What it means to consecrate oneself to Mary

Saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) explained how to make our consecration to Mary effective and fruitful:

"Each of us needs to feel loved, but we also need to love, to love madly, to love to the point of suffering for love, and to feel that our love is great."

 Saint Maximilian Kolbe dared to take this path and aim for a love this deep.

"Nothing of great importance in God's affairs is achieved without suffering. Besides, can a sacrifice be too hard when it comes to the Immaculate?... And if we do not cease in the struggle to conquer the world for the Immaculate, suffering will not stop coming our way... But only until death. After that, there will be a resurrection!" (July 12, 1935)

"Love of the Immaculate does not consist only in an act of consecration recited even with great fervor, but in suffering many privations and working for her without ceasing." (February 10, 1937)

"The Immaculate desires that we not only work, but suffer for her. There's an immense field of work to be done through suffering. The little crosses of each day must be borne calmly; that's what it means to give oneself to the Immaculate." (January 17, 1937).

"Let us not always seek to feel the sweetness of devotion to the Immaculate, for that would be spiritual greed. For us, too, there must be trials, dryness and feelings of abandonment, etc. We should then let her use, as much as she wants, the means of her devotion. We should let her choose, then, as much as she wants, the means of our sanctification."

Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Marian Encyclopedia