TUUS TOTUS of Blessed Honoratus Koźmiński

Poland - From May 28 to 31, 2015, Brother Yvan Passebon FSG and I, Arnold Suhardi SMM, were in Poland for a symposium on "the perfect consecration to Jesus Christ through the hands of Mary". The theme was "Tuus Totus of Blessed Honoratus Koźmiński". It was organized by the religious Congregations founded by the Blessed, especially by the Daughters of Mary Immaculate and the Daughters of the Purest Heart of Mary.

This Blessed, whose motto was TUUS TOTUS, was born in 1829 in Biala Podlaska and died in 1916 in Nowe Miasto. This Capuchin lived in the difficult moments of the Christian faith under the pressure of Communism. This servant of the Virgin Mary, whose life is very full of exemplary virtues of holiness, was beatified on October 16, 1988 by Pope John Paul II. He founded 27 Congregations. Seventeen of them are still alive and active. Many of them do not wear a religious habit. In a context marked by communism, in which the appearance of a person as religious was problematic, the fact of having no religious habit proved a very effective strategy to announce the Good News. Out of these 17 Congregations, eight live Montfortian Marian consecration from the outset as recommended by the Blessed, while a personal or communitarian practice of the consecration is also found in the other Congregations.

2015 is the 8th of a nine-year preparation to mark the centenary of the death of Blessed Honoratus Koźmiński. Each year some activities are organized: a symposium, a pilgrimage in the footsteps of the Blessed, meetings and other kinds of activities. So this symposium took place in the context of this novena, also in view of his canonization as the process is still ongoing at the Vatican.

Just a special note on the Daughters of Mary Immaculate whose members are 130. This Congregation was founded in honour of the proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854). In the garden of their Mother House in Nowe Miasto, a small town in which the Blessed departed for Heaven, we can find the statues and portraits of Father de Montfort as well as the Montfort’s phrases taken from the Treatise on True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

This symposium was attended by over 160 religious and held on Saturday, May 30, 2015. It was held at the Catholic University of Lublin where Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, taught. The first activity of the morning was to develop the theme of the Marian dimension of Christian spirituality (by Dr. Danuta Mastalska), then, of consecration to Jesus through Mary's hands according to Father de Montfort (by Father Arnold Suhardi SMM) and according to Father Honoratus Koźmiński (by Father Gabriel Bartoszewski, OFMCap). This session was led by Prof. Andrzej Derdziuk OFM Cap. The second activity of the day gave the opportunity to explore the different experiences of the practice of consecration in the various Congregations founded by the Blessed. For that, we were helped by the research of Sister Agata Mirek and Sister Teresa Nowacka. The third activity, which was in the afternoon, was dedicated to testimonies and sharing - among others that of Brother Yvan FSG – on the consecration lived in the concrete life of every day.

At the end of the day, there was one participant who said to me: “Everything you said about the consecration according to Father de Montfort we have learned it in the novitiate and we are living it. Our joy today is to have met two sons of Father de Montfort, who confirmed to us all these things".

I thank the Lord for this great opportunity to collaborate, meet and share among consecrated persons whose hearts are animated by the same spirit of the "perfect consecration to Jesus Christ through the hands of Mary" lived and taught before us by Father de Montfort and Father Honoratus.