IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

 12 JUNE 2021: IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY, ISAIAH 61. 9-11; LUKE 2. 41-51

Focus: The immaculate heart of Mary is not merely a matter of purity of heart or purity of life, the integrity of the person. It is to be clear-sighted and to be passionately and lovingly committed

1. The second Saturday after the Pentecost Sunday, we celebrate the immaculate heart of Mary. How beautiful it is that on Friday we celebrate the sacred heart of the Son and on the following day the immaculate heart of the Mother! It is not coincidental or merely sequential, but very meaningful and significant.

2. What is sacred reflects itself in what is immaculate. What is immaculate contains and embodies what is sacred. The sacred Son reflects the immaculate mother, and the immaculate mother embodies the sacred Son. Holiness and Immaculateness are integrated and inseparable. 

3. To be holy is to be pure. The more we conduct ourselves unstained and uncontaminated with an immaculate heart, the more we grow in holiness. The more we are holy, the more we grow pure and maliceless. To be holy and not to be immaculate is a contradiction.

4. In fact, sacredness and Immaculateness are not something accidental or additional to us. It is essential and integral to our very identity as God's redeemed children. "To be holy and blameless" is God's purpose for us, and destined us for such bliss (cf. Eph 1. 4). Our sanctification is God's will (1 Thes 4. 3)). So to grow sacred and immaculate should be our priority and perennial pursuit.

 

5. Certainly, it is God's gratuitous grace and not our merit. But this does not take away our role, our responsibility, our cooperation, and our effort. We should work hard to merit what we are graced with. This is what Mary did: if her immaculate conception shows predominantly the singular grace and privilege, accorded to her by God, her immaculate heart shows preeminently her humble cooperation with that grace. She constantly preserved her heart and life from sin, and fostered sanctity, thanks to God's grace.

6. Mary's immaculate heart is not only a pointer to her personal holiness and purity but much more, also, a strong inspiration and pathway to be pure and immaculate ourselves. In our times, where hearts are getting so much polluted by sin and malice, where to have heart comes to be taken as fragility and vulnerability, where hearts crooked, hard, and indifferent seem to be the order of the day, where hearts get entangled into much aberration and deviation in the name of modernity, the immaculate heart of Mary is a consolation and remedy!

 

Direction: The celebration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a pointer that true purity leads to joy and serenity because there is nothing that disturbs or distracts. Purity of heart is the propriety of life