Totus Tuus

More about the book

Amidst the Nazi occupation of Poland and long days in forced labor at a quarry and chemical plant, young Karol Wojtyla - the man who would become Pope John Paul II - made a discovery that would change his life. He read the eighteenth-century spiritual writings of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort and prayed Saint Louis's thirty-three days of preparation for total consecration to Jesus through Mary. He understood anew that the purpose of a true devotion to Mary is to be directed into a deeper relationship with Jesus and the Holy Trinity. The consecration so marked his life that he would adopt Saint Louis's phrase Totus Tuus (Latin for "Totally Yours") as his motto as bishop and later as pope.