Ad Honorem Immaculatae Conceptionis Mariae Oblatio

72 to seek the roots of that conscious and free consecration and of the subsequent giving of self to God as His possession in Baptism, the sacrament that leads us to the Paschal Mystery as the apex and center of the Redemption accomplished by Christ. In this way, simultaneously with the profession of the evangelical counsels, in a much more mature and conscious manner, “the old nature is put off” and likewise “the new nature is put on, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness,” to use once more the words of the letter to the Ephesians, (cf. 4:22-24). In his apostolic letter of 1988 on the occasion of the Marian Year, St. John Paul II characterized those relations and the novelty of consecration somewhat differently: A person’s vocation to consecrate his or her whole life has a special relationship to Christ’s own consecration for the sake of mankind. It stems from the sacramental root of Baptism, which embraces the first and fundamental consecration of the person to God. Consecra- tion through the profession of the evangelical counsels – through vows or promises - is an organic development of the beginning made at Baptism. Consecration includes the mature choice that one makes for God himself, the spousal response to Christ’s love . When we give ourselves to him in a total and undivided way, we wish ‘to follow him,’ making a decision to observe chastity, poverty and obedience in the spirit of the evangelical counsels. We want to be like Christ in the closest possible way, shaping our lives according to the spirit of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. But above all we wish to have charity, which permeates all the elements of the consecrated life and unites them as a true ‘bond of perfection’(cf. Col 3:14). All of this is included in the Pauline meaning of that ‘dying’ which begins sacramentally at Baptism. In his Post-Synodal Exhortation Vita consecrata (No. 30) St. John Paul II provided the most precise explanation of the necessity of this new and par- ticular consecration bestowed on the religious, which is inseparable from the profession of the evangelical counsels : In the Church’s tradition religious profession is considered to be a special and fruitful deepening of the consecration received in Bap-