What is a Marian consecration? Why consecrate Canada to Our Lady? In what way are we already consecrated to God

​Through the gift of Baptism, we are reborn, both spiritually and sacramentally, and become children of God. The other Sacraments of Christian Initiation, Confirmation and the Eucharist, strengthen and nourish our life of faith, leading us into an even deeper relationship with Christ through his grace. Through each of these Sacraments, we experience the joy of living as sons and daughters dedicated to the Lord, sharing in his divine life, joining ourselves to his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and receiving the free and empowering help that God gives us to respond to his call to become disciples, temples of the Holy Spirit, and members of his Church. As baptized persons, young and old, we are called to follow Christ through a life of holiness and service, to witness and evangelize, spreading the Kingdom of God in our midst. When we strive to follow Christ, despite our personal and communal weaknesses and failings, we embody more fully our vocation as “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9). Informed and motivated thus by our God-given identity, as Christians we look daily to the teachings of Christ and his Church to shape how we think, decide, and act. It is not easy to respond to life’s challenges and trials in a manner which is coherent and deeply faithful to Christ. With the unfailing help of the Holy Spirit, however, we can turn to the Father for divine assistance, not only at the crossroads of our life, but at every moment. The first and foremost way of understanding what consecration means comes from the viewpoint of God himself, for it is he who consecrates us before all else. Through Baptism, God makes us his adoptive children and confers on us his very own holiness of life and love. With God’s sanctifying and healing grace, we are made partakers of his Trinitarian life, enabling us to believe in him, to hope in him, and to love him through the theological virtues; we live and act under the promptings and with the gifts of the Holy Spirit; we grow in goodness through the moral virtues. A second, complementary way of understanding consecration is from the viewpoint of our human and Christian experience. Living in holiness and truth, we share in God’s life and love. To consecrate ourselves to him personally, then, is to make a faith-filled decision in which our response to God’s love for us is uniquely our own. A personal act of consecration is a means of further appropriating our Christian calling and continuing to abide in God’s grace. It is the renewal of our first consecration at Baptism in the particular form of a personal pledge, made willingly in faith, to live in more profound communion with Our Lord, committing ourselves to him and his Kingdom with greater fervour. It is an entrustment of our entire being to God, including all that we are and do, that we may belong to him more fully and to open ourselves even more to his grace in our lives. Christ Jesus is the best and prime example of what it means to consecrate oneself to God and to his will.