Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
June 20, 2020
Is 61:9-11, 1 Sam 2:1.4-8, Lk 2:41-51
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
The following points were attempted in today’s homily:
- In 1969 Pope Paul VI moved the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary from August 22 to the day immediately after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart in order to highlight the connection between the two feasts. Yesterday with Catholics across the world, we prayed with devotion, “O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto thine.” If we wish to have such a heart, we can learn so much from Mary, who shows us how to respond to the love of Jesus’ heart and be transformed by it. Mary’s heart was the one that Jesus heard from the first moment his human ears began to function. Hers is the heart that most received and best reflects her Son’s love and today is a day on which we seek not only to admire her, not only to imitate her, but to enter into her loving relationship with her Son. Today we say, with St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort and St. John Paul II who used to pray this every morning, “Praebe mihi cor tuum, O Maria!,” “Give me your heart, O Mary!”
- In 1917, when Mary appeared to the three shepherd children in Fatima, she said to them, “God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.” She invited all of us to consecrate ourselves to her heart as an antidote to the sin that leads to what she showed the children in three visions: to hell, to the destruction of atheistic communism, and to the persecution of the Church and even assassination attempts against the Holy Father. In order to live out well our consecration to Jesus’ Sacred Heart we do so through consecration to her Immaculate Heart. United with her, we enter into the consecration of her Son to the Father for our sanctification (Jn 17). Today we contemplate her heart, a heart that was full of grace because it was full of God. It was a heart full of thanksgiving, one that “rejoiced heartily,” as we see prophesied in Isaiah, because her joy was in God who clothed her with the robe of salvation, wrapped her in a mantle of justice, adorned her like a bride bedecked with jewels. Her heart constantly exulted in the Lord, as we see in her Magnificat, which fulfills what we heard in Hannah’s praise in 2 Samuel. It was a contemplative heart that, as we heard at the end of today’s Gospel, “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” She held on to God’s words and deeds as a treasure that kept paying out dividends within her, pondering God’s word so much that that word could take on her flesh.
- One of the best ways to ponder Mary’s heart and to learn from it is with the help of the eight adjectives found in the Preface of the Votive Mass of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary taken from the most beautiful liturgical book in the Latin Rite: the Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Preface reads: “You gave the Blessed Virgin Mary a wise and obedient heart, that she might perfectly carry out your will, a new and gentle heart, in which you were well pleased and on which you inscribed the law of the New Covenant. You gave her an undivided and pure heart that she might be worthy to be the Virgin Mother of your Son and to rejoice to see you forever. You gave her a steadfast and watchful heart, so that she could endure without fear the sword of sorrow and await in faith the resurrection of her Son.” We can ponder each of the attributes:
- Wise — Her heart was like the young Solomon’s, because pondering and treasuring everything as pieces of a mosaic within. It was wise because it was filled with God’s wisdom.
- Obedient — Her heart hears the word of God and keeps it, perpetually saying fiat. One of the alternative Gospels today is when the anonymous woman from the crowd screamed to Jesus, “Blessed is the womb that bore thee and the breasts that nursed thee.” Even though no woman’s womb or breasts were ever as blessed as Mary’s because of their association with the Son of God, Jesus upped the ante in his praise saying, “Blessed, rather, are they who hear the word of God and observe it.” Mary’s real beatitude came from her holy obedience that said, “let it be done to me according to your word.” Wisdom that allows us to see things as God does, and obedience that helps us to live that wisdom, is what allows us “perfectly [to] carry out [God’s] will.”
- New — In her heart we see the fulfillment of God’s promises through Ezekiel to give us a new heart, taking away our stony hearts and giving us hearts of flesh, hearts that beat in love.
- Gentle — Her heart was one that learned from her Son, who says, “Learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart.” The freshness and meekness of a heart like Mary’s pleases God, as the Preface says, and is the proper material for the Holy Spirit to inscribe the new law.
- Undivided — From the moment her immaculate heart first formed in St. Anne’s womb, it sought above all God’s kingdom as the pearl of great price worth everything else. Hers was a pure echo chamber of an Amen to all God’s desires.
- Pure — The pure of heart see God, as Jesus mentions in the Beatitudes, and her heart did, because there was no room in it for sin. The undivided heart made her capable of saying a full fiat to God through the Archangel Gabriel and her purity allowed her to rejoice in seeing God in her Son in this world and forever.
