Today we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a celebration of the complex relationship of Mary with her Son's work of salvation: from the Incarnation , to his death and resurrection, to the gift of the Holy SPirit so states the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy.
A celebration of the complex visceral relationship of MAry with her Son's work of salvation.
Think about these words again: visceral relationship of Mary and her Son's work of salvation.
Visceral is more than the intellectual but rather the deep connection of one heart to the other. Mary was deeply connected; she felt deeply the reality of salvation worked in the life and death of her Son.
Yesterday we celebrated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and today we are invited to experience the Immaculate Heart of Mary. They cannot be separated.
It is through Mary's "yes" to the Father that Jesus enters into the world. This Mother carried the Redeemer in her very body as he was knit in her womb, as he grew and developed from a fetus to an infant born into the world.
This Mother knows deeply the cost of salvation, the gift of salvation. Her Heart remains forever an intimate part of the that gift to the world that is the Sacred Heart of Jesus pierced for all.
We too must feel deeply this great gift. We too must carry this gift in our hearts. Our hearts must also be pierced by the very sword that pierced the side of Christ, only then can we truly begin to enter into this gift of salvation and allow it to transform us each day anew.
Mary "kept all these things in her heart" and she invites us to open our hearts wide so that the treasure of salvation, this gift of redemption, Christ himself can be kept there, living in us as he lived in her.
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