Spiritual Direction: Why Two Consecrations? What Is This All About?

The Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima (1917) asked that the Roman Pontiff consecrate Russia to her immaculate heart. From Fatima.org:

“I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart…If people attend to My requests, Russia will be converted and the world will have peace.”

In the apparition of July 13, Our Lady warned the three seers that if people did not stop offending God, He would punish the world “by means of war, hunger and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father,” using Russia as His chosen instrument of chastisement. She told the children that “to prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart” and promised that, by this single public act, Russia would be converted and peace would be given to the world.

The Mother of God cautioned that if Her requests were not granted, “Russia will spread its errors throughout the world, raising up wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer and various nations will be annihilated.”

Pope Saint John Paul II consecrated Russia to the immaculate heart of Mary in 1984. Even though this was not an explicit consecration of Russia, since Russia was not mentioned per se, the Pope later confirmed that Russia was in his intention. Sr. Lucia of Fatima later stated that this consecration was accepted by Heaven. In the latter half of the 1980’s, Russia underwent a process of change, leading to a democratic government beginning with the election of Boris Yeltsin in 1991, and the end of the Soviet Union (USSR) on the exact date of Christmas 1991. The dissolution of the USSR resulted in 14 independent nations taking their place among the nations of the world, alongside the nation of Russia.

1984 Consecration 

Before the Holy Year Mass for Families, with the Statue of Our Lady of Fatima, brought from Fatima to Rome for this purpose by the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima next to the main altar, the Holy Father gave an introduction, also in English, where he said in part:

"....In remembrance of the ‘Fiat’ uttered by her at the moment of the Annunciation, I will today entrust to her Immaculate Heart—in spiritual union with all the bishops of the world—all individuals and peoples, repeating in substance the act that I made at Fatima on May 13, 1982. ..."

ACT OF CONSECRATION

Immediately after the Holy Year Mass for Families:

1. "We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God".

As we utter the words of this antiphon with which the Church of Christ has prayed for centuries, we find ourselves today before you, Mother, in the Jubilee Year of the Redemption.

We find ourselves united with all the pastors of the Church in a particular bond whereby we constitute a body and a college, just as by Christ’s wish the Apostles constituted a body and college with Peter.

In the bond of this union, we utter the words of the present Act, in which we wish to include, once more, the Church’s hopes and anxieties for the modern world.

Forty years ago and again ten years later, your servant Pope Pius XII, having before his eyes the painful experiences of the human family, entrusted and consecrated to your Immaculate Heart the whole world, especially the peoples for which by reason of their situation you have particular love and solicitude.

This world of individuals and nations we too have before our eyes today: the world of the second millennium that is drawing to a close, the modern world, our world!

The Church, mindful of the Lord’s words: "Go... and make disciples of all nations... and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:19-20), has, at the Second Vatican Council, given fresh life to her awareness of her mission in this world.

And therefore, O Mother of individuals and peoples, you who know all their sufferings and their hopes, you who have a mother’s awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace, with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples.

In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated.

"We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God": despise not our petitions in our necessities.

2. Behold, as we stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your Immaculate Heart, we desire, together with the whole Church, to unite ourselves with the consecration which, for love of us, your Son made of himself to the Father: "For their sake", he said, "I consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the truth" (Jn 17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in this his consecration for the world and for the human race, which, in his divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure reparation.

The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in our times, in the heart of man and in his history.

How deeply we feel the need for the consecration of humanity and the world—our modern world—in union with Christ himself! For the redeeming work of Christ must be shared in by the world through the Church.

The present year of the Redemption shows this: the special Jubilee of the whole Church.

Above all creatures, may you be blessed, you, the Handmaid of the Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine call!

Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of your Son!

Mother of the Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of faith, hope and love! Enlighten especially the peoples whose consecration and entrustment by us you are awaiting. Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world.

3. In entrusting to you, oh Mother, the world, all individuals and peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world, placing it in your motherly Heart.

Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!

From famine and war,

deliver us.

From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us.

