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A triduum is three consecutive days on the liturgical calendar that commemorates or celebrates a feast day. Some are private devotions to a saint. We used to have many back in the centuries before the liturgical reforms and changes of Vatican II. I am proposing that we add a new one, likely just as a ‘private devotion.’ This one is a “Triduum of Monthly Marian Consecrations.”
Why a triduum of Marian consecrations? Consecration to the Blessed Virgin is important. Devotion to Mary is a sure sign of predestination. This is not in the Protestant sense of the word that God decides beforehand who will be saved, but rather that God knows in advance who will be saved and who won’t because He is omniscient and exists outside of linear time. Foreknowledge of who will be saved doesn’t mean predetermination of the saved. Many saints have taught that devotion to Mary has the advantage of bestowing greater receptivity to graces which flow to us through her. It’s like if you study hard in school, then you are ‘predestined’ to go to a good college since diligent studying makes you receptive to learning and knowledge. These saints have all stated that souls dedicated to Mary are never lost (doesn’t mean that they’ll avoid Purgatory, just that no soul devoted to Our Lady ever joins the ranks of the reprobate.)
For this triduum, I have selected the days dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Our Lady of Fatima. Those coincidentally are on the 11th, 12th, and 13th of the month, thus satisfying the idea of a triduum. I think the sequential order of the dates implies a Divine plan and isn't actually coincidental.
These days do not occur in the same month. Lourdes is in February, Guadalupe in December, and Fatima in May. But some people do a monthly consecration or dedication on the 13th of every month in honor of the Fatima Apparitions as a way to foster living out the Fatima Message. I have an old Guadalupe prayer book from a monastery in Oregon (they don’t print it anymore; the one I have dates from 1959) which has a monthly consecration to Our Lady of Guadalupe on the 12th of each month. I do not know of any devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes occurring on the 11th of every month, but there’s no reason why we can’t start one!
Our Lady of Lourdes is associated with healing. Spiritual healing, physical healing, all sorts of healing. Seventy of the medical ones have been declared miraculous (out of the thousands claimed.) Our Lady also gave the seer, St. Bernadette Soubirous, messages concerning repentance from sin.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is associated with the pro-life movement (she appears pregnant in the Miraculous Image on the Tilma of St. Juan Diego.) She is also associated with the largest voluntary mass conversion of people to Catholicism. Fourteen years after the Protestant Revolt in Europe which stripped millions from the Holy Mother Church, millions of pagans in Mexico replaced them through her intercession! If you read up on the Tilma, you’ll learn of the tremendous symbolism of the images depicted on it - symbols that are significant to both the Aztecs and the Spanish. Her words to St. Juan Diego practically clamored for the unity of the Americas, of all the peoples living in it. No class conflict or cultural segregation; but a unity of European and indigenous cultures. (I recently posted a book review that goes into greater detail about how pagan prophets under God’s influence foretold of the Guadalupe Apparition: How Our Lady of Guadalupe fulfilled an ancient Aztec prophecy.)
At Fatima, Our Lady exhorted us about repentance from sin, praying the Rosary, making sacrifices in reparation for sin, and that war is punishment for sin (the most grievous kinds were sins of the flesh, i.e. sexual sins, impurity, and immodest attire.)
So, repentance, conversion, prayer; and if you dig just a little deeper, there’s pro-life advocacy, pacifism, chastity, cross-cultural unity rather than conflict, and Catholicism as the alternative to paganism and the demonic…. I think this “Triduum of Monthly Marian Consecrations” is a timely devotion.
Repentance, conversion, and prayer are the antidotes to the scourge of abortion and contraception, to the endless war that is now threatening to go nuclear, sexual depravity now championed as ‘normal,’ and an increasingly pagan culture developing in the ‘post-Christian West’ that is careening towards the demonic paganism similar to that of the Aztec Empire the Spanish destroyed and the Catholic Church healed through Our Lady’s intervention. Given that ‘Fatima’ is a name held in reverence by Muslims, and that the word ‘Guadalupe’ has Arabic origins, this monthly triduum might impact Moslem-Christian relations and just might be a vehicle for Muslim conversion to Christianity.
