THE WARNING: POWER OF GOD

Consecration opens itself totally to the immeasurable power of God coming through the vessel of the Immaculate Heart. She is one of God's secrets, one that we can never fully comprehend: measureless love and grace reach down to us by means of the littlest one, Mary. The lowliest, the poorest, are always the chosen. The most humble and unpretentious are the ones most likely to be singled out by the Lord to be channels of His might. Consecration to the Immaculate Heart lives in this kind of faith. It believes that God can do His most powerful works through someone as simple and weak as Mary, the Virgin of Nazareth. She is not God, but one of us, sharing our human estate and helplessness. Nonetheless, she is filled with God's strength like the stone water-jars at Cana, overflowing by God's power with rich wine for the wedding. She pours out this wine of grace for others. She gives it to us to drink through her love and prayer.

She shares in the mediation of Christ. This should cause us no embarrassment. We members of His Body mediate the same grace of Christ as we baptize, forgive, intercede, love. But in her there does not exist the impediment to sharing God's grace which belongs to us because of our sinfulness. In her case, because she is Immaculate (sinless), the Spirit of Jesus rushes upon us through her Heart with such exuberant fullness that there is nothing beyond the ambit of her influence.

Consecration acknowledges her universal reign with Christ and welcomes it. The person consecrated to the Immaculate Heart has submitted willingly to God's plan to act through Mary, and revels in the joy of having made that decision. Consecration is an act of humility, by which we bend low as Jesus did when He washed His disciples' feet. In the littleness it admits of itself, it opens the human heart to miracles of transformation. It hastens the reformation of hearts the world over. It quickens The Triumph and the Era of Peace. It averts The Punishment by availing itself of God's mercy, coming through the Mother of Mercy. It shortens the time of The Tribulation, even turning it aside. Consecration assures us of salvation and empowers us to intercede more earnestly and effectively for the salvation of sinners. It is a most necessary ingredient of Our Lady's peace-plan, and will hurry on its fulfillment.

[To be continued . . .]