"We have
recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God."
As we utter the words of this antiphon with which the Church of
Christ has prayed for centuries, we find ourselves today before you,
Mother, in the Jubilee Year of the Redemption.
We find ourselves united with all the pastors of the Church in a
particular bond whereby we constitute a body and a college, just as
by Christ's wish the Apostles constituted a body and college with
Peter.
In the bond of this union, we utter the words of the present Act, in
which we wish to include, once more, the Church's hopes and
anxieties for the modern world.
Forty years ago and again ten years later, your servant Pope Pius
XII, having before his eyes the painful experiences of the human
family, entrusted and consecrated to your Immaculate Heart the whole
world, especially the peoples for which by reason of their situation
you have particular love and solicitude.
This world of individuals and nations we too have before our eyes
today: the world of the second millennium that is drawing to a
close, the modern world, our world!
The Church, mindful of the Lord's words: "Go... and make disciples
of all nations... and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the
age" (Mt 28:19-20), has, at the Second Vatican Council, given fresh
life to her awareness of her mission in this world.
And therefore, O Mother of individuals and peoples, you who know all
their sufferings and their hopes, you who have a mother's awareness
of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and
darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we,
moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace,
with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human
world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are
full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals
and peoples.
In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals
and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and
consecrated.
"We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God": despise
not our petitions in our necessities.
Behold, as we stand before you, Mother of Christ, before your
Immaculate Heart, we desire, together with the whole Church, to
unite ourselves with the consecration which, for love of us, your
Son made of himself to the Father: "For their sake," he said, "I
consecrate myself that they also may be consecrated in the truth" (Jn
17:19). We wish to unite ourselves with our Redeemer in this his
consecration for the world and for the human race, which, in his
divine Heart, has the power to obtain pardon and to secure
reparation.
The power of this consecration lasts for all time and embraces all
individuals, peoples and nations. It overcomes every evil that the
spirit of darkness is able to awaken, and has in fact awakened in
our times, in the heart of man and in his history.
How deeply we feel the need for the consecration of humanity and the
world—our modern world—in union with Christ himself! For the
redeeming work of Christ must be shared in by the world through the
Church.
The present year of the Redemption shows this: the special Jubilee
of the whole Church.
Above all creatures, may you be blessed, you, the Handmaid of the
Lord, who in the fullest way obeyed the divine call!
Hail to you, who are wholly united to the redeeming consecration of
your Son!
Mother of the Church! Enlighten the People of God along the paths of
faith, hope and love! Enlighten especially the peoples whose
consecration and entrustment by us you are awaiting. Help us to live
in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human
family of the modern world.
In entrusting to you, oh Mother, the world, all individuals and
peoples, we also entrust to you this very consecration of the world,
placing it in your motherly Heart.
Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so
easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose
immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and
seem to block the paths towards the future!
From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every
kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver
us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of
God, deliver us.
From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national
and international, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us.
From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God,
deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us.
Accept, Oh Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of
all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole
societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin:
individual sin and the "sin of the world," in all its
manifestations.
Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the
infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love!
May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your
Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!
– L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, April 2, 1984, pp. 8-10
