HOMILY FOR THE IMMACULATE HEART OF BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

 

*HOMILY FOR THE MEMORIAL OF THE IMMACULATE HEART OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY*

This is a reading common for today’s memorial: 2 Chronicles  24: 17-25;      Psalm 89: 4-5, 29-30, 31-32, 33-34;        Luke 2: 41-51. But I prefer the readings: Isaiah 61:9-11; Responsorial Psalm 1 Sam 2:1, 4-5, 6-7, 8abcd; Gospel Acclamation Lk 2:19, Lk 2:41-51 because of the Importance of today’s Memorial to me. To me, it is a solemnity, for the Immaculate Heart is the Heart of Love and Heart of Divine Presence. Immaculate Heart is the Queen of all Heart. To the Religious Congregations: Cordis Maria Filli (Clarentians) and Immaculate Heart Sisters, today is also Solemnity. I rejoice whenever I am privileged to celebrate the Solemnity of Sacred Heart. I rejoice more when it is the Immaculate Heart, the Queen of all Hearts. The Catechism of the Catholic Church CCC 486 says: The Father's only Son, conceived as man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, is "Christ". CCC 487 says: What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ. The Immaculate Heart leads me to understand more the Sacred Heart. Today’s first reading echoes the Magnificat of Mama Maria. This Isaiah 61 is used to compose one of the Magnificat I cherish so much. CCC 491-493 says that the most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus (1854): DS 280). The "splendour of an entirely unique holiness" by which Mary is "enriched from the first instant of her conception" comes wholly from Christ: she is "redeemed, in a more exalted fashion, by reason of the merits of her Son" (Lumen Gentium 53, 56). The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person "in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" and chose her "in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love" (Ephesians 1:3-4). The Fathers of the Eastern tradition call the Mother of God "the All-Holy" (Panagia), and celebrate her as "free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature" (Lumen Gentium 56). By the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long (CCC 722). It was fitting that the mother of him in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9) should herself be "full of grace."

The Immaculate Heart of Mary refers to the interior life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her joys and sorrows, her virtues and hidden perfections, and, above all, her virginal love for God the Father, her maternal love for her son Jesus, and her compassionate love for all people. In Luke 2, the Scripture reports twice that Mary kept all things in her heart, that there she might ponder over them. Luke 2:35 recounts the prophecy of Simeon that her heart would be pierced with a sword. St. John's Gospel invited attention to Mary's heart with its depiction of Mary at the foot of the cross at Jesus' crucifixion. St. Augustine said Mary cooperated through charity in the work of our redemption (Bainvel, Jean. Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary).  For St. Leo, it is through faith and love that Blessed Virgin Mary conceived her son spiritually, even before receiving him into her womb (Mauriello, Rev. Matthew R., "Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary). St. Augustine teaches that Virgin Mary was more blessed in having borne Christ in her heart than in having conceived him in the flesh.

It was Saint John Eudes (d. 1681) who propagated the devotion, to make it public, and to have a feast celebrated in honor of the Heart of Mary, first at Autun in 1648 and afterwards in a number of French dioceses. He established several religious societies interested in upholding and promoting the devotion. Jean Eudes' efforts to secure the approval of an office and feast failed at Rome, but, notwithstanding this disappointment, the devotion to the Heart of Mary progressed. Eudes began his devotional teachings with the Heart of Mary, and then extended it to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (EWTN on the Hearts of Jesus and Mary; 215). In 1699 Father Pinamonti (d. 1703) published a short work on the Holy Heart of Mary in Italian, and in 1725, Joseph de Gallifet combined the cause of the Heart of Mary with that of the Heart of Jesus in order to obtain Rome's approbation of the two devotions and the institution of the two feasts. In 1729, his project was defeated, and in 1765, the two causes were separated, to assure the success of the principal one. However, it was only in 1805 that Pope Pius VII allowed a feast to honor the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Joseph N. Tylenda. Saints and feasts of the liturgical year 118).  On 21 July, 1855, the Congregation of Rites approved the Office and Mass for the Immaculate Heart (Bainvel, Jean. "Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary"). It commemorates the joys and sorrows of the Mother of God, her virtues and perfections, her love for God and her Divine Son and her compassionate love for mankind (Holweck, Frederick. Feast of the Most Pure Heart of Mary). The Congregation of Rites did not impose them upon the Universal Church. Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1944 to be celebrated on 22 August (Calendarium Romanum 94), coinciding with the traditional octave day of the Assumption. In 1969, Pope Paul VI moved the celebration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to the Saturday, immediately after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This means in practice that it is now held on the third Saturday after Pentecost (Calendarium Romanum 94, 135).

Two elements are essential to the devotion, Mary’s interior life and the beauties of her soul, and Mary’s virginal body. Veneration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary generally coincides with the worship of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  However, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is especially directed to the “Divine Heart”, as overflowing with love for humanity.  In the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, on the other hand, the attraction is the love of her Immaculate Heart for Jesus and for God. Again, in devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Roman Catholic venerates in a sense of love, responding to love.  In devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, love is formed from study and imitation of Mary’s yes to God as the mother of Jesus.  In this devotion, love is more the result, than the “object” of the devotion; the object being rather to love God and Jesus by uniting one’s self to Mary for this purpose and by imitating her virtues, to help one achieve this. History of the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is connected in many ways to that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

In Mama Maria, the definition of faith given by the Second Vatican Council finds perfect embodiment: “The obedience of faith (Rom. 13.26; see 1.5; 2 Cor 10.5-6) is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God” (Dei Verbum #5). But, as Mary was to discover, faith is “not a triumphal march but a journey marked daily by suffering and love, trials and faithfulness” (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, Wednesday, 24 May 2006). Mary touched the obscurity of faith from her first fiat in Nazareth to her final fiat beneath the Cross at Golgotha. When she and Joseph presented Jesus in the Temple, a “second Annunciation” to her took place. The old man Simeon prophesied that her Son was to be “a sign of contradiction” and that “a sword would one day pierce her heart” (Lk 2.34-35). Mary experienced the truth of Simeon’s words during the annual Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem – the Gospel, which we have just heard. This sword of sorrow would cut deeper with the passing of time. Even in the hidden life of Nazareth over the next eighteen years, Blessed John Paul II tells us that Mary’s journey was marked by “a particular heaviness of heart … a kind of ‘veil’ through which one has to draw near to the Invisible One and to live in intimacy with the mystery” (Encyclical Letter, Redemptoris Mater #17).  Living in daily intimacy with the divine child, whom she knew from Scripture was the Son of God, yet destined to become “a man of sorrows,” “a worm and no man,” “despised and rejected by men” (cf. Is. 53), required enormous faith and surrender in God’s designs. Here again, Mary, empty of self and completely receptive for God and His loving plans, abandons herself to the incomprehensible will of the Father, regardless of what it may cost her, for she believed that “for those who love God, all things work together for the good” (Rom 8.28). Blessed Virgin Mary needed that faith to remain at the foot of the Cross. Mary stood before the atrocious sufferings of Her Son. Mama Maria’s love is for our own good. She continues to love us and be for us. I love you Mama Maria, the Immaculate Heart. May your warm Heart continue to protect and strengthen me, and lead me to your Son. Oh Mother Mary, the Spotless heart, the Heart of freedom and Joy.

© Rev Utazi Prince Marie Benignus SFDPM