Totus Tuus — Marian consecration of St Louis de Montfort

The Total Consecration to Jesus through the hands of Mary is the full form of Marian devotion according to St Louis Maria Grignion de Montfort († 28.04.1716), French missionary, in his Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Treatise was written around 1712, and providentially discovered in a field in 1842 — after more than a hundred years lost — when it was published for the first time. St Louis de Montfort was canonised by Pius XII on 20 July 1947. The consecration is summed up in the formula «Totus tuus ego sum, et omnia mea tua sunt» — «I am all yours, and all that I have is yours» — adopted by St John Paul II as his papal motto, engraved in Latin under his papal coat of arms and repeated in all the Marian encyclicals of his pontificate (cf. Redemptoris Mater 1987 n. 45 and the autobiography Gift and Mystery, 1996). This reduced form, attributed by JPII to Montfort, is the most diffused at present. The total consecration should ideally be preceded by 33 days of preparation according to the method of Montfort himself.

Latin (formula of St Louis de Montfort, 18th c.):

Totus tuus ego sum, Maria, et omnia mea tua sunt.
Accipio te in mea omnia.
Praebe mihi cor tuum, Maria.

English:

I am all yours, O Mary, and all that I have is yours.
I receive you into all that is mine.
Give me your Heart, O Mary.

Total consecration (complete form):

O Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother, today I, your unworthy servant, in the presence of the heavenly court, choose you as my Mother and Lady. I give and consecrate to you, as your slave of love, my body and my soul, my internal and external goods, and even the value of my good actions past, present, and future.

I leave you the full right to dispose of me and of all that belongs to me, without exception, according to your good pleasure, for the greater glory of God, in time and in eternity. Receive, O most kind Virgin, this little offering of my slavery, in honour and union of the submission which the eternal Wisdom deigned to have to your Motherhood, in homage to the power which both of you have over this poor sinner, and in thanksgiving for the privileges which the Most Holy Trinity granted you.

I promise to serve you faithfully from today until the last moment of my life, and «Totus tuus ego sum, Maria, et omnia mea tua sunt» — I am all yours, O Mary, and all that I have is yours.

Amen.