6nd Stage - Renewing one's baptism by consecrating oneself to the Heart of Jesus
To renew one's baptism by consecrating oneself to the Heart of Jesus
The previous step reminded us that Jesus is the consecrated one and that he brings us into his consecration through baptism. This sixth step shows that consecration to the Heart of Jesus is a renewal of this baptismal consecration.
A consecration is the act by which a person or community gives themselves totally and irrevocably to God. For a baptised person, it corresponds to the solemn and voluntary renewal of their baptismal consecration.
To consecrate oneself to the Heart of Jesus is to accept God's love for us and for our families. It is to place Jesus at the centre of our lives and thus respond to God's love. It is to wish to be taught by his Heart: «Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.» (Mt 11:28-29). Thus, this act is not a trivial or magical one. It is important to prepare for it, to understand what it entails, and to grasp its implications. This is the purpose of this course.
Why devote yourself to the Heart of Jesus?
01 Rediscover the purity of our baptism
Through baptism, Christians are bound and consecrated to Jesus, our Saviour and Lord of our entire lives. The primary cause of the corruption of the Christian life comes from the forgetting and ignorance of these commitments made at baptism. However, we experience ourselves as weak and changeable. The purity of this first and foundational consecration is altered by our sins and frailties, like a spring that has become sandy.
The way to remedy this situation is to remember the obligations undertaken at baptism and to renew the promises of holy baptism. It is necessary for us, at various moments in our lives, to receive a «reminder». Thus, every year, we renew the promises of our baptism during the Easter Vigil.
Consecration to the Heart of Jesus is an opportunity for us to rediscover the purity and strength of our baptismal consecration. It is a new stage in our fidelity to our baptism. It is what the Church calls a pious exercise, in the same way as the rosary or the Stations of the Cross, for example.
02 Return love for love
The message of Paray can be summarised as a call to return love for love to the Lord who has loved us so much and who receives only ingratitude and indifference from us. The Lord thirsts for our love, as he told Saint Margaret Mary: «I thirst, but with such an intense thirst, to be loved in the Blessed Sacrament!»
Consecration is an offering of ourselves in loving response to that love which precedes us, in a more radical giving of ourselves to the Lord and to our brothers. «God has loved me too much not to spare myself with him from now on,» said Saint Claude La Colombière, perfectly summarising what consecration is.
03 The Fate of the Apostles of the Heart of Jesus
This act is profoundly missionary and aims to make us fervent apostles of the gentleness, humility, and compassion of the Heart of Jesus, to announce to the world how much it is loved. We will have the opportunity to return to this.
The Virgin Mary, sublime model of consecration
Marie is the consecrated one par excellence
In the footsteps of her Son, Mary is the consecrated woman par excellence, by virtue of two fundamental stages in her life given entirely to God. Firstly, through the gift of her Immaculate Conception, she was consecrated from the very first moment of her existence. Then, in the act of free faith that she made at the Annunciation - her fiat - she confirmed this consecration by responding to the Angel's invitation: «I am the handmaid of the Lord». (Luke 1, 38). This assent to God's call would be fully confirmed at the death of her Son on the Cross, where she repeated her fiat in the silence of her invisibly pierced heart.
This is why we frequently consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of his Mother. Consecrating ourselves to Mary is the best way to consecrate ourselves to Jesus. To renew one's consecration to Jesus, Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Monfort suggests going through the most perfect of all means, which is the Blessed Virgin, since it is through her that Jesus wanted to come to us. He explained that «perfect consecration to Jesus Christ is nothing other than a perfect and complete consecration of oneself to the Blessed Virgin, in other words a perfect renewal of the vows and promises of holy baptism». (120)
So, to summarise, «we consecrate ourselves all together to the most holy Virgin and to Jesus Christ. To the most holy Virgin as the perfect means that Jesus Christ has chosen to unite Himself to us and us to Him. And to Our Lord as our ultimate end, to whom we owe all that we are as our Redeemer and our God.» (TVD 125)
In the next step, we are entering the third part of our journey by offering a simple way to live consecration.
