Yesterday, we celebrated the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so it is appropriate that today we celebrate the immaculate heart of his mother, Mary. Mary was single-hearted in her faith, in her devotedness to God. She is an example and an inspiration for us, as sin and anger, frustration and impatience, our ambitions and our jealousies can take us away from our single-heartedness and our devotion to our faith.
Much of the devotion to the immaculate heart of Mary that we have today has its origin in the medieval period of the Church, with St Anselm of Canterbury and St Bernard of Clairvaux. In our modern era, John Paul II had this to say in his encyclical letter Redemptoris Mater: “By her loving consent, Mary first conceived Christ in her heart and then in her womb accepting fully and with a ready heart everything that is decreed in the divine plan. ”
In looking at the immaculate heart of Mary, we can say that Mary faced a lot of situations in her life that she did not completely comprehend: when the Angel appears to her in the Annunciation, when she received the prediction from Simeon, when she loses track of Jesus on their visit to the Temple, when Jesus is faced with starting his earthly ministry at the wedding of Cana, and when her son dies on the cross. Mary pondered all these things in her heart. Mary places her trust in God even when she does not completely understand. She moves forward in her life and in her faith in her single-hearted devotion.
Let us unite our prayers with the prayers of the Immaculate Heart of Mary today.
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