Lord… as You live… as Your John lives… The three lilies, the three white flames, the three beatitudes of the earth, my Lord. Yes. Because I think that it is a beatitude to possess God and God is possessed by the pure. I believe that he who is pure is a Heaven with God in its centre and the angels around… Oh! My Lord! That is what I would like… Little have I heard of what You, Your Mother, the disciple and Isaac have said. Neither have I approached anyone else who could tell me Your words. But I feel as if my soul heard You all the time and You were its Master… I have told You everything, my Lord…»

«Annaleah, you are asking for very much and are giving very much… Daughter: you have understood God and the perfection to which a creature may rise to be like the Most Pure and to please the Most Pure.»"

Annaleah, after making her vow, will die on Palm Sunday during Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem. She will not see the Passion.

The Consecrated Virgins, unthinkable in Antiquity where Woman was mother and procreator, are born with Christianity and are present from apostolic times. As Annaleah indicates, they are inspired by the example of the Virgin Mary.

Johanna, wife of Chuza, Herod's steward

Healed of tuberculosis, Johanna responds to Jesus who asks what she wishes most.

«Yes, I bless you. What else shall I do for you?»

«Nothing, Lord. Beside loving me and allowing me to love You.»

«And would you not like to have a child?»

«Oh! a child!… Do as You please, Lord. I leave everything to You: my past, my present and my future. I owe You everything and I give You everything. Give Your servant what You know is better.»

This act of confident abandonment from Johanna to Christ may seem very brief but it unfolds all its depth in that of Saint Charles of Foucauld (1858-1916) which is similar:

My Father, I abandon myself to you, do with me what pleases you. Whatever you do with me, I thank you. I am ready for everything, I accept everything, provided that your will be done in me, in all your creatures, I desire nothing else, my God. I place my soul into your hands. I give it to you, my God, with all the love of my heart, because I love you, and because it is a need of love to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands without measure, with infinite trust because you are my Father.

These acts of confident abandonment are indeed a constant in the history of the Church. Saint John Paul II, for example, had as his motto Totus Tuus (Totally Yours), a consecration to the Virgin Mary taken from that of St Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort.

Matthias, the future apostle

The shepherds contemplate the ecstasy of Jesus returned to the manger of His birth. The Passion is very near.

"Most High God, God and Father of Your people, Who accept and consecrate hearts and altars and sacrifice the victims pleasing to You, let Your will descend like fire and consume me as a victim with Christ, like Christ, and for Christ, Your Son and Your Messiah, my God and Master. I implore You. Hear my prayer"

By offering himself "as a victim with Christ, like Christ, and for Christ," Matthias asks to unite himself to the Passion of Christ lived for the redemption of sinful men. It is the beginning of the long line of "victim souls" or "hosts" to which belong Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Maria Valtorta. It is also said that these souls offer themselves as a "holocaust." This word finds its origin in the sacrifices of Judaism during which animals were completely consumed by fire for the purpose of atoning for the sins of an individual or the entire people. By His Passion, Christ offered Himself as a victim for the definitive atonement of the sins of all humanity.

Christ being the only Redeemer, this is not substitution but an association as Saint Paul expresses it.

Syntyche, the runaway slave

Syntyche and John of Endor, persecuted, leave to found the Christian community of Antioch. It is the time of the Acts of God.

Syntyche in the meantime kneels at Jesus’ feet saying:

«Bless me, consecrate me, that I may be fortified. Lord, Saviour and King, I, here, in the presence of Your Mother, swear and profess that I will follow Your doctrine and serve You until I breathe my last. I swear and profess that I will devote myself to Your doctrine and its followers for Your sake, my Master and Saviour. I swear and profess that there will be no other purpose in my life and that everything that is world and flesh is definitely dead, as far as I am concerned, whilst, with the help of God and of the prayers of Your Mother, I hope to defeat the Demon so that he may not lead me into error and I may not be condemned at the hour of Your Judgement. I swear and profess that allurements and threats will not bend me and I will remember everything, unless God allows otherwise. But I hope in Him and I believe in His bounty, whereby I am sure that He will not leave me at the mercy of obscure powers, stronger than my own. Consecrate Your servant, O Lord, that she may be protected from the snares of every enemy.»

Jesus lays His hands on her head, as also priests do, and prays over her.

Syntyche is consecrated by Jesus laying on His hands. She becomes a servant of Christ to whom she devotes her life by pronouncing, unknowingly, the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience which seemed to her to flow from the teachings she had heard. Syntyche (Syntychè) is mentioned in Saint Paul's letter to the Philippians as a prominent Christian. He testifies that both struggled with him for the proclamation of the Gospel.   

The Consecrations of Maria Valtorta

Her Lay Vocation

Although Maria Valtorta was a Franciscan tertiary and then a tertiary of the Servants of Mary, she was not a religious sister because she was called to another vocation. The sisters of Monza, intrigued by the visible transformation produced by her last spiritual retreat on this 16-year-old girl, asked her about her vocation:

"[...] the Superior particularly asked the Sister who knew best how to speak to me to enquire as to whether I intended to become a Sister as well. I undeceived her at once. Oh, it would have been sweet to take up that way, to place myself under the shelter of Mary forever, under her mantle, and let life glide by in that fashion...! But it was not my way or the life where God wanted me. I knew this clearly. The world was to be my arena of combat. I did not know what the combat would be, but I knew it must take place in the world and not in the cloister."

Although she was not a religious sister, she nevertheless had her "divine enclosure". It was her sickbed where she was nailed until her death and where she received the outpouring of revelations from Heaven.

1925; the first consecration

On January 28, 1925, she received The Story of a Soul which she had ordered with her meager savings. She began to read the work in its entirety. It was a revelation:

"My soul was melting with love. I had found the harpist capable of making the strings of my spirit resound. [...] I decided to make a very good confession and a fervent Communion, even better than usual, and then pronounce my act of offering."

She did so on Sunday, June 7, 1925, feast of The Holy Trinity, exactly thirty years after Saint Thérèse did the same on that same solemnity. The content of this consecration must have been similar to that of little Thérèse, since Maria did not leave us a text of it. She thus offered herself as a "victim of holocaust to Merciful Love" in order to live "in an act of perfect love." From that day, "sorrows have come raining down" upon Maria, but she regrets nothing.

1931: the second consecration

In 1931, aged 35, she made a new act of offering, not only to "Merciful Love" as previously, but also to "Divine Justice." She did so with apprehension because this consecration was not without consequences.

In her Act of offering for sinners and souls who have lost confidence in Mercy, Sister Faustina perfectly evokes the type of counterpart:

"This offering consists in accepting with complete submission to the divine will all the sufferings, and fears, and anxieties with which sinners are filled, and in exchange, I give them all the Consolations that I have in my soul, which flow from my intimacy with God. In a word, I offer everything for them: holy masses, holy communions, penances and mortifications, prayers. I am not afraid of blows—the blows of divine justice—because I am united to Jesus."

This coexistence of pain with union to God expressed here by St. Faustina is found in the beatific vision of Stephen undergoing his martyrdom by stoning. It is the same union to God expressed by Maria Valtorta in her Hymn to love and suffering. This coexistence of two realities is explained, in the work of Maria Valtorta, by the tripartition of man into body/soul/spirit already expressed by St Paul.

Layperson (laic) living in the world but following the rules of life of a particular religious order.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992).