While there, a lady was doing some walking for exercise in the lane over from me. As I was going to leave, we struck up a conversation. She turned out to be a Catholic who has dedicated over 40 years of her life to lay ministry: authoring a prayer program, running retreats, leading pilgrimages, and accompanying others to Christ. As I left, we exchanged information and agreed to meet up sometime soon. 

I wouldn’t have known it then but this encounter, orchestrated by the Blessed Mother, has changed the trajectory of my life.

As this friendship began, I learned this woman is a mom and grandmother as well as a widow who had lost her husband 11 years prior. Combining that loss, her ministry experience, and her deep faith, she was inspired to begin a ministry called Spiritual Mothers in Lay Evangelization (SMILE). This organization has Mary, our Blessed Mother’s, hand all over it.

SMILE exists to train and form Catholic women to “live in the supernatural.” To help women of the faith be 

A– aware that they are capable of evangelizing regardless of what their life looks like, 

B– provided an in depth look at the feminine gifts relative to evangelizing and relationship with Mary, and 

C– training on how to be this type of Catholic woman out on the world. 

In short, that looks like this: provide nurturing by listening, accompanying, sharing, living a radical love, and holding hearts in ways only a woman can. SMILE empowers women to build our Church by sharing the Gospel while consoling and converting hearts and drawing close to Mary. I came to understand that devotion to Mother Mary and a relationship with her, allowed healing in my friend’s life. Even now, in the last chapter of her life as she is still going at 81 years old.

I had just moved back home, was striking out on old friendships, and needed work. SMILE needed someone to help progress its development. So, I jumped in and started to learn what it takes to run and develop a ministry. 

More importantly, Mother Mary was working on my heart. I remember thinking, “That’s a thing? Mary wants to be a part of my life? Wait, she is a part of my life!”

I gradually learned how to turn to Mary in prayer, to seek her help and advice. Then, unexplainable graces seemed to appear. After almost a year of work and dedication to the SMILE ministry and some self-reflection, I decided to make my own Marian Consecration for the first time in May of 2024.

What does consecration mean? Well, if you do a quick search, you might find this definition: “The action of making or declaring something sacred.” What’s my action? And what exactly is being deemed sacred? Mary is. As is our relationship with her. 
A relationship with Mary is something that deepens our ability to suffer well. For every moment we are fearful to display the pain in our heart to our Father, or are embarrassed to share our faults with Jesus, Mary is there. 

I want to make it clear my consecration and subsequent relationship with Mary is more than a “gleeful, sprinkles on top, mama loves you” type of thing. There have been moments when I cried out to the Blessed Mother in desperation, agony, despair, and have thrown my pain at her. I’ve asked her to reconnect me to Jesus or called on her when I needed a Mother’s Heart.     

Through the ministry, life’s trials, and in preparing for consecration, I learned that Mary, Queen of heaven, wants to be with us. She wants to wrap her arms around us, to share how our hearts can be converted, or rather transformed, and that we can reach out and touch the hearts of others, whom we have a duty to love. Mother Mary wants us to know her Son. 

You see, by letting Mary in and by offering an exchange of hearts with her, we can only come to know Jesus better. We can be further assumed into the love and life of the Holy Trinity.

I heard something interesting the other day, “God loves you because of who He is.” So, if God is Love and wants to perfectly share that with us; and he gave His Son and He gave us Mary, then maybe one of the best things we can do is to accept her and accept her love for us. So, when we look back at the definition of consecration, what is being declared sacred? The Blessed Mother, Mary, is. What’s the action that makes that declaration? Well, that’s up to you.

The Marian Congress, a program of the Office of Intercultural Ministries, is a day-long Marian retreat which concludes with a Marian consecration. This year's Marian Congress takes place May 3. To learn about the Marian Congress and to register, visit www.dosp.org/mariancongress.