John Paul II

“The Angel of the Lord Declared unto Mary.”
The Greatest Event in History

Veneration of the Mother of God in its traditional form comes to me from my family and the parish in Wadowice. I remember a side chapel in the parish church dedicated to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where the high school students would go in the morning before classes started. In the afternoon, too, after classes were over, many students would go there to pray to the Blessed Virgin…
In Debniki, in the period when my priestly vocation was taking shape, also thanks to the influence of Jan Tyranowski, my way of understanding veneration of the Mother of God underwent a certain change. I was already convinced that Mary leads us to Christ, but in that period I began to understand that Christ, too, leads us to His Mother. There was a moment when I questioned in some way my veneration of Mary, feeling that it, by taking up too much space, might end up compromising the supremacy of the worship owed to Christ. At that point, a book by St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, entitled Treatise of True Devotion to the Holy Virgin, came to my aid. I found in it the answer to my perplexities. Yes, Mary brings us closer to Christ, she leads us to Him, on the condition that we live her mystery in Christ… I understood then why the Church recites the Angelus three times a day. I understood how crucial the words of this prayer are: “The Angel of the Lord declared to Mary: And she conceived of the Holy Spirit…! Behold the handmaid of the Lord: Be it done unto me according to Thy word… And the Word was made Flesh: And dwelt among us…” These are truly crucial words! They express the core of the greatest event that ever took place in the history of mankind.
Here we have explained the provenance of Totus Tuus. The expression comes from St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort. It is the abbreviation of the more complete form of entrustment to the Mother of God, that runs like this: Totus Tuus ego sum et omnia mea Tua sunt. Accipio Te in mea omnia. Praebe mihi cor Tuum, Maria.

From John Paul II, Dono e Mistero [Gift and Mystery], Libreria Editrice Vaticana