1. Is 6:1-9
2. Gospel: Lk 2:41-51
" THE HEART THAT LOVED GOD"
Dear brothers and sisters, today we are celebrating the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary follows the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus which was yesterday. Looking at the two devotions, they seem to be closely linked with each other simply because " Mary's role in the Church is inseparable from her union with Christ and flows directly from it... this union of the mother and with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ's virginal conception up to his death," ( CCC nos.964, 1172).
Tracing from history we can understand that this devotion to Immaculate Heart of Mary grew up in parallel, but at a lesser intensity than that of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus only starting to become more prominent during the time of St. John Eudes. John Eudes was born in 1601 in Normandy, France. He died on August 19,1680 and was canonized by Pope Pius XI on May 31, 1925.
There is a difference between the devotions to the two Hearts, that is the heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary. The difference is that the sacred heart of Jesus emphasizes His divine heart as being full of love for humankind, while devotion to Mary's Immaculate Heart is essentially concerned with the love that her heart has for Jesus, our God and Savior. Therefore, Mary's heart is meant to be a model for the way we should love God. She is really a human person who is able to fully and really love God in the way that He should be loved since her heart is Immaculate which means sinless. It is because if Mary did not respond generously with a loving " yes" to God's proposal of being the Mother of his Son, then we would not have had a Savior and we would not be saved. For us, our daily response to God should also: " Thy will be done."
Mary's Immaculate heart is honored simply because she was chosen to be the Mother of God. Recognizing her extra ordinary holiness called to share in and cooperate in His redemptive sufferings, and the immense love she bestowed on Jesus as His mother.
Dear brothers and sisters, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary invites us to have contemplative heart. It is only with a contemplative heart, that we can recall our past in retrospection and see the hand of God in our personal history. It is with contemplative heart that we become more aware of the presence of God in the present, and that will deepen our hope and confidence in God to journey into the future.
You may put this question before yourself that, what kind of heart do you have? Do you have a stony heart, a wooden heart, or perhaps a plastic heart? Another question is: What are the sins in your heart? There is no real peace in your heart as long as you hold in it the following sins of the heart:
H- Hatred; E- Envy; A- Anger; R- Resentment; T- Timidity.
Hakuna maoni:
Chapisha Maoni