The Immaculate Heart of Mary & the Luminous Life
I think that many of us nod and agree how wonderful Mary's Immaculate Heart is. But it's something 'out there'. It's part of a statue or a painting. Yes, it's pretty.
But we don't quite know what to 'do' with it.
I'll be honest. I didn't know what to do with this devotion for a very long time.
Which is strange, because Mary's Immaculate Heart has been part of the Church's life for over a thousand years. When she appears to children and visionaries, she asks us to emulate her heart.
So we put pictures on our walls, follow the first Saturday devotions, ask her to pray for us, and then... that's about it.
So I started to do a little research. Why is her heart important? It's united to Christ. That's pretty important. She's the 'flower of our race,' and conceived without sin. Got it.
Growing up, I didn't know what to do with it. I continue to love her, but this Immaculate Heart business threw me.
So it became another devotional object. Another pretty, painted thing 'out there' that I look at, and sigh, and wish, 'If only I was good like that. Maybe I'll be immaculate next year...'
When the Church gives to the People of God a devotion, it's not another sticker for our lunchboxes. It's a key. It's a truth. It's a way to life.
It's something that has to come alive inside us.
And then I found a wonderful overview of it all by Michael Heinlein, on SimplyCatholic.com: Finding Jesus in the Immaculate Heart. Give it a read. And the overview from 'We Dare to Say'.
This quote from Our Lady of Fatima leapt out at me:
“I will never leave you; my Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.”
Where was the last time someone had said they were the 'way'?
Of course. Christ himself, John 14:6. So I started meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, to think about her Way.
And then, like a burst of light, I realized something. I'd long tried to follow Mary as a guide through life in the 'contemplative path' of the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries.
But with St John Paul II's inclusion of the Luminous mysteries, that triad is enriched. This fourth set of mysteries shows us how an immaculate heart sees the world, lives in the world.
An immaculate heart isn't centered on 'getting out of here' with a perfect punch card.
Mary's heart saw life differently. Saw every moment as Heaven-sent. Where death is not a deadline. And where holiness is real life.
So instead of thinking of Mary's immaculate heart as something beautiful 'out there', I hope these short notes help you see that we can live in her heart.
Need a refresher? (Read the Luminous mysteries and their Gospel moments.)
1. The Baptism in the Jordan
When Christ enters the Jordan River, he asks John the Baptist to baptize him. John's response is to falter, and back down, and want to prostrate himself before the Lord. Christ steadies John's hand to get the job done.
Reflection: God gifted us a cosmos where we also take responsibility for things. We aren't called to polish the great gears of a cosmic clock. We are to tend the world as stewards, bring things to fruition and glory, and use every ounce of our own creative energy to strive to become greater.
Christ helps John the Baptist to do his mission. He doesn't take it away. John is a mission to the world at his time.
It takes an immaculate heart to accept that God is asking for my cooperation. Not just in my life. But in the greater 'thing' that is history. That my little deeds to bless God, and do good, and bring the energy of my being to bear on my tasks, matter.
John matters. I matter. You matter. And Mary lived a life where she knew she mattered deeply to God.
Action: Reflect on how powerful it is for you yourself to matter that deeply. No matter what others think or say, God would create the entire universe all over again just to hear you say to him, 'I love you'.
2. The Wedding at Cana
When the wine ran out at the wedding feast, Mary and Jesus are approached to 'solve the problem'. She has no fear whatsoever in asking him to step in.
Reflection: From the beginning days of mankind in Eden, God's first commandment was for humanity to be fruitful and multiply. Almost every tree was good to eat. And everything in the universe was good.
So it's very meaningful that Christ's first recorded miracle is at a wedding, filled with feasting, family, and festivals. He book-ended his earthly ministry with these themes.
Heaven is a feast, a feast of friendship, an ongoing festival of love and light and goodness. Mary's immaculate heart must have lived in this place of radical hospitality. Can you imagine a home, a world, where food and cheer were valued above hoarded gold? It would be a merrier world.
That's the world we were offered, we are called to co-create. Mary's home was an extension of her immaculate heart, and the love she had for God flowed into all the love her open door and table shared with others.
