Day 6 or 7 of the 33 Day Consecration to Mary - The Glorious Mundane

Today is day six or seven of the 33 Day Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, depending on whether you were ending on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. My girls and I were driving to school this morning and we were lamenting our being tired and leaving the house in a rush. We aren’t quite back to the school routine after Thanksgiving break. But our routines have always been a little out of order. I’m not very organized. The lamentation came as an interruption because I was making our morning prayers to God at the time. I felt God telling me to invite Him into the conversation, so we would not make plans or vows without Him. And as I talked to the kids, I felt very inspired to bring up Proverbs 31, the poem of the “Woman of Worth.” She does not eat the bread of idleness: she wakes early to prepare breakfast for her household, makes sure her charges are doubly clothed in the cold and goes on to work with wool and flax. These ordinary things of the household and daily life are the things that her husband and children praise her for by the end of the proverb. I considered how Holy are the ordinary things of life, as Jesus consented to live 30 years in an ordinary home life with almost no details recorded in Scripture. He helped with ordinary things and the Father was pleased. How much holiness there is in the mere routine of waking, eating, cleaning, schooling, labor and leisure when it is connected to God. The Father is pleased with our daily effort and wants to be with us. He wants to help us, especially those of us who aren’t very organized! I pray for our ordinary home lives, our families and our earthly work. I pray for the healing of that home life in our youth and for that season in our descendants. May the Lord bring us holiness, order, unity and peace in the mundane, which is also His glorious dominion. Today, we consecrate ourselves, our families, our nation and our Church. A Solemn Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Most Holy Virgin Mary, tender Mother of men, to fulfill the desires of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the request of the Vicar of Your Son on earth, we consecrate ourselves and our families to your Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, O Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, and we recommend to You, all the people of our country and all the world.

Please accept our consecration, dearest Mother, and use us as You wish to accomplish Your designs in the world.

O Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, and Queen of the World, rule over us, together with the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, Our King. Save us from the spreading flood of modern paganism; kindle in our hearts and homes the love of purity, the practice of a virtuous life, an ardent zeal for souls, and a desire to pray the Rosary more faithfully.

We come with confidence to You, O Throne of Grace and Mother of Fair Love. Inflame us with the same Divine Fire which has inflamed Your own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Make our hearts and homes Your shrine, and through us, make the Heart of Jesus, together with your rule, triumph in every heart and home.

Amen. --Venerable Pope Pius XI