From sins against the life of man from its very beginning,

deliver us.

From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God,

deliver us.

From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international,

deliver us.

From readiness to trample on the commandments of God,

deliver us.

From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God,

deliver us.

From the loss of awareness of good and evil,

deliver us.

From sins against the Holy Spirit,

deliver us, deliver us.

From sins against the Holy Spirit,

deliver us, deliver us. (sic)

Accept, Oh Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies.

Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the "sin of the world", in all its manifestations.

Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!

Pope’s prayer to Our Lady of Fatima

In the afternoon of March 25, 1984, inside the Vatican Basilica and before the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima, before it was taken to the Basilica of St. John Lateran for an all-night vigil, the Holy Father prayed as follows:

Brothers and Sisters.

Before this Marian stay in St. Peter’s Basilica comes to an end, allow me to say a word of thanks. I want to thank you, Mother of Christ, Our Lady of Fatima, who have given us this honor today, the third Sunday of Lent, the day of the Jubilee for families; you who have paid us this visit on a day so full of our faith and our hope. As Bishop of Rome I want to than you, Mother of Christ, Our Lady of Fatima, for this visit of yours in St. Peter’s Basilica on a day when this basilica and this square, filled with pilgrims for the Holy Year of the Redemption, have been able to attend a solemn, deeply felt, I would say suffered, act of entrustment, an act addressed to your Immaculate Heart and, in your Immaculate Heart, addressed to your Son, the Redeemer of the world, the Redeemer of man. We rely on this Immaculate Heart of yours, a mother’s Heart, because in this Heart of yours you carried him as his mother. We rely on this mother’s Heart of yours because with this Heart you embrace all his disciples, indeed all individuals.

So today we have wanted to entrust the fate of the world, of individuals, of peoples, to your Immaculate Heart in order to arrive at the very center of the mystery of Redemption, the mystery that is stronger than all the sins of man and of the world, the mystery in which one can conquer sin in its various forms, in which one can begin, can inaugurate, a new world. And we so need this new world because we experience more and more that the old world, the world of sin, oppresses us, frightens us, brings us various forms of injustice; many times under the name of justice it brings us injustice.

So we have wanted to choose this Sunday, the third Sunday of Lent of the year 1984, still within the Holy Year of the Redemption, for the act of entrusting, of consecrating the world, the great human family, all peoples, especially those in such need of this consecration, this entrustment. All this we have been able to do according to our poor human ability, in the dimension of your motherly concern.

Our Lady of Fatima, to whom we are so devoted and so grateful, indeed in the most intimate and personal sense, you had wanted to pay us a visit on this day that is so important here in Rome. How grateful we are for this! How thankful we are for this! What grace you have given us with this presence of yours which I would say is personal. And our gratitude is extended to the guardian of your sanctuary in Fatima, our beloved brother in the episcopate, the bishop of Leiria-Fatima. We are grateful to him for bringing us the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. We are all grateful, all Romans, above all the Bishop of Rome. We are so grateful for this visit of the statue of Fatima here in our own surroundings: first in the Pauline Chapel of the Vatican, then in my private chapel, then in St. Peter’s Square during the great celebration, and finally in this basilica. Now in this basilica there comes to an end the visit of Our Lady of Fatima who, to continue her presence in Rome, will go to the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, St. John Lateran, and then, according to what I have learned, to the Sanctuary of Divine Love. Excuse us, O Madonna, excuse us, Oh Mother of Jesus, if we have to meet in this Rome in various places, in different sites. We must open, we want to open, the grace of your presence to the various locales of this large city and diocese of the Pope. I thank you for everything, and I thank you in the name of everyone, especially in the name of the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, of my brothers in the episcopate, of all the priests, of the whole People of God in this city and in this Church.

I kiss your feet for wanting to direct your steps to us.

May I be permitted, Oh Mary, Our Lady of Fatima, to give again in your presence a Blessing to all present and to the whole Church of Rome.

