HAPPY FEAST DAY!
A Blessed Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to You!
Great Importance for Our Time
The Immaculate Heart of Mary is the mystery most central to the Message of Fatima. Our Lady specifically came in 1917 because the Blessed Trinity wanted to establish devotion to Her Immaculate Heart throughout the world. In fact, Sister Lucia might aptly be called “The Apostle of the Immaculate Heart of Mary,” for her vocation, in accordance with Divine Providence, was to help announce and spread this devotion.
The Five First Saturdays Devotion is precisely meant to make reparation for the offenses against Our Lady’s most Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. By our acts of love, penance and reparation we may envision ourselves removing the numberless splinters and thorns which have pierced Our Lady’s Heart.
Heaven asked for the Pope, in union with the world episcopate, to consecrate Russia specifically to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Once this Act is faithfully completed, there will be great miracles and Russia will be converted. It stands to reason that a clear sign of Russia’s conversion will be that the people of that predilect nation will become greatly devoted to the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Heart and the most Holy Rosary. It is insightful to note that these important devotions have never been promoted in any areas under Eastern Orthodox Catholicism.
As Our Lady has promised, the world will then experience a period of peace in which the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumphantly reign.
There is a profound and beautiful parallel between the 17th century requests of the Sacred Heart to St. Mary Margaret Alacoque and Our Lady’s requests at Fatima. From these important apparitions, it is clear that God wants all men to be devoted to the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart and for all men to acknowledge that these Two Hearts, forever inseparable, reign over all.
Therefore today is a great feast and of special importance for all Catholics who are striving to promote the Message of Fatima and bring Christ’s peace to the whole world.
More Details from the Saintly Visionaries
On June 13, 1917, Our Lady of Fatima told the children: “God wills to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. To whomever embraces this devotion, I promise salvation. These souls will be cherished by God, as flowers placed by Me to adorn His Throne.”
Our Lord Himself explained to Sister Lucia His desire to establish this devotion: “I desire most ardently the propagation of the cult of the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, because the love of this Heart attracts souls to Me; it is the center from which the rays of My light and My love go through all the earth, and the unquenchable fountain from which the living water of My mercy flows into the earth.”
Communicating Heaven’s desire to Pope Pius XII in a letter of October 1940, Sister Lucia ardently urged him to extend to the whole Church a feast in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, “as one of the main feasts of Holy Church.”
When at last, in 1944, the Holy Father instituted the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the Church’s universal calendar, Sister Lucia affirmed, “I rejoice in the progress which devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is about to make everywhere. In the present time, it is this devotion that will save us!”
Recalling how her cousin Jacinta had embraced this devotion, Sister Lucia wrote:
“Jacinta chose from the litany of ejaculations which Father Cruz suggested to us, this one: ‘Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation!’ After saying it, she used to add sometimes, with the simplicity that was natural to her: ‘I so love the Immaculate Heart of Mary! It is the heart of our dear Mother in Heaven! Don’t you love saying many times over: “Sweet Heart of Mary, Immaculate Heart of Mary”? I love it so much, so very much.’ At other times, as she gathered wild flowers, she sang a little tune that she made up herself as she went along: ‘Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation! Immaculate Heart of Mary, convert sinners, save souls from hell!’”
The same devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart burned all the stronger in little Jacinta as her brief life drew toward its close, with a poignant lesson for each of us:
“A little while before going to the hospital, Jacinta said to me: ‘It will not be long now before I go to Heaven. You will remain here to make known that God wishes to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When you are to say this, [that is, when it is permitted to reveal this part of the Secret] don’t go and hide. Tell everybody that God grants us graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary; that people are to ask Her for them; and that the Heart of Jesus wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be venerated at His side. Tell them also to pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace, since God has entrusted it to Her. If I could only put into the hearts of all, the fire that is burning within my own heart, and that makes me love the Hearts of Jesus and Mary so very much!’“
From Sermon 9 on the Visitation by St. Bernardine of Siena
– The following is taken from the Divine Office:
And so, from this [Immaculate] Heart as from a furnace of divine ardor the Blessed Virgin brought forth good works, that is, words of the most ardent charity. For as from a vessel full of the richest and best wine only good wine can be poured; or as from a furnace of intense heat only a burning fire is emítted; so indeed from the Mother of Christ no word can go forth except of the greatest and most intense divine love and ardor. It is also the mark of a wise woman and matron to speak few words, but words that are effective and full of meaning; and so seven times, as it were, seven words of such wonderful meaning and virtue are read as having been uttered by the most blessed Mother of Christ, that mystically it may be shown She was full of the sevenfold grace. To the Angel twice only did She speak; to Elizabeth also twice; with Her Son likewise twice, once in the temple, and a second time at the marriage feast; and once to the attendants. And on all those occasions She always said very little; with this one exception that She spoke at length in the praise of God and in thanksgiving, namely, when She said: My soul doth magnify the Lord. But here She did not speak with man, but with God. Those seven words were spoken in a wonderful degree and order according to the seven courses and acts of love; as if they were seven flames from the furnace of Her Heart.
– And from the Divine Office citing ecclesiastical documents:
The liturgical worship, through which due honor is given to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary, and for which many holy men and women have prepared the way, the Apostolic See itself first approved in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Pope Pius VII instituted the Feast of the Most Pure Heart of the Virgin Mary, to be piously and reverently celebrated by all the dioceses and religious families who had asked for it. Afterwards Pope Pius IX added an Office and a proper Mass to it. But an ardent desire and longing, which had arisen in the seventeenth century, grew day by day, that namely, the same Feast, given greater solemnity, might be spread to the entire Church. In 1942, Pope Pius XII, graciously acceding to this wish, and during the terrible war then ravaging almost the entire world, pitying the infinite hardships of men, and because of his devotion and confidence in our heavenly Mother, in solemn supplication earnestly entrusted the entire human race to Her most generous Heart, and in honor of the same Immaculate Heart he ordered a Feast to be kept forever with its proper Office and Mass.
(Photo courtesy of Frank Vincentz CC BY-SA 3.0)