“Come, Holy Spirit, come by means of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, thy well-beloved spouse.”
This short but powerful prayer comes from Servant of God, Fr. Stefano Gobbi whose love for our Blessed Mother influenced many thousands to pray the rosary and increase their own devotion to her. Praying this short prayer in the month of August is a simple way to open ourselves to the graces the Church offers during the month dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The month of May is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In June we honor Our Lord’s Sacred Heart, and in July we extend this honor to His Precious Blood. The other bookend to the Divine devotions of June and July is the month of August, when we honor Mary’s Immaculate Heart.
We also celebrate the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus back-to-back with the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, usually in the month of June, but occasionally in May or July, depending on the liturgical calendar. This back-to-back celebration is a sort of focal point of these months and highlights the intimate union between the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts.
Why the Immaculate Heart?
The language of the bible uses the “heart” to describe the integrity or wholeness of a person. Our heart is at our core and is where mind, will, emotions, virtue, and spirit come together as one. When we speak of the Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart, we are speaking of the entirety of her person, which is uniquely and perfectly conformed to the Divine Will and God’s plan for the salvation of all mankind.
She has no ulterior motives, no selfish plans of her own. Her love for God is pure and complete: immaculate. Like the Church at the end of time, Mary’s heart is already presented without spot or blemish or any such thing because of her absolute love of God and fidelity to His mission of mercy and grace.
All of this makes Mary’s Immaculate Heart a perfect reflection of Jesus’ Sacred Heart and a perfect model for each of us, her children. As we honor and celebrate it throughout the month of August, we please our Lord and aid our own sanctification. St. Louis de Montfort, in his treatise on consecration to Jesus through Mary, famously said the Blessed Mother is, “the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus.”
Though our hearts will never be as pure as Mary’s in this life, we can still be continually purified by our devotion to the Immaculate Heart. Through this devotion, she will lead us ever closer to the Sacred Heart of her Son, Jesus. The safe refuge of Mary’s heart is the best place for us to more readily focus the trajectory of our lives towards Jesus.
From the Cross, Jesus gave all of us His mother when He entrusted her to St. John with the words: “Behold, your mother” (Jn. 19:27). We are each called to respond to this enormous grace by entrusting our hearts to Mary, by making her a part of our daily spiritual lives and by imitating and honoring her Immaculate Heart. This Heart is the model of every virtue, all devotion, and of a life of prayer and service to our God.
The Fatima Request
Throughout the Fatima apparitions, and especially on June 13, 1917, Blessed Mother spoke about her Immaculate Heart, saying to Lucia:
“Jesus wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.”
At this same apparition, Our Lady showed Lucia, Jacinta, and Francesco her Heart, holding it out to them in her hand. Much later in her religious life, Sister Lucia was given the specifics on how we are to make the Five First Saturdays as reparation and consolation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In doing so, we also answer Our Lord’s call for devotion to her Heart. As the name implies, on five consecutive first Saturdays of the month, we show our devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart by:
- Going to confession, with the intention of making reparation to Mary
- Receiving Holy Communion, in a state of grace, for the same intention
- Praying at least five decades of the Rosary
- Spending fifteen minutes meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary
To those who satisfy these requests, Mary promises the graces necessary for their eternal salvation.
Becoming All Flame for Mary Through Her Immaculate Heart
The image we all know of the Immaculate Heart shows that heart engulfed in flames of charity. Mary’s heart burns steadily but is not consumed. Instead, this fire consumes all that would divert from anything that is not of God’s will.
Desert Father Abba Joseph is famously quoted as saying, “If you will, you can become all flame.” Like Mary, we too are called to have hearts that are all flame with love of God and desire to do His holy will.
In Psalm 51:10 we hear:
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
And in Psalm 24:3-4:
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…
By practicing devotion to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, by yielding to the purifying flame of a life lived in ever deeper reflection of her and her perfections, we will become flame and increasingly be able to, “do whatever he tells you,” as Mary instructed at the Wedding Feast at Cana.
This becoming flame burns away not only sin, selfishness, and vice, but ultimately leaves a burning ember of fearlessness that is purity of intention. No longer shackled by anything that seeks self-preservation or control over this uncontrollable life, we will be free to burn for Jesus, like Mary, and do what it is we were created to do.
This fearless purity of intention yields the greatest freedom we could ever hope to attain: the freedom to do God’s will in all things. In this freedom, we will join Mary in God’s salvific work for humanity in whatever way He tells us. In this freedom, we will have peace that goes beyond understanding, no matter what the circumstances of our lives. In this freedom, we will truly satisfy the desire of the Sacred Heart that the Immaculate Heart be honored and loved.
When the Holy Spirit, her spouse, finds Mary in a soul, he hastens there and enters fully into it. He gives himself generously to that soul according to the place it has given to his spouse. One of the main reasons why the Holy Spirit does not work striking wonders in souls is that he fails to find in them a sufficiently close union with his faithful and inseparable spouse. – St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, #36
Let us join St. Louis de Montfort, and countless other faithful flames who have gone before us, in delving more deeply into devotion to the Immaculate Heart this August. In so doing, may we draw down God’s grace, in the form of the flaming freedom of purity of intention, to do His holy will always.
Image by Radek Linner on Wikimedia Commons