2022 Consecration 

ACT OF CONSECRATION TO THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

O Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, in this time of trial we turn to you.  As our Mother, you love us and know us: no concern of our hearts is hidden from you.  Mother of mercy, how often we have experienced your watchful care and your peaceful presence!  You never cease to guide us to Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Yet we have strayed from that path of peace.  We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars.  We have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations.  We have betrayed peoples’ dreams of peace and the hopes of the young.  We grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their interests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns.  We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons.  We stopped being our neighbor’s keepers and stewards of our common home.  We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war and by our sins, we have broken the heart of our heavenly Father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters.  We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves.  Now with shame, we cry out: Forgive us, Lord!

Holy Mother, amid the misery of our sinfulness, amid our struggles and weaknesses, amid the mystery of iniquity that is evil and war, you remind us that God never abandons us, but continues to look upon us with love, ever ready to forgive us and raise us up to new life.  He has given you to us and made your Immaculate Heart a refuge for the Church and for all humanity.  By God’s gracious will, you are ever with us; even in the most troubled moments of our history, you are there to guide us with tender love.

We now turn to you and knock at the door of your heart.  We are your beloved children.  In every age you make yourself known to us, calling us to conversion.  At this dark hour, help us and grant us your comfort.  Say to us once more: “Am I not here, I who am your Mother?”  You are able to untie the knots of our hearts and of our times.  In you, we place our trust.  We are confident that, especially in moments of trial, you will not be deaf to our supplication and will come to our aid.

That is what you did at Cana in Galilee when you interceded with Jesus and he worked the first of his signs.  To preserve the joy of the wedding feast, you said to him: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3).  Now, O Mother, repeat those words and that prayer, for in our own day we have run out of the wine of hope, joy has fled, fraternity has faded.  We have forgotten our humanity and squandered the gift of peace.  We opened our hearts to violence and destructiveness.  How greatly we need your maternal help!

Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer.

Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.

Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation.

Queen of Heaven, restore God’s peace to the world.

Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness.

Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons.

Queen of the Rosary, make us realize our need to pray and to love.

Queen of the Human Family, show people the path of fraternity.

Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world.

O Mother, may your sorrowful plea stir our hardened hearts.  May the tears you shed for us make this valley parched by our hatred blossom anew.  Amid the thunder of weapons, may your prayer turn our thoughts to peace.  May your maternal touch soothe those who suffer and flee from the rain of bombs.  May your motherly embrace comfort those forced to leave their homes and their native land.  May your Sorrowful Heart move us to compassion and inspire us to open our doors and to care for our brothers and sisters who are injured and cast aside.

Holy Mother of God, as you stood beneath the cross, Jesus, seeing the disciple at your side, said: “Behold your son” (Jn 19:26).  In this way, he entrusted each of us to you.  To the disciple, and to each of us, he said: “Behold, your Mother” (v. 27).  Mother Mary, we now desire to welcome you into our lives and our history.  At this hour, weary and distraught humanity stands with you beneath the cross, needing to entrust itself to you and, through you, to consecrate itself to Christ.  The people of Ukraine and Russia, who venerate you with great love, now turn to you, even as your heart beats with compassion for them and for all those peoples decimated by war, hunger, injustice, and poverty.

Therefore, Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the Church, and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine.  Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love.  Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world.  The “Fiat” that arose from your heart opened the doors of history to the Prince of Peace.  We trust that, through your heart, peace will dawn once more.  To you, we consecrate the future of the whole human family, the needs and expectations of every people, the anxieties and hopes of the world.

Through your intercession, may God’s mercy be poured out on the earth and the gentle rhythm of peace return to mark our days?  Our Lady of the “Fiat”, on whom the Holy Spirit descended, restore among us the harmony that comes from God.  May you, our “living fountain of hope”, water the dryness of our hearts.  In your womb Jesus took flesh; help us to foster the growth of communion.  You once trod the streets of our world; lead us now on the paths of peace.  Amen.

The major difference between the two is the one from 25 March 2022 mentioned clearly Russia and Ukraine.  God Bless Us All- Now and Forever. Amen