Who are you, O Immaculate? I often remember these words of St. Maximilian Kolbe while I am praying and thanking the Immaculate for taking control of my life. The mystery of my relationship with her and her working in my life is tied up into the mystery of the Immaculate Conception itself. She is simply a Mother who loves her children—but this is no ordinary love. This love is powered by the one who is Love itself: the Holy Spirit. Mary’s love is so penetrating, that it raises up her lost little children all the way to the throne room of God. This is the only way I can think to begin describing my own experience with her. The story of my coming to know and love God more intimately, and in consecrating myself to the glorious Virgin Mary is truly her action more than my own.

I suppose I should back up a bit to provide context. I grew up in a household that was sacramentally Catholic. By this, I mean we received all our Sacraments of Christian Initiation and we went to church sometimes—mostly on Christmas and Easter. As a young boy, I remember having intimate conversations with God, feeling like he was right there with me (and truly he was). But this relationship was not fostered externally very much, and the noise from the world around me slowly crept in.

My friends were all living ordinary secular lives, prioritizing temporal “fun” and the pleasures of adolescence. At first, these were innocent enough, but as I grew older, and being that I was somewhat precocious, my desire for fulfillment grew faster than my emotional and spiritual maturity. What I mean by this, is that I was always looking for more—more emotional highs, more excitement, more intellectual stimulation, more adventure, more pleasure, more adrenaline.

By the time I hit middle school, we scarcely went to church at all, and by high school I don’t recall going in the first few years. Living this essentially secular lifestyle with my lack of fulfillment or direction was not a great combination. I began to go off the deep end, and to this day I thank God that it did not continue. I was living a sinful lifestyle of egocentrism, but I was miserable. I felt entirely lost and didn’t know which way my life was going. My curiosities became bolder and further from truth and goodness, and I was at the cusp of giving in to some things which likely would have steered my life off the tracks entirely to a place where I do not know if I would have physically survived.

This is when the Immaculate stepped in, although I did not know at the time that it was her. All I knew is that I couldn’t stop thinking of Jesus. This beginning of my journey consisted of visiting some Christian faith sharing groups and going with friends to their different churches. There was something pulling me in, but I couldn’t quite figure out what. By the beginning of my senior year of high school, I wandered into my local Catholic parish and ended up providentially bumping into the youth director, who held a Master’s Degree in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville. He became my lifeline and the encyclopedia of Catholic teaching to help bring me to the truth.

Throughout my senior year and maybe six months following it, I trudged through this exploratory period of seeking. Much of this was still intellectual, with some of it migrating the necessary path to my heart—but the world and the adversary still fought tooth and nail to pull me back. About eight months after high school, I had a backslide. For three weeks I found myself spending time with people whose idea of fun was partying and drinking alcohol. Surprisingly, this was the only time I had become curious about drinking, and unfortunately gave in to their invitations to partake. During these three weeks, I felt like I hit rock bottom. I was absolutely miserable again, chasing a fleeting imitation of joy—which, in reality, were only spikes of hormones and emotionally superficial experiences.

All this time I had been avoiding going to Mass and the friends I had made at the church. It all came to a head when I awoke one morning feeling like my heart was being pierced by daggers. The experience was so intense that it felt physical, and to this day I do not know if it was spiritual or also a physical sensation. The words quickly raced to my lips, “I need to go to Mass, three weeks has been long enough.” Then, within thirty seconds, I received a text message from a friend: “You need to go to Mass, three weeks has been long enough”—the exact words I had just said aloud. I was stunned. I immediately got ready and went to the church.

I arrived about forty-five minutes before Mass started so I could talk to the youth director and some friends. These conversations were the first time I heard that I could not receive Holy Communion because I was not in a state of grace. During Mass I sat in a different section than usual, and during the consecration, the Lord opened my heart to a true understanding of what was happening. This was my moment of real conversion. I finally knew what it was that I could not receive that day. I wept.

Following this instance, a few other grace-filled things happened, including having a priest read my soul in the confessional the day after Mass. I knew God was doing a big thing, but I did not know that it was truly Our Lady acting in my life. That week, out of nowhere, I couldn’t stop thinking of the Rosary. I had never prayed it. I did not know anyone who prayed it. But now I needed to.

I prayed the Rosary every night that week by myself. I had to look up online how to pray it. For some reason this was more important than I could understand. The fruit of the Rosary was a new desire to go to daily Mass, which I began immediately. Then after only a short while, a friend reached out randomly, asking me, “Have you ever done the Marian consecration?” I had no idea to what he was referring. No, I hadn’t, but it sounded like something I wanted to do.

After work I rushed to the church to speak to the youth director. He emphasized how truly important Marian consecration was to me. He told me that St. John Paul II attributed his entire faith to Marian consecration—that it changed his life. If I was to do Marian consecration, I needed to take it seriously, he told me. This is not a casual thing. My immediate response was, “Then Marian consecration is going to change my life, too.”

I took a couple weeks to research more to see what I was getting myself into and how I was to do it. Also, I was waiting for the start date to consecrate myself on the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Once the preparation began, the next thirty-three days of my life were Marian consecration. But it was not immediately peaceful. In fact, I experienced what I now know is spiritual warfare very intensely during this preparation. At one point, I felt as if I was surrounded by some presence which did not want me to continue. I felt like I was even physically getting backed up against a wall—surrounded by what I can only describe as a tangible anxiety and fear. All I could think to do was fight back and pray, so I picked up my Rosary.

The lingering feeling of interior tension hung around me throughout the thirty-three days. Yet, I felt closer to God. Now I know that he and the Immaculata were sustaining me, and my consecration preparation was a purging experience. I was being purified to come into a deeper relationship with God.

Through his grace, I made it through the thirty-three days of preparation, spending most of my time praying, working, or exercising to help myself through it and to overcome the efforts of the adversary trying to tear me back to the world. When consecration day arrived, I thought I was already done; I thought the preparation was the consecration and the consecration prayer was just signing my name on the line. I was wrong.

I went into St. Patrick’s Church to go to confession and pray the Rosary. Afterwards I realized I had forgotten the consecration book in the car. So, in the parking lot, the Immaculate caught me off guard. I said the prayer by my car and signed my name on the line. Immediately I felt a rush of wind pass through my body and the tangible experience of peace and silence pass through me. I know of no other way of describing this, but that the silence was not the absence of sound, but a positive peace that silenced any distress I had within me.

Since this day, my prayer life has had a true intimacy. The Immaculate brought the head knowledge of theology to my heart. As her role is to bring us to Jesus and the Mediatrix of all graces, my experience is also that she traverses the highway between the head and the heart—calling us to true prayer from the heart anointed with love.

One of the theological questions that has been asked of Mary is if she needed to be redeemed. The answer, of course, is that Jesus did redeem her, but He redeemed her through a “preventative redemption.” Jesus saved her from sin by keeping sin from touching her—still flowing from the grace of the Cross. He saved her like one would say they were saved if they were pulled away from an oncoming car—saving them from being hit.

In my case, the Immaculate saved me both ways. She saved me from the sinful life I was living, and she saved me through a “preventative redemption”—obtaining for me the grace to be saved from the path down which my life was heading. And now in hindsight, I can see that Our Lady saved me to accomplish her mission. Every door that is opened in my life says “Mary” on it. Other doors are frequently closed, but hers always open just as she opens the door to the heart of her Son to us and instructs us to “do whatever he tells you.”