MARY AND DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS
BY CANON FRANCIS RIPLEY, SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR, SENATUS OF LIVERPOOL
MARIA LEGIONIS DECEMBER 1998
The noble aspiration of the Legion of Mary is nothing less than that each of its members should be another Mary. With that in mind, we think of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our ideal can be very simply expressed. It is to love Jesus with the Heart of Mary and to love Mary with the Heart of Jesus.
To love Jesus with the Heart of Mary. She saw every word and deed of her divine Son as an act of love. Infinite Love created her to give Him a human body. Infinite Love graced her to be worthy of Him. Infinite Love ensured that free consent which made His coming in flesh a reality. Infinite Love disposed all the details of His birth. The Spirit of Love inspired St. Matthew and St. Luke to reveal them to the world.
So, we could go on seeing every word which came from the lips of Incarnate Wisdom as words Love willed us to hear. Mary saw at first hand and understood, as nobody else could, the loving deeds of His childhood and youth. She possessed in its fullness the gift of understanding which enabled her to see the inner meaning of His every word with a profundity deeper than that of the holiest contemplative. Every word, every deed had to be prized as the gift of a loving Heart.
The summit of the Christian life is the understanding of the love of Jesus. Mary understood that love. Remembering that the first object of our Legion membership is our sanctification we should ceaselessly pray to Mary for deeper appreciation of the love of her Son. In the words of St. Paul, the charity of Christ surpasses knowledge. The symbol of that charity, revealed by Himself, is His Sacred Heart.
We offer ourselves to the Church, which is itself the Body of Christ and a gift of His limitless love, to undertake every form of apostolate which is fitting to us. Our objective must always be to implant in the hearts of all we meet the deep conviction of Christ's love which inflames our own hearts. That conviction is itself a gift of His love. The stronger the flame in our own hearts, the more likely it is to inflame the hearts of others. Faith is like a burning flame which must be caught rather than taught. That is why our Legion prayer is a prayer for faith and why we must pray fervently to Our Blessed Mother for everincreasing faith.
With that faith, animated by charity, we form in ourselves living pictures of God, Christ, the Church, the Sacraments, the Mass, Our Lady and all these should mean to the world and then through the system providentially provided by the Legion we do our utmost to confront others with those pictures. In the words of the Handbook this means "the effort of one heart to pour its supreme possession into another heart:' This should be the dominant aim of all we do as Legionaries. Every form of apostolate, every work should be saturated with the deep faith and love which comes from devotion to the Heart of Jesus - a devotion taught by her who knew and loved that Heart with every fibre of her being, our own lovely Mother Mary.
In one of his most moving Encyclical letters Pope Pius XII told the Church that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the surest instrument with which to combat the evils of the present day. He lists them: sin and infidelity within the Church, the increasing tide of materialism and irreligion, hatred of God and the Church, anticlericalism, the coldness and lack of fervour even among those who claim to be God's lovers. He asks us to recall these words of Leo XIII:
"Behold, today another sign appears before our eyes, auspicious and divine, even the Sacred Heart of Jesus ... enveloped in flames, shining in resplendent glory. In it must all our hopes be placed; from it must men seek and await their salvation."
The Pope goes on to write this: "Without any doubt a burning devotion to the Heart of Jesus will cherish and advance our reverence for the Holy Cross especially and our love for the august Sacrament of the Altar .... Only those have a proper understanding of Jesus Christ crucified, who have penetrated the mystic secrets of His Heart."
The true riches of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Pope says, will not be poured out unless that devotion is linked indissolubly with devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. "For in the eternal Will of God the Blessed Virgin Mary has been joined indissolubly to Christ .... in such a way that our salvation has proceeded from the charity of Jesus and His bitter sufferings together with the love and sorrows of His Mother". That is why the Church and the whole world have been consecrated to the sinless Heart of Mary.