Consecration to Mary, under various forms, is considered an essential part of the charism, not only of the Montfortans, but also of the Marianists, of the Claretians and of various other religious institutes.58 It is also used in many associations such as the “Legion of Mary”, the “Militia of the Immaculate”, the “World Apostolate of Fatima”, the “Mary Queen of Hearts” Association and in the Marian Congregations themselves.
“With the election of John Paul II to the Pontificate and his renewed acts of consecration of individual churches and nations, of the universal Church and of the whole world (1981, 1982, 1984)” observes the Montfortan Father Stefano De Fiores “consecration/entrusting to Mary becomes a theological theme without frontiers.”59
Although it has always been part of the tradition of the Church, consecration to Mary has however suffered misunderstandings of various kinds. Two types of criticism converge in the opposition to this consecration: the first regards its very object, the most Holy Virgin, to whom an improper cult of “latria” would be rendered60; the second criticism regards the method of consecration, understood, according to the Montfortian perspective, as “slavery” to Our Lady.
The first point is clearly refuted by St Louis Marie de Montfort himself: all devotions must be directed towards Christ as the end and centre of all things, “otherwise they would be false and misleading”.61 It is obvious, he explains, that consecration to Mary also can have no other end than Christ. “If then” says de Montfort “we are establishing sound devotion to Our Blessed Lady, it is only in order to establish devotion to Our Lord more perfectly.”62 It is not therefore a question of a cult of “latria”, but of a legitimate cult of “hyperdulia”. “Theology” in fact “tells us that we must have for Mary not only a dulia cult, such as that owed to the saints, but a hyperdulia cult, which comes immediately after the latria cult, reserved for God and the divine Humanity of the Saviour.”63
It is above all the second point, regarding the idea of “slavery”,64 that does however offend modern sensitivity, because it expresses a relation of dependency and antithetical subjection to that idea of “liberation” and self-determination, the leitmotiv of the progressivist mentality.65 Modern man cannot imagine that there is anyone who wishes to find his freedom in the dependence on another. “Nobody wishes to be a slave anymore, not even a slave of love”,66 objects a famous progressivist theologian.
And yet the saints and the Popes, from the ninth century to present, took on the title of Servus servorum Dei in official acts,67 who were honoured to consecrate themselves as slaves to Jesus Christ, to the Most Holy Virgin and to their neighbour.68 “The Lord has made me a slave of the people of Hippo”, wrote St Augustine;69 while St John Chrysostom affirmed: “If he who was in the image of God, humbled himself, taking the image of a slave to save slaves, what is there to wonder at if I, who am only a slave, make myself a slave of my companions of slavery?”70
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, in a series of articles that appeared in Folha de S. Paulo formulated the problem with the usual clarity, bringing the terms of “slavery” and “freedom” back to their authentic meaning71:
“One used to say of a man who fulfilled his duties that he was a ‘slave of duty’. Actually he was a man at the climax of his freedom, who understood with a completely personal act the roads that he should follow; decided with manly force to follow them; and conquered the assault of disorderly passions that tried to blind him, to soften his resolve and to block the way he had freely chosen. The man who, having obtained this supreme victory, continued with a strong step in the right way, was free.
“‘Slave’, on the contrary, was he who allowed himself be drawn along by disorderly passions, towards that which his reason did not approve of, nor his will had chosen. These authentic losers were called ‘slaves of vice’. They had, through slavery to vice, ‘freed’ themselves from the healthy dominion of reason. (…) Today everything has been reversed. As the model of a ‘free’ man we take the hippie with a flower in his hand, who wanders without a fixed abode and without a goal, or else the hippie who, with a bomb in hand, sows terror as he pleases. Contrarily, we consider a person to be bound or not free if he obeys the laws of God and of men.
“In the current situation, ‘free’ is the man whom the law authorizes to buy the drugs he wants, to use them as he pleases, and finally…to become their slave. And the law that forbids man to become a slave of drugs is tyrannical, enslaving.
“Again in this cross-eyed perspective, made of inversions of values, enslaving is the religious vow, through which, in full consciousness and freedom, the monk devotes himself, renouncing any step back, to the service, full of self-sacrifice, of the highest Christian ideals. To defend this free decision from the tyranny of one’s weakness, the monk, in this act, subjects himself to the authority of the watchful superiors. One who thus binds himself, to preserve himself free from evil passions, is today likely to be described as a cowardly slave. It is as if the superior put a yoke on him that would limit his will … when, on the contrary, the superior serves as a guide for the elevated souls who aspire, freely and courageously — without giving in to the dangerous vertigo of the heights — to climb up to the top of the ladder of supreme ideals.
“So, for some, ‘free’ is he who, with clouded reason and broken will, driven by the madness of his senses, has the chance to voluptuously slip on the slide of bad habits. And ‘slave’ is he who bends to his reason, conquers his passions with the strength of his will, obeys divine and human laws, and puts order into practice.
“Above all, ‘slave’ in this erroneous perspective is he who, to guarantee his freedom more completely, freely chooses to subject himself to authorities who may guide him towards the goal that he wants to reach. It is to this point that today’s opinion, filled with Freudism, brings us!”72
In what sense can we conjugate the word “love” to that slavery which seems to contradict the former in as much as it is a hateful imposition of one will over another?
“In good philosophy” explains Plinio Corrêa de Oliviera again “‘love’ is the act with which the will freely wants something. Thus, even in current language, ‘will’ and ‘love’ are words that can be used in the same sense. ‘Slavery of love’ is the noble climax of the act with which someone gives himself freely to an ideal, a cause. Or, sometimes, he binds himself to another.
