Tony Mullen has built a mission for Our Lady with St. Louis de Montfort as his inspiration . . . 

Legate Tony Mullen has built a successful career as a developer and investor, but at 56, his chief goal is one that takes him beyond the latest construction project and into the realm of the spiritual.

St. Louis de Montfort

Consecration

Ever since consecrating his life to the Blessed Virgin some 17 years ago through St. Louis de Montfort’s method of Total Consecration to Mary, Mullen has devoted himself to getting others to do the same.

The year after making his consecration, Mullen, an At-Large Legatus member from Drexel, Pa., helped start a group called Friends of Our Lady, which later grew into the Children of the Father Foundation. Today, the foundation serves as an umbrella organization for the My Consecration apostolate and several other alliance partners — including Lighthouse Catholic Media and St. Joseph Communications.

Through a Facebook page and website — myconsecration.org — the apostolate has become the world’s largest provider of information on Total Consecration to Mary, annually sending 51,000 booklets and other materials to people in the U.S. and Canada. They also work to encourage Marian consecration in parishes and have produced a DVD featuring Cardinal Justin Rigali. In addition, the ministry was featured last year on EWTN Live with Fr. Mitch Pacwa.

Mullen initially was drawn to making a consecration through his interest in Marian apparitions, most notably the one at Fatima, Portugal, to three children in 1917. In all the apparitions, he said, the message has been the same: “pray, fast, hope and don’t worry.”

Marian consecration, as described in St. Louis de Montfort’s book True Devotion to Mary, is a spiritual way to Jesus through Mary. It involves a 33-day period of preparation after which the person makes an act of consecration, surrendering all and giving Mary permission to form him or her in the image of her Son and according to God’s will.

“We consciously and lovingly give up our lives and offer them to Jesus through Mary,” explained Ray Mooney of Flushing, N.Y., national director of parish consecration for the apostolate. “Our lives are no longer our own.”

Inspiration

Linda Mullen and her daughter Kelly at Kelly’s ring
Mass in 2005 at Archbishop Prendergast High School

Mullen sees promoting Marian consecration as a call he and his late wife, Linda, received from God. Linda, who died Feb. 26 at the age of 55 from a rare form of breast cancer, had been the chief operating officer of the My Consecration apostolate. Mullen said he now considers her the CIO — or chief intercessory officer — who prays for the ministry from heaven.

Toward the end of her illness, Mullen said, Linda accepted her suffering because she knew God was using her to save souls. “Linda was quietude: simple, quiet, humble, obedient like Mary. She was simply someone like Mary who said ‘yes.’”

Of the 500,000 people the apostolate has reached, Mullen said he believes Linda personally reached 300,000.

Mullen considers Marian consecration to be God’s remedy at this time in salvation history. The consecration, he said, is not just another devotion, but a last chance offered by God to receive graces offered from the heart of Jesus through his mother’s heart.

Devotion to the heart of Mary, he said, is simply a continuous renewal of one’s baptismal vows. “It’s not some kind of extra nice optional devotion. It’s a means to perfect your purpose. Christ came to us through Mary, and he wants us to come more perfectly to him through Mary. This is the role God has assigned her.”

Mooney said he made his consecration in 2002, the year his life changed. “I had been an on-and-off Catholic for many years. In the late 1990s and early 2000, I was living a life I should not have been living. I knew I had one foot in hell and the other on the proverbial banana peel.”

He agreed to go on a parish retreat and returned to Confession and Communion. Later that year, he made a Marian consecration and, although renewal is recommended annually, he now renews his consecration daily before Mass. “I really have lived that consecration the last 10 or 11 years and it has brought me closer and closer and closer to Mary and to Jesus.”

Mooney’s consecration was done in a group at his parish under the guidance of a seminarian who conducted weekly meetings for participants. Although the My Consecration apostolate will send materials to individuals, the organization promotes parish consecrations because of the effect they can have on parishes and because they give those making the consecration access to someone who can explain the process to them.

Life-changing

Legate Tony Mullen poses with his wife
Linda during a 2010 visit to Bermuda

Father Jay Finelli, who made his consecration in 1988 as a seminarian and since has led parishioners at Holy Ghost Parish in Tiverton, R.I., through the process, attributes the start of Eucharistic adoration in his parish to Marian consecration.

Father Finelli, who blogs at iPadre.net and records weekly podcasts, said he also sees the effects of Marian consecration in the faith-filled lives of individual parishioners. “It’s almost like they are religious living in the world, which is what we’re called to by Baptism,” he said.

Carol Haase of Greentown, Pa., who has facilitated parish consecrations for the apostolate in the dioceses of Scranton, Pa., and Venice, Fla., said she has received many graces from Mary since experiencing a deepening of her faith after the national pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima came to her parish about eight years ago. After that, she began going to Mass and Eucharistic adoration and praying the rosary regularly.

Haase also joined the Legion of Mary and made a Marian consecration. Soon after, her husband, who had said he would never become Catholic, began praying the rosary with her. Within two months, he decided to enter the Church.

Despite the secular culture and challenging economy, Haase said she has continued to have a sense of peace because of her devotion to Our Lady.

“I just always know deep in my heart that no matter what happens in the world, we’re going to be safe in the heart of Mary,” she said. “I can see the world getting more evil and our freedoms being taken away, but I just have that consolation that we’re going to be OK.”

In the future, she said, “we are going to be bombarded more and more by secularism and we really have to find refuge in Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Otherwise we’re not going to be able to stand through it. The only way is to be consecrated to Jesus through her Immaculate Heart.”

JUDY ROBERTS is Legatus magazine’s staff writer.

Learn more

Myconsecration.org

facebook.com/myconsecration.org

iPadre.net