Our Place is in Mary’s Heart

Mary, the New Jerusalem

“I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem,

coming down from God out of heaven like a bride

beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Rev 20:1-2)

We all know that when Cardinal Karol Wojtyla went to the conclave for the election of the successor to Pope John Paul I, the Primate of Poland asked him to accept if the choice of the College of Cardinals fell to him to be the new pope. It is also well known that the Primate told him that his mission was to prepare the Church for the third millennium. Similarly, a few years before, the retreat he preached for Pope Paul VI in Lent 1976, a “Sign of Contradiction”, harked back to the prophecy of Simeon to Our Lady regarding her son who would be a “sign of contradiction”. Ergo, hasn’t John Paul II himself become a sign of contradiction sent by God to humanity for the last 20 years of the Second Millennium? One of the talks of the retreat also mentioned the sign in heaven of a “Woman”, understood of course to be Our Lady, referring to Revelation Chapter 12. The future pope seemed, thereby, not only to be showing the importance of Mary but also imparting a fact: that a real spiritual war and struggle was taking place during these years or was about to take place. We know also that John Paul II not only had great devotion to Our Lady but also that she was meant, through him, to prepare the Church to enter into the Third Millennium, just as Mary preceded the birth of the Lord 2000 years ago. By inference, then, we can assume that the years 1970s-1999 were supposed to be years of struggle and real spiritual warfare.

Well-known, too, is the fact that many people receive locutions from God, from Our Lady, etc. Sometimes they have a more coined form: a private revelation (see CCC 67 and following regarding Private Revelations). One usually takes them with a pinch of salt. Nobody is forced to believe in them, even if they are approved by the Church. If they help us grow in our faith then this is good. Amongst many private revelations and locutions, there is one which astonished me greatly. I read it toward the end of the 1980s. It was a locution given to a priest a few years before, in the 1970s if I am not wrong. In it, Our Lady relentlessly talked about the triumph of her Immaculate Heart. In this, there is nothing really new, in the sense that in Fatima Our Lady said the same, when she said that “in the end” her Immaculate Heart “will triumph”. But what struck me deeply in one of the locutions given to this priest –a locution which raised many theological and spiritual questions– was this assertion, which I am paraphrasing from memory: the times we are living in or about to go through (1970-1999) are difficult, challenging and are dark times; the forces of evil will be strengthened and the confusion will be great. But also this brings with it many dangers for our faith. In essence, however, this priest’s locution stated that the only safe place for us would be to take refuge in Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Therefore, we were invited to enter and dwell in Her Immaculate Heart. I was happy to admit with great faith that Mary is a safe “place” so to speak. I had read much about exorcisms and about Satan in past years and knew to which extent Satan feared Our Lady. That was fine by me. But I struggled to fathom out how one could “enter in her heart”. I felt that one needed some “visualisation” to do so, or some image or parable to help guide him as to the path to follow in order to enter Mary’s Immaculate Heart. Then too, a more mundane consideration was the fact that Mary’s heart is physically much smaller than a human body. So, I wondered: how can we enter? What does it exactly mean on a practical level? (Nicodemus asked the Lord: “How is a man able to be born, being old? Is he able to enter into the womb of his mother a second time, and to be born?” (John 3:4))

Even with the help of Grignon the Montfort, whom I knew already and had read his great book “True Devotion”, I failed to unravel what it meant really and mostly how to bring it about. I was able, also, to note that some people did not have any problem with it at all, and others, like me, struggled to figure out how to enter into Mary’s Heart.

It took me years. Today it is different. Now if you asked me, I would find it much easier to explain it to myself and to others. Other images come to my rescue. The Gospel itself helps me! Who would have thought it?!

But how could we explain this theologically in a sound orthodox way? Because it is one thing to be very devoted to Our Lady, to have read Montfort, and admit her supreme importance and the other is to have a very sound theological foundation regarding recourse to Our Lady. To ensure even greater solidity it would be much better if one were also able to lean on the Scriptures in order to know her and to see how we could allow her into one’s life. Finding her in the Scriptures –more so the Gospels– using a deeper method of reading, very close to the one followed by the Fathers of the Church, is to be more trusted, explored and developed. I am alluding for instance to the golden thread of St. Luke’s Gospel: how to make the Act of Faith, based on an in-depth reading of Luke’s first chapter (see this text: “Luke’s Final Pentecost”).

