SJST

I am delighted to present on “St. Joan and St. Thérèse” a beautiful personal letter from the training officer aboard one of our heroic aircraft carriers defending the country.

In her personal spiritual journey, LCDR Amy Hunt was drawn by St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse to courageously make her Act of Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary according to St. Louis de Montfort. What a grace! It is my hope that all of you will make this same, powerful, and grace filled consecration. “To Jesus through Mary in the friendship and sisterly care of Sts. Joan and Thérèse”!

I hope this pleases and inspires you. With permission to use her name and the carrier’s name:

Hi Walter,

I am writing you on Sunday afternoon, as it is the one day each week on the USS CARL VINSON where my schedule is a little lighter and I have time to catch up with family and friends. Every day is a work day on a deployed ship, but I am very grateful that I can worship on Sunday and have a few hours of personal time.

First of all, thank you for the lovely poem you sent me in honor of my Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary! It was such a beautiful and fitting tribute. I will cherish it always. It was one among many blessings I received through the act of my consecration. The mass itself was beautiful. Our priest, an ex-Marine and faithful chaplain whose vocation has brought such blessings to our ship, prayed a special Blessing of the Candles for Candlemas and we had a small processional entrance in our tiny shipboard chapel. One of our sailors had prepared a beautiful makeshift shrine to our Blessed Mother, complete with a statue of Our Lady of America, candles and artificial roses (we can’t get the real thing out here, obviously). I asked one of my good friends, a Prowler pilot who is very devoted to our Lady, to do the readings. Then in place of a homily, Father had me read and sign my prayer. He signed it as witness, and then we continued the mass. All in all, it was a lovely mass. When I first learned about St. Louis de Montfort’s devotion to the Blessed Mother a few years ago, I never thought I would be making the consecration myself, in the middle of the North Arabian Sea, no less! And yet, it just goes to show you that God often has his own plan for our lives.

The amazing thing about God’s plans versus what we often invent for ourselves, is the miraculous way He brings about His design in our lives. I know it took your website to deepen my devotion to St. Joan and St. Therese and give me the courage to make the consecration (which you speak about in many of your blogs). Only God could bring the lives of two strangers together in such a meaningful way! And the fruits of it are still emerging. Just 2 days after my consecration, my husband’s grandfather who left the Church more than 50 years ago, made an appointment to see a priest about coming home again to the Church. This in itself is an answer to our prayers, and I know it is the grace that flows from Christ our Lord through our Blessed Mother’s heart that touched his heart after all these years.

I hope you will post this letter in your blog, not to bring attention to myself, but because there may be someone else out there considering deepening their spiritual journey by making the Total Consecration to Mary. I want to encourage them to do so. I was scared about abandoning my own will and whether I would be able to live out my consecration faithfully. But the Bible says that God will always give us the grace and strength for the challenges at hand, and the temptations that threaten to make us fall. Trust God. “Do not be afraid”. Once you abandon yourself as a slave to Christ, you realize you have no fear because you’ve already given up everything. There is nothing left to lose!

Thanks, Walter. I pray that God continues to bless you and your wife Josey. I hope one day our families will have an opportunity to meet.

In Jesus Through Mary,

LCDR Amy Hunt
Training Officer
USS CARL VINSON (CVN 70)