We need Mary’s maternal intervention and her intercession in our lives and society. If we can consecrate ourselves every month under these three titles of Our Lady, then perhaps miracles will occur and the general race to the cultural and moral bottom we are descending into will stop.
The three Acts of Consecration follow. You can see in the one to Guadalupe the seeds of this idea. It suggests making that consecration on the 12th of each month, as well as being mindful of Our Lady’s messages at Lourdes and Fatima. They are taken from traditional sources.
Act of Consecration to Our Lady of Lourdes (to be said every month on the 11th):
Holy Mary, Mother of God, Virgin Immaculate, you appeared 18 times to Bernadette at the grotto in Lourdes to remind Christians of what the truths in the Gospel require of them. You call them to prayer, penance, the Eucharist, and the life of the Church. To answer your call more fully, I dedicate myself, through you, to your Son, Jesus. Make me willing to accept what He said. By the fervor of my faith, by the conduct of my life in all its aspects, by my devotion to the sick, let me work with you in the comforting of those who suffer and in the reconciliation of people that the Church may be one and there be peace in the world. All this I ask, confident that you, Our Lady, will fully answer my prayer. Blessed be the Holy and Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us. St. Bernadette, pray for us.
And so today, may Mary, the Mother of God, the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Lourdes intercede for us and lead us closer to her son, Jesus. Amen.
Act of Consecration to Our Lady of Guadalupe (to be said every month on the 12th):
O Most Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God, I (Name,) although most unworthy of being your servant, yet moved by your wonderful mercy and by my desire to serve you, consecrate myself to your Immaculate Heart, and choose you today, in the presence of my Guardian Angel and the whole heavenly court, for my special Lady, Advocate and Mother, under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the name given to the heavenly image left us as pledge of they motherly kindness. I firmly resolve that I will love and serve you always, and do whatever I can to induce others to love and serve you. I pray you, Mother of God, and my most kind and amiable Mother, that you will receive me into the number of your servants as your child and servant forever. Assist me in all my thoughts, words, and actions at every moment of my life, that every step and breath be directed to the greater glory of God; and through your most powerful intercession obtain for me that I may never more offend my beloved Jesus, that I may glorify Him in this life, and that I may also love you, and enjoy you, in the company of the Blessed Trinity through eternity in Holy Paradise.
In order to live this consecration as another St. Juan Diego, I promise to renew it frequently, especially on the twelfth day of each month; and mindful of your messages to us at Lourdes and Fatima, I will strive to lead a life of prayer and sacrifice, of fidelity to thy Rosary and of reparation to your Immaculate Heart. Amen.
Act of Consecration to Our Lady of Fatima (to be said every month on the 13th):
O Most Holy Mary, Virgin Mother of God, Queen of Heaven and Earth, in accordance with thy wish made known at Fatima, I consecrate myself today to your Immaculate Heart. To you I entrust all that I have, all that I am, to your blessed charge and special keeping and into your Immaculate Heart. For this day, for every day of my life, and at the hour of my death, I commend my soul and body.
To you do I entrust all my hopes and consolations, all my trials and miseries, my life and the end of my life, that through your most holy intercession and your merits all my actions may be ordered and disposed according to your will, and that of your Divine Son.
Reign over me dearest Mother, that I may be yours in prosperity, in adversity, in health and in sickness, in life and in death. Grant that I may have no other spirit but your spirit, to know Jesus Christ and His Divine and Holy Will; that I may have no other soul but your soul, to praise and glorify the Lord; that I may have no other heart but your heart, to love God with a pure and burning love like yours.
My beloved Mother, my glorious Queen, I am all yours and all that I have is yours. Amen.
Originally published in a slightly different form at: Sober Catholic: Let's Start a Triduum of Monthly Marian Consecrations!
I am Catholic bogger and writer who chiefly posts on spirituality and addiction recovery at Sober Catholic. I have self-published devotionals for Catholics in recovery as well as "The Sober Catholic Way;"a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life drawn from nearly two decades of blogging at SoberCatholic. Another recent book, "Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics" encourages creative Catholics to make use of their faith to help steer contemporary culture away from the cliff it is careening towards (or, to help build a new one after the plummet from the cliff.) I am married to my wife, Rose, and we live in western New York.
