The Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Saturday after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, Memorial
Other Celebrations for this Day:
Liturgical Cycle: A | Lectionary Cycle: II
Introduction
The celebration in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is closely linked to the solemnity of the Sacred Heart, which follows it by one day. This is not by accident. When we honour the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we simply celebrate our Lord’s great love, which he showed by dying for us and which he continues to give us day after day. Mary was close to her Son, not only because she was his Mother but because she loves everyone for whom her Son lived, died, and rose from the dead. Her heart is large enough to include us all in her love. She is with us in our sorrows and joys.
Opening Prayer
Lord our God,
We thank you for the love
with which you filled the heart of Mary,
The Mother of your Son and our mother.
In your great kindness, you have given her to us
to open our hearts to your word and to your love,
so that we can seek your will in all we do.
May she also let our hearts be touched
by the needs of people with sorrows and cares.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
First Reading
Elijah left. He found Elisha, son of Shaphat, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen; he was following the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak over him.
Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah, and said: “Let me say goodbye to my father and mother; then I will follow you.” Elijah said to him: “Return if you want; don’t worry about what I did.”
However, Elisha turned back, took the yoke of oxen, and slew them. He roasted their meat on the pieces of the yoke and gave it to his people, who ate it. After this, he followed Elijah and began ministering to him.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm 16:1b-2a and 5, 7-8, 9-10
R. (see 5a) You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge;
I say to the LORD, "My Lord are you."
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup,
you it is who hold fast my lot.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord.
I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices,
my body, too, abides in confidence;
Because you will not abandon my soul to the nether world,
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption.
R. You are my inheritance, O Lord.
Alleluia Verse
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed is the Virgin Mary who kept the word of God
and pondered it in her heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Every year, Jesus’s parents traveled to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover, as was customary.
And when Jesus was twelve years old, he went up with them according to the custom of this feast.
After the festival ended, they left, but the boy Jesus stayed in Jerusalem, and his parents didn’t know it.
They assumed he was with their group of travelers, and after walking all day, they searched for him among their relatives and friends.
As they didn’t find him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him;2
and on the third day, they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions.
All the people were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
His parents were very surprised when they saw him, and his mother said to him:
“Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I were very worried while searching for you.”
Then he said to them:
“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
But they did not understand this answer.
Jesus went down with them to Nazareth and remained obedient to them. His mother kept all these things in her heart.
Prayers of the Faithful
Let us raise our hearts in prayer to God our Father, and ask him to fill our world and our communities with the warmth of his love. We say: R/ Lord, hear your people.
– For the Church of Jesus Christ on earth, which is a community of weak people, that the power of God’s goodness may become visible in our love for one another, we pray: R/ Lord, hear your people.
– For our world with all its needs, that Mary may watch over it, pray for it and keep people from warring with one another and from making one another suffer, we pray: R/ Lord, hear your people.
– For people in lowly jobs, that they may learn from our humble Mother that God values all work done with love, we pray: R/ Lord, hear your people.
– For all missionaries, that like Mary, our dear Mother, we may give Christ to our world and have a heart loving all people and especially the poorest and the weakest, we pray:
– For all of us united here, that our faith may produce in us, as in Mary, fruits of genuine love for one another, we pray: R/ Lord, hear your people.
Our loving God, these are the things we ask of you today. Let Mary enrich our prayers with hers and give us every good gift through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Prayer over the Gifts
Generous and merciful God,
we are sure you accept our prayers wholeheartedly
when there is peace among us
and when we try to the best of our ability
to be one of heart and soul.
Help us in our weak efforts
on account of the prayers of Mary.
With her we offer you all honor and praise
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Preface:
The Immaculate Heart of Mary
The heart of Mary is the heart of one who lives by the New Law.
Father, all-powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
You gave the Blessed Virgin Mary
a wise and obedient heart,
that she might perfectly carry out your will,
a new and gentle heart,
in which you were well pleased
and on which you inscribed
the law of the New Covenant.
You gave her an undivided and pure heart,
that she might be worthy
to be the Virgin Mother of your Son
and to rejoice to see you forever.
You gave her a steadfast and watchful heart,
so that she could endure without fear the sword of sorrow
and await in faith the resurrection of her Son.
With the whole company of the angels
we sing your praises
In their canticle of joy:
Holy, holy, holy Lord…
Prayer after Communion
Good and loving Father,
in this eucharist we have enjoyed
the food of life and the drink of joy
of your Son Jesus Christ.
Fill us with his Spirit of love,
that our love, like that of Mary,
may be reliable and lasting,
that no indifference may extinguish it,
no flood of impatience nor hatred may sweep it away.
Let it be a flame warming the hearts of people
and a fire burning for you
our living God, now and for ever.
Blessing
God has been very good to us. He has given us Jesus to save us from our inability to love God and neighbour. He has given us Mary to watch over us, to care for us, to pray with us and for us. Yes, Mary cares. Could our thanksgiving not be that we too learn to care for one another and to render all the service we can? May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. R/ Amen.
Let us go and, like Mary,
serve the Lord in one another. R/ Thanks be to God.
REFLECTION
IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY
We, Claretian Missionaries, are sons of the Immaculate Heart. In our spirituality, Mary is our mother, and we are her sons. This sonship is not merely a title. It is “an existential dimension of our missionary life. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit to be lived and experienced, that configures our interior being and dynamises it for the apostolic mission.”
Mary’s spiritual motherhood is a maternity that gives birth to us as missionaries. For this reason, the meaning of being a Son of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is essentially missionary. As Mother, the Heart of Mary is the setting in which the Father, through the Spirit, conforms us to Christ. This motherhood continues in our mission. In the Founder’s words, we are like “the arms of Mary.”
Luke 2:41-51
Mary "kept everything in her heart"
As if in the shadow of the solemnity of the Heart of Jesus, the Church places the obligatory Memoria of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the day after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. It is important to remember and contemplate the Heart of Mary after having contemplated the meaning of the Heart of Jesus. Because, if the Word became flesh and thus received a heart of flesh, Mary is that flesh of the Word, from whom the Word of the Eternal Father took his mortal flesh. We Christians have a lot to learn from Mary's Heart. From the meek and humble Heart of Jesus, we receive the revelation of love. From the Heart of Mary we learn to accept and assimilate that love.
Mary is, for us, a teacher of the Christian life. In her, there was no resistance; her "fiat or yes" was complete and unconditional. But, like anyone else, she too had to walk through that process of faith in which not everything was clear at the beginning. She too, lost sight of Jesus, and felt the anguish of a search that did not bear immediate fruit. The three days of searching speak, in fact, of the three days Mary lived through from Good Froday to Easter Sunday. Not everything was clear to her ... Yet - Mary "kept everything in her heart", leaving with patience and trust, with true faith, leaving the Word to mature, to penetrate to those depths of the soul in which a complete understanding is possible only in the fullness of time – the time designed by God himslef.
This is the humble heart, the open heart, the heart that loves, the heart of a mother, the Immaculate Heart of Mary. If we imitate Jesus, the meek and humble of heart, shall we not also imitate the one from whom that heart took its flesh?
Saint Anthony Mary Claret, a 19th-century Spanish missionary, propagated the devotion of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He founded the religious congregation of the Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, also known as the Claretian Missionaries. St. Claret composed the following prayer to Mary, which is inscribed in his chapel:
O Heart of Mary, furnace and instrument of love, enkindle me with the love of God and my neighbour.