“Sacred affection and the duties of marriage have something that binds, that links, that ennobles. In Spanish, handcuffs are called esposas, ‘spouses’. The metaphor makes us smile, and it may make supporters of divorce shiver. It in fact alludes to the indissolubility. In Portuguese and in Italian, we speak of the marriage ‘bond’. More binding than the marriage state is that of the priesthood. And, in a certain sense, the religious state is even more so. The higher the state freely chosen, the stronger the bond and the more authentic the freedom.”73
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira recalls how the consecration of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort is of a wonderful radicality. It not only sacrifices the material goods of man, but even the merit of his good works and prayers, his life, his body and his soul. It has no limits, because the slave, by definition, has nothing of his own, he belongs wholly to his master. Our Lady obtains in exchange for her “slave of love” special divine graces that enlighten his intelligence and strengthen his will.
“In exchange for this consecration, Our Lady acts in the innermost being of her slave in a marvellous way, establishing an incomparable union with him.
“The fruits of this union will be seen in the Apostles of the latter days, whose moral profile is outlined by the saint with lines of fire in his famous Prayer for Missionaries. To this end he uses a language of apocalyptic greatness, in which all the fire of a John the Baptist, all the preaching power of a John the Evangelist and all the zeal of a Paul of Tarsus seem to live again.
“The extraordinary men who will fight against the devil, for the Reign of Mary, by gloriously leading until the end of time the struggle against the devil, the world and the flesh, are described by St Louis as magnificent models who invite to the perfect slavery to Our Lady all those who, in the current dark days, fight in the ranks of the Counter- Revolution.”74
Notes:
58. On the relationship of the consecration to Mary of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort and that of St Maximilian Kolbe, cf. Father Antonio M. Di Monda O.F.M. CONV., La consacrazione a Maria, Naples, Milizia dell’Immacolata, 1968.
59. Stefano De Fiores M.M., Maria nella teologia contemporanea, (Rome, Centro “Madre della Chiesa”, 1987), p. 314-15. Cf. also A. Rivera, “Boletín bibliográfico de la consagración a la Virgen”, Ephemerides Mariologicae, vol. 34, 1984, pp. 125-33.
60. “A consecration in the real sense of the word — objects for example the Progressivist theologian Juan Alfaro — is only made to a divine Person because consecration is an act of latria, whose final end can only be God” (J. Alfaro, Il cristocentrismo della consacrazione a Maria nella congregazione mariana, (Rome, Stella Matutina, 1962), p. 21.
61. St M. Grignion de Montfort, A treatise on true devotion, no. 61.
62. Ibid, no. 62.
63. R. Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., Vita spirituale, p. 254.
64. The doctrine of the Church on slavery is expressed in the phrase of St Paul: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave not free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”, (Gal. 3:28). “The house of every man is a city — adds St John Chrysostom — and, in it there is a hierarchy: the husband has power over the wife, the wife over the slaves, the slaves over their wives, the men and women over their children” in Epistula ad Ephesios, cit. in Paul Allard, Les esclaves chrétiens depuis les premiers temps de l’Eglise jusqu’à la fin de la domination romaine en Occident, (Paris, Didier et C., 1876), p. 279.
65. On slavery and Christian morals: Pietro Palazzini, entry Schiavitù, in EC, XI (1953), col. 58; Viktor Cathrein, S.J., Filosofia morale, It. tr. (Florence, Libreria Editrice Fiorentina, 1920), vol. II, pp. 475-90.
66. Edward Schillebeeckx, Maria Madre della Redenzione, It. tr. (Catania, Edizioni Paoline, 1965), p. 142.
67. A. Pietro Frutaz, Servus Servorum Dei, in EC, vol. XI (1953), coll. 420-2. St Gregory the Great was the first pope to make widespread use of this title. cf. Paolo Diacono, Vita S. Gregorii, in PL, vol. 75, p. 87.
68. S. L. M. Grignion di Montfort, A treatise on true devotion, no. 135, but also Imitation of Christ, book III, chap. X.
69. P. Allard, Les esclaves chrétiens, p. 242.
70. St John Chrystomom, De mutatione nominum, Homilia II, 1, 1 cit. in P. Allard, Les esclaves chrétiens, pp. 242-3. According to Father Garrigou-Lagrange, “if in the world there are slaves of human respect, of ambition, of money and of other more shameful passions, fortunately there are also slaves of a promise made, of conscience and of duty. Holy slavery belongs to this last class. We have here a living metaphor that is the opposite to the slavery of sin” (R. Garrigou-Lagrange O.P., La Mère du Sauveur et notre vie intérieure, (Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1975), appendix IV.
71. The teaching of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira here reflects that of Leo III, in the encyclical Libertas of 20 June 1888 (in IP, vol. VI, La pace interna delle nazioni, pp. 143-76) and anticipates that of John Paul II, in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor of 6 August 1993.
72. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “Obedecer para ser livre”, Folha de S. Paulo, 20 September 1980.
73. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, ibid, “By calling all men to the summits of freedom of the ‘slavery of love,’ St Louis de Montfort does so in such prudent terms as to leave the field free for important nuances. His ‘slavery of love’, so full of particular significance for the people bound by a vow to the religious state, can be equally practised by secular priests and the laity. In fact, contrary to religious vows that are binding for a certain period or for one’s whole life, the ‘slave of love’ can leave this very elevated position at any time, without ipso facto committing a sin. And, whereas the religious who disobeys commits a sin, the lay ‘slave of love’ commits no sin by the simple fact of contradicting in some way the total generosity of the gift that he has made. Having said this, the lay person maintains this position of slave with a free act, implicitly or explicitly repeated every day, or better at every instant” (ibid).
74. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Prologue to the Argentine edition of Revolution and Counter-Revolution, pp. 33-4.