On April 15th we will be offering a spiritual retreat for our family of parishes. This retreat is Fr. Michael Gaitley’s 33 Days to Morning Glory. The goal of this spiritual retreat is to consecrate ourselves and our family of parishes to Jesus through Mary. To consecrate oneself to Jesus through Mary is known as a Marian Consecration.
This sounds scary, complicated, and difficult. It is not!
Maybe you have never heard of it and think this is something new going on in the Catholic Church. It is not!
In his book, True Devotion to Mary, St. Louis de Monfort wrote about preparing oneself for consecration to Mary. He wrote this book in 1712, but the manuscript was lost until 1842. So Marian Consecration has been around since the 1800’s. If fact, Pope St. John Paul II was a strong proponent of the writings of St. Louis de Montfort and had a great devotion to Mary because of his Consecration to Mary.
Fr. Gaitley’s 33 Days to Morning Glory is a modern update of how to prepare for consecrating yourself to Jesus through Mary.
Why are we doing this?
I believe that spiritual retreat is an opportunity for spiritual healing. Many of us are in desperate need of spiritual healing. If you are unhappy, angry, frustrated, or despairing over the current course of the Road to Renewal and its impact on your parish, I encourage you to attend this retreat. We are having this retreat especially for you. I believe this retreat will help you find healing.
There is very little any of us can do to change the course of the Road to Renewal, but I firmly believe with Mary’s help we can find healing. She can teach us how to be obedient in the face of uncertainty. If we can make her yes, our yes, we will not only move forward, but we will thrive. Instead of seeing this Road to Renewal as a diminishing of our parish life, we can see it as an opportunity to flourish, to renew the Catholic Church in Buffalo, not from the top down, but from the bottom up. It is not the leadership of the Diocese of Buffalo that will rescue us, it is you, the individual parishioner, who will restore the spiritual life of this Diocese.
So, I encourage you, I urge you, I beg you, please come to this retreat. Place your trust in Mary. She will show us the path of obedience, the path to her Son, Jesus. He is our light and our salvation. The same yesterday, today and tomorrow.
I also believe that Mary is the one who will lead us, this family of parishes and the Diocese of Buffalo, out of the spiritual desert we are currently in. The Diocese of Buffalo is in the grip of multiple crises. Of all these problems we face, the one you and I can have the most impact on is the problem of religious vocations within our community. The other issues we face are beyond our control. But we do have control over the religious life in our community. Once again, I believe Mary has the answer to our crisis in religious vocations in the Diocese of Buffalo.
The early Church rallied around the Blessed Mother. She held them together in their trials and tribulations. The same can be true for us. I hope that you will join us in this effort to begin our spiritual renewal. May Mary’s fiat be our fiat, “May it be done to me according to your word.”
Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us. St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us. All holy men and women, pray for us.
AMDG,
Fr. Tom Mahoney
Pastor
Originally printed in the April 7, 2024 Akron Clarence Roman Catholic Community bulletin.