Action: Meditate on the role of the family, the home, and the breaking of holy bread and wine as the reason why we're gifted life. Why we're called to protect life. Communion with Christ and each other through ordinary life begins now.
3. Proclamation of the Kingdom
After John's arrest, Jesus insisted on the message that the Kingdom is at hand. "Repent, and believe in the Gospel." Mark 1:14
Reflection: “All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, "I am the way." St Catherine of Siena. Jesus didn't come to tell us that the Kingdom was able to be handed to those who lived a good life. It is at hand. It is here.
There is so much that is wrong and rotten with the world. But the fact that we feel such pain and horror at how awful it all is points to something. Points to something wonderful. We hate all this wrongness, because it shouldn't be.
We can do something about it. We matter. Friendship and family and healthy living matters. We recognize that the Kingdom is everywhere, latent now, not just later on. So we grab it. Hold onto it with white-knuckles because it's a pearl of great price.
Action: Our efforts to imitate Mary's immaculate heart start by saying yes. And then living out that 'yes'. Our lives are more than just our own. Our lives are part of the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth. Like Mary, are we helping to soften and strengthen our community into a kingdom? Not a kingdom built on state lines, but a kingdom built on faith, hope, love, and the call to holiness?
4. The Transfiguration
In a visit to Mount Tabor, Christ revealed the glory of his divine nature to Peter, James, and John. His inner life, always hidden, showed itself through his outer life.
Reflection: Each of us is a complex interweave of culture, nurture, nature, and choices. We inherit all kinds of thoughts and pressures. We spend our lives sifting through what's true and what's easy, and sometimes have the strength to live according to our beliefs. This is sometimes thought of as the discrepancy between our inner and outer lives. What we think and what we do aren't always the same.
Something immaculate is something without stain. Mary was perfectly clean and clear and transparent to the goodness of God. She must have had a strong, winsome personality to endure her seven sorrows, and still mother the early Church. And through it all, her inner and outer life were calm and united.
Dr Alice von Hildebrand speaks of a 'Transfiguration' moment that can happen to couples. It's a gift that allows them to see each other as God sees them. For a second, they see the hidden inner person, and in that moment, choose to spend the rest of their waking freedom loving that person before all others.
Action: Ask for the gift to know that everyone has this luminous lining. No matter who we are, or how we live. We are beloved children of God. Perhaps one day we can see that inner life in another person. We must ask that Mary's immaculate heart softens ours, and helps us love like hers. And even if we can't actually do it yet, then imagine it. Hope for it.
5. The Institution of the Eucharist
Before his Passion, Christ brings his apostles together in an upper room, and during the ancient rituals of the Passover meal, elevates two time-honored elements into a new reality. He gives himself as food for his people.
Reflection: Before, Christ proclaimed the Kingdom, and showered his miracles of healing, plenty, and deliverance. All those were the cleansing of the cosmic temple, shoring up the hearts of the People of God. Now, he dips into deep Heaven to bring out the greatest gift. Communion with himself.
This Communion was always something dreamed of since the beginning. Humanity longed to live in God. But the twilight gate of death held us back, champing at the bit, afraid and awed.
Christ didn't just go to die, promising happiness hereafter to good little girls and boys.
He folded everything in on itself. He bent the flow of time and creation into an new reality. Like folding sheets of dough and butter together. Here, and now, we can fill ourselves with the eternal, infinite, God. And in time, depending on how serious our 'yes' and our 'thank you,' he will digest our hearts, and make them clean and clear. Not later. Now. This Sunday.
It's said that one person doesn't start a movement. 2 people do. And Mary's immaculate heart was that second person. He is the way. She lived it out. Now it's our turn.
Action: Meditate on the reality that Heaven starts now. Mary's heart is a blueprint for us to begin to live in Christ here and now, and not later. Every one of us is able to do it, and all in different ways. This life here and now is not something to endure, wish away, or deal with. It's a sacred pilgrimage. It matters too. Everything matters. Everything is sacred.
How we see is what we see.
Mary's immaculate heart loved first, saw first, and acted first. All we have to do it copy her.
And maybe one day, we'll find that we weren't really so alone as we thought we were, but that each of our inner room was always a triad of hearts - the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Heart, and our heart.
All wanting to beat together.