On July 27, 1661, the same year when he was elected Superior General and first successor of St. Vincent de Paul, Father Renato Almerás (1661-1672) published a circular with the Act of Consecration of the Congregation of the Mission to the Virgin Mary.
Since then, every August 15, on the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, in the communities of the Congregation of the Mission, we began to pray the act of consecration which we share here:
We, very unworthy priests, clerics and brothers of the Congregation of the Mission,
having placed ourselves in the presence of God and of the whole Court of Heaven,
having considered, on the one hand, the great and extreme need we have
of the Grace of God, as well for our sanctification as for the due discharge
of our duties to our nieghbor and of our other employments, and considering,
on the other hand, O Most Holy Virgin Mary, thy great power with thy Divine Son
and they exceeding goodness toward men in obtaining graces for them,
we have recoursse to thee, as to the Mother of Mercy, in the hope that,
by thy means, we may obtain help and succor.
For this reason, O Most Compassionate Virgin, we now, prostrate
in body and mind at the feet of thy majesty, most humbly beseech thee
to accept the united, cordial, and irrevocable oblation of our souls and bodies,
which, on this solemn day, we dedicate and consecrate to thy service and thy love,
purposing, with the assistance of the Holy Ghost,
to entertain always for thee a singular respect and most special veneration;
to publish thy name over the world, to announce everywhere thy power
and thy goodness, to invite men to honor, serve, and imitate thee;
and to invoke thee in order to find grace before God.
Almost a century later, Father Jean Baptist Etienne (1843-1874) asked that the same consecration act be repeated on December 8 on the occasion of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
Fr. Rolando Gutiérrez CM
