“Mary has produced, together with the Holy Ghost, the greatest thing which has been or ever will be—a God-Man; and she will consequently produce the greatest saints that there will be in the end of time.”

― Saint Louis de Montfort

St. Louis Marie Gringon de Montfort May have penned the most famous and possibly rigorous consecration to Our Lady, but over the last decade a number of guided preparations for consecration have become available. Each is similar in structure, meditations and prayers to seed the field for a period before consecration is made, but each is also very different as well. Where De Montfort gives us a primarily prayerful option, Aquinas leans more theological. Kolbe draws from his works, walking a middle ground, eminently practical but also, at the same time, deeply contemplative. Both the Morning Glory text and the Consecration for children draw from the biographies of the saints for further inspiration. 

Having already made the De Montfort consecration, I want to go back through in a slower more deliberate manner and explore the preparation in a way that I didn’t have time to during my first time through. As anyone who has made a consecration can tell you, after the first week, you can feel like you’ve wandered to the ocean. The prayers permeate your day and the work of beginning to reestablish yourself with a new Marian character can easily overwhelm.

For this project, I am going to use five (6) texts. I will be looking at a side by side of the original translation by Reverend Frederick William Faber, D.D and Scott L Smith’s recent translation.

Next I’ll look at Fr. Michael Gaitley’s 33 Days to Morning Glory.

The final 33 day preparation will be Marian Consecration for Children by Carrie Gress

And I will also take a look at two 9 day preparations, one, recently published based on Saint Thomas Aquinas by Fr. Gregory Pine and Matt Fradd. And the other based on Saint Maximilian Kolbe by Fr. Anselm Romb.

I plan to work through all of these books side by side, giving each book it’s own day/post. The way this works, about every week and a half, we will visit Saints Kolbe and Aquinas, while moving through the other three (4) books together in turn.

I’ve image linked the books above. It would be helpful to look into copies of the 4 non-Montfort consecrations. to follow along with. Of course, there are many free versions of the original translation of True Devotion to Mary available, and the Preparation for Total Consecration from that title is easily found online.