The Immaculate Heart of Mary
Blessed Are the Pure in Heart
In the Beatitudes, Jesus, the Son of Mary, gives us the key that unlocks for us the mystery of today’s feast of the Most Pure Heart of Mary. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). There was in Mary Most Holy Heart nothing to keep her from seeing God, nothing between the eyes of her soul and the Face of God. Repeatedly in the last years of his pontificate, Saint John Paul II and, after him, our beloved Pope Benedict XVI, invited us to place ourselves at the school of the Virgin there to learn the contemplation of the Face of Christ. The Face of Christ is seen only with the eyes of the heart.
To Contemplate With Mary the Face of Christ
Sixteen years ago in Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Saint John Paul II said:
I have felt drawn to offer a reflection on the Rosary . . . and an exhortation to contemplate the Face of Christ in union with, and at the school of, His Most Holy Mother. To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the Face of Christ” (RVM, art. 3).
Saint John Paul II returned to this intuition in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, saying:
In my Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, I pointed to the Blessed Virgin Mary as our teacher in contemplating Christ’s Face, and among the mysteries of light I included the institution of the Eucharist. (EDE, art. 53)
The Eyes of Your Heart
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Saint Paul brings into a fuller light the meaning of this promise of Jesus when he tells us that, “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:6). In the same vein, he prayed for the Christians of the Church at Ephesus: “I cease not to give thanks for you, making commemoration of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation, in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what the hope is of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.” (Ephesians 1:16-18).
Incarnation
Mary’s Immaculate Heart, her illumined Heart, her Heart free of every shadow, was created for the contemplation of Christ, the Human Face of God. While He was yet hidden in her womb, the eyes of her heart beheld His Face. After His birth, holding Him against her breast, she gazed at His Face and saw the radiance of the glory of God.
Hidden and Public Life
During the years of His hidden life, her eyes grew adjusted to the obscurity of faith, allowing her to see on the Face of her growing Son the splendour of the Word beheld from all eternity by the Father. During His public life the enlightened eyes of her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart saw what other eyes darkened by sin could not see.
Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension
During His bitter Passion, Our Lady saw the Face of Christ despised and cruelly disfigured: the glory of God shining through an ignominious veil of spittle and of blood. Her pure Heart beheld His Face in the glory of His Resurrection and, at His Ascension, received its indelible impression so deeply that, from that day forward, anyone seeking the Face of Christ could find its image in her Immaculate Heart. “And His mother kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).
Pentecost
After Pentecost, the Mother took her place in the heart of the Church, her Immaculate Heart becoming the Church’s living memory, the inexhaustible treasure from which Luke and John drew their Gospels. Her Immaculate Heart was the hidden spring of the Church’s prayer, the sanctuary of the icon of the Holy Face “not made by human hands.”
In the Church
“Devoted to the breaking of the bread” (cf. Acts 2:42), Mary, Mother of the Church, recognized, as did no other, in the Host and in the Chalice the Eucharistic Face of her Son. When, at the hour willed by God, she fell asleep, it was to pass from the vision of the Eucharistic Face to the face-to-face that lies beyond the sacramental veils. “As for me, I shall behold Thy Face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with Thy glory” (Psalm 16:15).
From One Degree of Glory to Another
The Pure Heart of Mary, the God-seeing Heart of Mary, intercedes for us in this and in every Holy Mass that, with the “eyes of our heart enlightened,” we might see, through the veil of the Sacred Host, the Eucharistic Face of her Son and so “be changed into its likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
