Laura, Warrior Princess

Confession: I've been holding out on giving God 100% of myself. There are two things I want very much, and I've been holding on - rather like Lot's wife looking back at the home she didn't want to leave - fighting giving all to Him because I want my own desires that much.

As if I could bully Him into letting me have my way by holding out on Him! HA!

Yet the people I love and long for - and my desires always involve people, not things - are even more precious to God than they are to me. I can trust Him to take care of them.

In fact, just a moment ago, listening to a course lecture on St. Louis de Montford's True Devotion to Mary, I asked that my parental authority over my daughters, even now that they are grown women, might still be applied (after all, I didn't know this stuff when they were growing up) - and I have consecrated my daughters to Jesus through Mary.

This shouldn't really shock anyone - not of my Catholic friends, anyway; it is really the ultimate fulfillment of the Infant Dedication we made of them when they were under a year old. What I wanted then for my daughters is fulfilled in what I have learned about devotion to Jesus through Mary. This is just repeating and perfecting the pledge made then.

I make this devotion also of myself, and will formalize it before witnesses at the appropriate time.

In the Dedication, three major things are accomplished. They are contained in the prayer of Dedication:

First, we renew and ratify our Baptismal promises: we renounce forever Satan, his pomps and works.

Second, we choose that Mary, the Handmaid (slave) of the Lord will be our Mistress; we will become the slave of the Slave. "I deliver and consecrate to thee, as they slave, my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the value of all my good actions, past, present and future..."

This takes us full circle - to the Cross: "And I give myself entirely to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry my cross after Him all the days of my life, and to be more faithful to Him than I have ever been before."

This is an amazing act. I can only get glimpses of the power of it, the significance of it, in my imagination.

Thankfully, I don't have to fully understand everything. It is enough that I recognize that I have been fighting, like a wild colt - only instead of stopping fighting for the weariness of fighting's futility, I am coming gladly to the Master to ask Him what He wants of me.

I will serve as His bondservant all the days of my life. I will and do renounce Satan and his works, and I put on the armor provided me to fight against him forever.

Totus Tuus - All for thee, dear Lady, so that you might give all and more to your Son.