Acts of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
In the Fatima Message of Sister Lucia we read that those who will live the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary will be truly converted and consecrated to God, those will be new generation that will overcome evil! This new generation is the generation of the Immaculate Heart, and Mary is its Mother.
In 1855, 62 years prior to the Fatima apparitions, Zofia Truszkowska (Maria Angela) and her cousin Klothilda Ciechanowska (Mother Veronica) entrusted themselves to the service of the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to the will of her Son, Christ the Lord. Thus, she gave the beginning to the Congregation that was to take the title of the Daughters the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The citizens of Warsaw called them ? the Felicians. In the letters to the Sisters, her spiritual daughters, Mother Mary Angela often wrote: I recommend you to the Heart of Jesus and Mary. Mother Angela her love for Mary and unity with Her was deepening by the acts of consecration to her protection.
In 1864, at the request of Mother Angela, Father Honorat Kozminski, Capuchin, the spiritual father of the Felician Congregation, made a solemn Act of Consecration of the entire Congregation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Since then, this act has been repeatedly renewed. A few years later Father Honorat prepared and wrote in his own blood the Act of Servitude of the Congregation of St. Felix to Our Lady:
Mary Most Holy, you established this poor Congregation of St. Felix for the service of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. You gathered it together anew when it was dispersed, and you preserve it even till this time. Now desiring to celebrate the Feast of your Presentation and remembering the founding of the Felician Congregation which occurred on this day, I fall at your most holy feet and give you this entire Congregation as it now exists and as it will exist in the future, if that pleases God. I offer and dedicate this Congregation as your complete possession. Direct this Congregation and its total destiny. According to your holy pleasure, distribute, use and manage all the merits it may have now, will have in the future and had in the past. May you graciously consider yourself Lady, Heiress and Owner of the entire Congregation and of all that belongs to it and may belong to it. I ask all this for the greater glory of the Triune God and as a sign both of my special devotion to you and of my love, gratitude and trust. This entire Congregation is yours ? may all that it has be yours.
In the Constitutions of the Felician Congregation of 1874 it is stated that each Sister entering the Congregation is to be inscribed into the Fraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When the Congregation had its headquarters in Warsaw, the Sisters were inscribed into the Fraternity which existed at the church of the Bernardine Fathers (it existed there since 1854) or in Lublin at the Capuchin Fathers’ Church. The enrolment cards of some of the Sisters are preserved in the Felician Archives. The Sisters, who entered the Congregation in Cracow, were inscribed into the Fraternity that existed at the Marian Church (it existed there since 1855). At the time when such a Fraternity was established at the church at Smolensk Street in Cracow and when it was aggregated to the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Paris in 1896, which was founded by Fr. Des Genettes at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary already in 1836, each postulant was inscribed to this Fraternity. In 1973 the Fraternity numbered 42,680 members. Each year about 500 people were inscribed to it.
Also, in order to emphasize her affection to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, each Felician ? receives the name of Mary as a part of her religious name; each Province of the Congregation is entitled with the Marian name: Immaculate Heart of Mary (Kraków), Our Lady of Czestochowa (Przemyśl), Our Lady Queen of Poland (Warsaw) ), Our Lady of Hope (North America), Our Lady of Aparecida (Brazil). Immersed in our Felician spirituality, expressed in the Congregational emblem and motto we seek to do All through the Heart of Mary in honor of the Blessed Sacrament.