One of the names and images we use to describe Our Lady is “the New Jerusalem”. A city in general is a place which can contain many people – a City is a place in which we can dwell. Here the minor issue is that Our Lady is a human being and not a “city”. Yes, she is the mother of each and every one of the redeemed and in this sense, because of her motherly love, each one of us has a special place, so to speak, in her Heart. Most noteworthy then is the Angel’s greeting to Mary: he calls her “full-of-grace”. She is not only immaculate, pure, without sin, but she has a reality which we find great difficulty in grasping: she is “Full-of-grace”. We forget that God’s grace means caring for others. What is charity if it is not “caring for others”? St. Paul says: “the pressure on me on every day is my care for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not burn inwardly?” (2 Cor. 11:28-29) and also he says under the effect of God’s charity in him: “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all these things to all, so that by all means I might save some.” (1 Cor. 9:22) By contrast, when God asked Cain: where is your brother? His reply was: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9-16) Indeed, “Charity grew cold” (Mt. 24:12) in the heart of Cain, for he stopped being the “carer of his brother”.

Much is said about the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Mentioning that her heart is “immaculate”, that sin is absent in her, that she is pure and without sin, makes us think about our sin. Ironically an empty place, clear, clean, pristine – as we imagine Our Lady’s “immaculate” state of being to be – is not necessarily a place full of love, full to the brim with love. However, in fact, if we pay closer attention, “purity” in Our Lady means “fullness of Charity”, it means that her heart is full of God and of God’s activity – the main activity in God being “caring for” his brothers. God cares for each one of us: “even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Mt. 10:30) He takes care of them and not one of them falls without his knowledge: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care.” (Mt. 10:29)

We have difficulty fathoming out God’s capacity to care for us, in so minute detail, and we would struggle even more to understand how God’s capacity to care is present in Mary to the point that it can embrace all of humanity.

Because Mary is full of God’s love, she is full of God’s care for each one of us and this is what moves us. She is moved by God’s Love to love us, she is moved in God’s way, using God’s love itself and not her own capacity. It is not her capacity but God’s capacity in Her which is at work. In a way, we can also say that it is God’s love in Her which has generated her immensity, because it is God who is immense, infinite. Let us remember that Scripture speaks about God’s “bowels of Mercy” (Lk. 1:78) …. So, let us just imagine that God “bowels of Mercy” can dwell in Mary without any restrictions,… this means that God’s capacity becomes Mary’s capacity.

We need, consequently, to realise that once we think or mention the Immaculate Conception of Mary we, in fact, need to “see” her immense charity, God’s charity dwelling in her without any limit or restriction. We also need to “see” the direct result of God’s infinite charity dwelling in Mary, i.e. the place God makes within her for all her countless children.

At a certain point, right before the beginning of His Passion, the Lord says to Peter that the latter cannot follow Him at that moment but will be able to follow Him later. He also adds that He is going to prepare a place in God’s House for us: “In My Father’s house there are many mansions. And if not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (Jn. 14:2). The Father’s House is Jesus himself. To be more precise: Jesus’ Body: “To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”” (Jn. 2:16) “But the temple he had spoken of was his body.” (Jn. 2:21)

The great mystery of Jesus is that embodying the Total Jesus or the Whole Jesus: the Head and the Body. His mystical body is real, it is composed of each one of us. So, if we are talking about Jesus’ Body, we should understand it to be all of us. With the divine charity poured into her heart Mary takes care of Jesus the Head and Jesus the Body. Using a global perspective, then, Jesus’ body is the Church, Jesus’ Bride, each one of us.

“Preparing a place for us” is a very profound expression. It alludes to Jesus’ Work of salvation during His Passion, on the Cross, when He bathes his bride, purifies her and make her ready to come to Him:

“25 Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her 26 to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to Himself as a glorious church, without stain or wrinkle or any such blemish, but holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25-27) All this work of “washing her” occurs during the six hours where He is suspended on the Cross, when He cleanses his mystical body, his bride, with his love for her and the sufferings of his body and of his soul.