- Steadfast — Her heart persevered through vicissitudes. It loved on despite being pierced so many times. At the Presentation, Simeon foretold that her own heart would be pierced on account of her Son’s being a sign that would be contradicted. That heart was pierced when Herod sought to assassinate him, when they needed to flee to Egypt, when her fellow Nazarenes tried to hurl him to his death, when so many rejected him during his public ministry, when the crowds chose Barabbas over him, when she saw him mocked, scourged, condemned, crucified and killed. But her heart didn’t give up. She kept loving to and through the Cross. She kept standing, loving right alongside her Son.
- Vigilant — Her heart waited for her Son’s resurrection with faith and hope and awaits our responding to God’s graces until we, by God’s mercy, come to be with her forever. Her steadfastness allowed her to ensure the sword of sorrow without fear and to remain alert for her Son at all times.
- That’s a heart that Mary wants to give us. That’s a heart she wants us to imitate. That’s the heart that will fulfill the prayer we made yesterday.
- Last night, one of my spiritual directees who loves In Sinu Iesu as much as Sr. Monica Marie, sent me a beautiful email card for this feast in which she quoted what the anonymous priest author of the book said she said to him, and through him, to us. It shows what she hopes to give us through consecration to her immaculate heart. “I am your Mother of Perpetual Help and I am the Mediatrix of all graces for my dear children. My eyes of mercy are turned toward you. My Heart is open to you. My hands are ever raised in prayer for you, or open over you to shower abundant graces upon you and upon those for whom you pray. I am pleased that you want to imitate my son Saint John in making your home with me, in opening to me every part of your life. In this way, you allow me to act upon you, but you also allow me to act with you and through you. My presence and my action are revealed in gentleness, in sweetness, and in mercy. I want you to resemble me spiritually, just as my Jesus resembled me physically. Jesus, looking at me, saw the perfect reflection of all the dispositions and virtues of His adorable Heart. I, looking at you, want to see my own Immaculate Heart mirrored in yours. I want to communicate to you … the virtues of my Heart. By consecrating yourself to me, you have made this possible, and already my transformation of you has begun.”
- That transformation is effectuated at Mass. It’s at Mass that Jesus responds to her prayers and ours to give us a new heart, a true heart transplant, as we receive his heart and his whole body, blood, soul and divinity within. This is the means by which he makes our hearts like unto his. This is the way that our heart becomes wise, obedient, new, gentle, undivided, pure, vigilant and steadfast just like Jesus’ Sacred Heart. Give us your heart, O Mary!
The readings for today’s Mass were:
Reading 1 IS 61:9-11
Thus says the LORD:
The descendants of my people shall be renowned among the nations,
and their offspring among the peoples;
All who see them shall acknowledge them
as a race the LORD has blessed.
I rejoice heartily in the LORD,
in my God is the joy of my soul;
For he has clothed me with a robe of salvation,
and wrapped me in a mantle of justice,
Like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,
like a bride bedecked with her jewels.
As the earth brings forth its plants,
and a garden makes its growth spring up,
So will the Lord GOD make justice and praise
spring up before all the nations.
Responsorial Psalm 1 SM 2:1, 4-5, 6-7, 8ABCD
R. (see 1) My heart exults in the Lord, my Savior.
“My heart exults in the LORD,
my horn is exalted in my God.
I have swallowed up my enemies;
I rejoice in my victory.”
R. My heart exults in the Lord, my Savior.
“The bows of the mighty are broken,
while the tottering gird on strength.
The well-fed hire themselves out for bread,
while the hungry batten on spoil.
The barren wife bears seven sons,
while the mother of many languishes.”
R. My heart exults in the Lord, my Savior.
“The LORD puts to death and gives life;
he casts down to the nether world;
he raises up again.
The LORD makes poor and makes rich,
he humbles, and also exalts.”
R. My heart exults in the Lord, my Savior.
“He raises the needy from the dust;
from the dung heap he lifts up the poor,
To seat them with nobles
and make a glorious throne their heritage.”
R. My heart exults in the Lord, my Savior.
Alleluia LK 2:19
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed is the Virgin Mary who kept the word of God
and pondered it in her heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel LK 2:41-51
Each year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover,
and when he was twelve years old,
they went up according to festival custom.
After they had completed its days, as they were returning,
the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem,
but his parents did not know it.
Thinking that he was in the caravan,
they journeyed for a day
and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances,
but not finding him,
they returned to Jerusalem to look for him.
After three days they found him in the temple,
sitting in the midst of the teachers,
listening to them and asking them questions,
and all who heard him were astounded
at his understanding and his answers.
When his parents saw him,
they were astonished,
and his mother said to him,
“Son, why have you done this to us?
Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.”
And he said to them,
“Why were you looking for me?
Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
But they did not understand what he said to them.
He went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and was obedient to them;
and his mother kept all these things in her heart.
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