Ignatians: Consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady, Regina Mundi – in the footsteps of St. Louis de Montfort
Ignatians consecrate themselves to the Immaculata under the title of Our Lady of Chivalry, according to the method of total consecration of St. Louis de Montfort
The Ignatian, glorying only in the Cross of His Lord Jesus Christ by which the world is crucified to him and he to the world, resolves to spend his life under the flag of the Cross, fighting alongside His Lord, Jesus Christ, as a priest of His Mystical Body, for the sake of the honor of God and the eternal salvation of souls.
This implies that he views his existence as being in, with, and through Christ; that he wills whatever Christ wills. And in order to conform his existence to Christ in the way in which Christ wills it to be conformed, he consecrates himself to the Queen of Heaven and Earth, Our Lady, the Immaculata, Mediatrix of all graces.
The spirit in which he chooses to consecrate himself to Her is that of chivalry. This is the chivalry at the heart of the crusading spirit of the medieval knights that so formed the ethos of St. Ignatius Loyola: a spirit not of violence but of virile and noble self-sacrifice for the defense of the Catholic Faith and the protection of persecuted fellow-Christians.
Through this consecration to Her who, as the heroine who remained beside her Son through all dangers unto death, and to whom the Christian is entrusted in virtue of the Crucified’s words to her, “Behold thy son”, the Ignatian deepens and strengthens his consecration as a true knight of Christ.
Consecration symbolized by their „Ring of the Chivalric Cross“
Ignatians, in order to remain ever alert to their consecration to Our Lady of Chivalry, wear a ring. This, although made of non-precious metal, is exceedingly precious in their eyes, because it is a consecration ring, a nuptial ring, both because it bears the “cross of the five wounds” which reminds them of their consecration to Christ Crucified and of their consecration to Our Lady of Chivalry. As a ring, with its traditional nuptial significance, it evokes for the Ignatian his vow of chastity through which in an extraordinarily deep and costly way he manifests his total self-giving to Christ and His Mystical Body through the Immaculata, Our Lady of Chivalry.