❤️The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary celebrates the interior life of the Blessed Virgin, her pure and unconditional love for God and humanity, her joys, and especially her sorrows. This heart, which kept all things and pondered them, is the symbol of her perfect union with the Father's will. The feast, promoted by saints like St. John Eudes and greatly spread after the apparitions of Fatima, was extended to the universal Church by Pope Pius XII in 1944, who fixed its celebration on August 22, the then-Octave of the Assumption, to honor the heart that is intimately united with the redemptive work of her Son, Jesus Christ.
🙏 Introit (Heb 4:16 | Ps 44:2)
Adeámus cum fidúcia ad thronum grátiæ, ut misericórdiam consequámur, et grátiam inveniámus in auxílio opportúno... Let us approach with faith the throne of grace to obtain mercy and find grace in timely help. Ps. My heart overflows with a goodly theme; I address my verses to the king.
📖 Reading (Sirach 24:23-31)
Like a vine I produced blossoms of a pleasant odor, and my flowers yield fruits of glory and wealth. I am the mother of beautiful love, of fear, of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come to me, all you who desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweeter than honey, and my inheritance sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. My memory will endure through the generations of the ages. Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more. He who listens to me will not be confounded, and those who work by me will not sin. Those who glorify me will have eternal life.
✝️ Gospel (John 19:25-27)
At that time, standing by the Cross of Jesus were His Mother, and His Mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus, therefore, saw His Mother and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His Mother, "Woman, behold your son." Then He said to the disciple, "Behold your Mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
🤔 Reflections
📜Mary, standing by the cross, not only suffered but cooperated with her love in the work of redemption, becoming the spiritual mother of all the faithful, represented in the beloved disciple. She became, in a spiritual sense, the mother of His members (which we are), because she cooperated with her charity so that the faithful might be born in the Church (St. Augustine, De sancta virginitate). The sword of sorrow predicted by Simeon pierced her soul, uniting her heart to the sacrifice of Christ in a unique way; therefore, we can call her the Queen of Martyrs, for the compassion of her soul surpassed the bodily sufferings of the martyrs (St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon for the Sunday in the Octave of the Assumption). Eternal Wisdom, described in the book of Sirach as the "mother of beautiful love," found its perfect dwelling in Mary, so that in her resides all the grace of the way and the truth, which is Christ Himself (St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Mariale).
↔️The Gospel of John is the only one that details the presence of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the Cross and the dialogue in which Jesus entrusts her as a mother to the beloved disciple. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41; Luke 23:49) also mention the presence of holy women during the crucifixion, including Mary Magdalene and "Mary the mother of James and Joseph," but they describe them as watching "from a distance," without recording the explicit presence of Jesus' Mother at this crucial moment nor the dialogue that establishes her spiritual motherhood.
🕊️St. Paul, although he does not narrate the life of Christ, provides the theological foundation for the scene at Calvary. In Galatians 4:4, he states that God "sent forth his Son, born of a woman," highlighting Mary's irreplaceable role in the plan of salvation, which culminates at the Cross. Furthermore, Paul's exhortation to "fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church" (Colossians 1:24) finds its perfect model in Mary, whose heart, united with Christ's, suffered with Him for the redemption of the world, becoming the maternal heart of the Church itself.
🏛️Church documents delve deeper into the meaning of Mary's maternal heart. The Bull Ineffabilis Deus (1854) of Pope Pius IX, in defining the Immaculate Conception, extols the unique purity of Mary's heart. Pope Leo XIII, in the encyclical Octobri Mense (1891), teaches that at the foot of the Cross, Mary united her sorrows with those of her Son, "meriting" to become a mediatrix of graces. Pope Pius XII, in the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), reaffirms that Mary, by offering her Son on Golgotha together with the sacrifice of her maternal heart, became, by a new title of sorrow and glory, the Mother of all the members of Christ.
