In the late seventeenth century, Jesus’s appearances to St. Margaret Mary Aloque repopularized devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Devotees were encouraged to meditate upon Jesus’ love for them. Interestingly, one reason that the faithful and scripture scholars think that the beloved disciple goes unnamed throughout the entire Gospel of John is so that the individual reader can put him or herself into the position of the beloved disciple in the moments where he appears. One such moment where the beloved disciple appears is at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday, which Catholics around the world recently celebrated. With Jesus on the Cross dying and suffocating for air, he found the following words so important to the beloved disciple (and by extension, all future Christians for the rest of time): “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (Jn 19: 16-17). Our Lord clearly invites his disciples to have a deep relationship with Mary, and what better way to know and love a person than by getting to know and love his or her heart?
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary can be traced back to the twelfth century, to writers such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Anselm. However, much like the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it became re-popularized in the seventeenth century as well. The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary can be best understood as a reflection of the love in Jesus’s heart. As she was so intimate with him throughout her entire life, Mary knows and loves Jesus more than any other human who has or ever will live. As such, her heart is so conformed to Jesus’s heart that by loving her we have an easier access to the graces he wants to give us. She is like a pane of glass that disciples see Jesus through, entirely clear, but most certainly there and very important nonetheless. Loving Mary’s Immaculate Heart is also particularly important for young men. As Jesus was incarnated as a man, he lived as a man, loved as a man, and his manliness plays a vital role in everything He does. Fortunately for men, we can attain this love of Jesus through loving devotion to Mary’s Immaculate heart. The Church recognizes the intense closeness and similarity of the Sacred and Immaculate Heart by placing their feast days right next to each other on the Church Calendar. In 2023, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart will occur on Friday, June 16. The very next day (June 17) the Church will celebrate the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
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