Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Offering
by Brian Kravec, MI
Consecration means setting yourself aside for service to God.
Marian consecration (consecrating yourself to Jesus Christ through
the Blessed Virgin) has always been advocated by the Church.
Mary (my wife), and I made our consecration to the Immaculata
as husband and wife in 1997 on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.
I recall kneeling side by side before the Blessed Sacrament in
the private chapel of my spiritual advisor, the late Rev. Francis
M. Bednar. We recited the simple consecration prayer of St. Maximillian.
Father Francis smiled and cradled our baby daughter in his big
arms as he witnessed and blessed our act of self-giving.
We live the gift of our consecration in a very simple manner.
The Blessed Mother takes our ordinary lives and makes of them
an extraordinary offering to her Son. In light of our consecration,
to say that Mary, my wife, is "just" a mother and homemaker
is a gross understatement. We believe that motherhood is the
most honorable lay vocation on earth.
By means of consecration, the Mother of God gathers all the joys
and frustrations and sorrows of child rearing, along with all
the mundane and seemingly thankless tasks of home management,
and gives them to Jesus for the conversion of all hearts, for
our Pope, the deliverance of souls from Purgatory and as an offering
of reparation for the sins of the whole world.
As Mary's husband, I am inspired and often humbled by the selfless
way she lives her consecration according to the exhortation of
St. Therese, the Little Flower and Mother Teresa, "Do small
things with great love."
Like most husbands and fathers, I spend a long part of my day
working to provide for my family. I am employed as a correctional
officer in the world's largest maximum-security women's prison.
This is an oppressive and spiritually hostile environment. It
is over the razor wire, beyond tons of concrete and through countless
steel doors and electronic gates where our heavenly Mother embraces
me in her mantle and forms me into the likeness of her Son.
It is in this work place, my confessor reminds me, that like
St. Maximilian in the Nazi death camp, I may be the only witness
to Christ that the women know. It is here in the "belly
of the beast" where, by means of the Miraculous Medal prayer,
I daily entrust the incarcerated women and myself to the Mother
of Mercy.
The identical painting of St. Maximilian in the prison garb of
Auschwitz, which graces the entrance of the Marytown friary,
also graces a cinder block wall seen through the front window
of the Chapel of Our Lady of Peace located on the prison grounds.
The donors are unknown to the inmates and staff who pass by.
It is just another little way of living our consecration.
Pope John Paul II, who canonized St. Maximilian October 10, 1982,
named him "prophet and sign of the new era, the civilization
of love." Under his patronage as intercessor for families,
our marriage is a sacrament of perpetual conversion. We have
become, one for the other, an instrument of sanctification.
Consecration makes our individual lives and our marriage a continuous
prayer to Jesus Christ. Through the Blessed Mother our ordinary
prayers come to fruition in the most extraordinary ways. For
instance, as sweet fruit, the sign of the Cross that our daughter
age five, traces on my forehead with her tiny index finger every
day before I leave for work. Consider consecrating your life
and your marriage to the Immaculata.
(c) Copyright 1998-2004 The Militia
of the Immaculata. All rights reserved.
| Contact
Us |
MI
HOME
| Back
to top |