Using the verb “to build”, which describes how God made Eve from Adam’s rib, Jesus on the cross “builds” His only Bride, who is also the “mother” or the “mold” of all the souls to be saved. In this sense, on the Cross He prepares a place for us, and this place He prepares is in Mary.

When the Angel of the Lord is greeting Mary, he says: “you have found favour in the eyes of God”. Why? Isn’t she “full-of-Grace”?! This means that her care and attention for her brothers and sisters has been active before the Annunciation. She thought and prayed for the “humble”, the “hungry”, the “poor”, the oppressed etc… as she mentions in her Magnificat. She was united with them, they found place in her heart. In fact, spontaneously, she gave full rein to the full action of God’s love in her; all the space in her she left for God – this is why she talks about the “humble/low state of His servant” (Lk. 1:48). This descent is in fact an emptying of herself to allow God to be and act more in her and through her. It is by “going down” so to speak, leaving to God’s Charity all the space, that she pleased God (“you have found favour with God” (Lk. 1:30)). Yes “the Mighty one has done great things for” her (Lk. 1:49): He was fully able to fully intercede in her for his people. She attracted God within her by allowing the full power and extent of his charity to act in her.

She is the seat of His Mercy. She is the place where His Mercy was able to exercise itself to its fullest. She was able to attract God’s Mercy, for God’s Mercy for his people filled her. Jesus, the Eternal Son Incarnate is the Mercy of God the Father.

In the Gospel of St. John, at the beginning of his Passion the Lord said to Peter that he could not follow where He, Christ, was going (John 13). In St. Luke, the Lord predicts to Peter his betrayal of Him and adds the following request that when Peter came back, he was to strengthen the faith of his brothers (see Luke 22:32). The Lord, in fact, is going to prepare a place for Peter in Mary. He is going to prepare a place for each one of us in Mary, the New Jerusalem. “To come back” for Peter means that first he will go astray, and then he will become aware that Mary carried him in her heart during the Passion, death of the Lord and that, still keeping him (and us) in her heart, she waited for the Risen Lord to rise in the early hours of Sunday. “To come back” for Peter is to become aware of what Mary did for him, that her faith remained steadfast, and that she believed for him in the resurrection of the Lord and was the first and only person to greet Jesus when He rose from the dead. So “to come back” is to enter within Mary, into her heart, willingly and now understanding what is at stake, accepting the fact that Mary alone was able to follow Jesus and that the only way to follow Jesus is “in Mary”. To come back is to find “the way”, “the new way” (“a new and living way, which He inaugurated for us through the veil that is His flesh”, (Heb. 10,20) “inaugurated”, “created” meaning, so to speak, carved out, paved by the Lord, to cross the abyss of his holy Death to reach his Resurrection: the “new way” of Mary’s Faith and Mary’s heart.

It is only by finding Mary’s Faith that Peter can strengthen the faith of his brothers. Paradoxically his betrayal of his Lord enabled him to better “see” how much his worth and that Mary was the only solution to reach the resurrection of the Lord and meet Him, risen.

Indeed the “Mighty One has done great things for” Mary because she believed for all the faithful and became in this way the Mother of each and every one of the Living in Jesus. Yes, through Peter’s acknowledgement, Mary can say that “all generations will call” her “blessed” “because she believed what Jesus said and promised”: I will rise from the dead on the third day. Her immaculate heart believed. This is momentous. An historic affirmation, an earth-shattering truth.

“all generations” are called to find in her Heart the Act of faith in the Resurrection, to become believers. “all generations” will call her “blessed”.

Let us contemplate Mary’s immense charity, God’s charity in Mary’s heart. Let us contemplate our own place in Mary’s heart, the only heart capable of believing in the Resurrection.

Byzantine Easter Liturgical Hymn “Shine in splendour”

(see Isaiah 60 and 12)

“Shine in splendour, O new Jerusalem”

(“Arise, shine, for your light has come” (Isaiah))

“the glory of the Lord is risen upon you”

(“the glory of the Lord rises upon you” (Isaiah))

“O Sion, Sing with joy and rejoice, O Mother of God”

“Rejoice in the resurrection of your Son”

(“For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah))

Easter 2024

PS It would be good to read this text again and again and meditate upon it.

See also:

Our Place is in Mary’s Heart

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