1. "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.

2. 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! Help us to live in the truth of the consecration of Christ for the entire human family of the modern world.

3. In entrusting to You, O 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, deliver us.

       Accept, O 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", sin 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!

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