Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Installation of State Deputies
Omni Hotel, New Haven
June 10, 2023
Introduction
Yesterday morning, we celebrated with joy and solemnity a Votive Mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This morning, as is customary on Saturdays, we celebrate a to do so when, as votive Mass of Mary, and in so doing, we are afforded the opportunity to reflect together on the Immaculate Heart of Mary. How fitting it is you have heard so often in these past days, we are directing our attention to getting to “the heart of the matter” by means of our new Cor initiative.
More Than a Feeling
Before going any further, it may be helpful to offer a word of clarification on what exactly it means when we say “heart”. In our culture, when we speak of something as “touching our hearts”, or as “coming from the heart”, we often mean this to refer to something of our emotions, our feelings. The heart is often thought of as something sentimental.
While that has its place to be sure, the biblical understanding of the heart is something much deeper and more profound. When one speaks of the “heart”, in biblical terms, they are speaking of the very core of the person, the whole of the being, everything they are. This is more than just our sentiments, our feelings, and our emotions; it’s our whole person, every part of who we are.
“Had I but Mary’s Sinless Heart…”
Yesterday we took part in a beautiful Eucharistic procession, bringing the presence of the eucharistic Lord onto the streets of New Haven. As is customary, we sang, or at least tried to sing, as we processed. One familiar hymn often associated with Eucharistic processions is the classic “Jesus My Lord, My God, My All.” In that hymn we pray, “Had I but Mary’s sinless heart, to love thee with my dearest King”. In these beautiful words, we see a certain sadness, a sadness that comes from a sense of unfulfilled longing. The hymn seems to pose a question to us: What if we, like Mary, had a heart that was sinless, a heart radically open to God, a heart filled with grace, filled with God’s very life and love. What if we had a heart that was unified, fully directed toward one thing, the one thing necessary: the Lord himself?
We seek after what we desire… We might think to ourselves, “Oh how wonderful that would be”, but in the same breath we might immediately conclude, “but that’s not possible for me.” We know ourselves, we know our failings, our sins. We are aware of our shortcomings and inadequacies. These can be daunting. But what can spur us to look past these things?
Desire moves the whole of creation. If we are to seek after something, if we are to move ourselves to respond to the invitation of the Lord, we have to have our eyes fixed on something capable of moving our heart … not just filling us with good feelings, but something that cuts to the core of who we are, that pulls the whole of who we are in a new direction. The sense of defeat, the sense of spiritual inertia that we can often face is overcome when we see something that desire, something that we truly want. Faced with something we truly desire, we will do anything to pursue it.
Is this not the case? Just think how the high school boy, smitten by the pretty girl in his lab group, will do anything and everything to get her attention, to be able to spend time with her. A man who thinks he has found “the one” begins to dress a little better… he might even improve his manners a bit. A man who becomes a father for the first time begins to make different decisions about how he spends his time, how he commits himself to his work, how he spends his money. A wife who loves her husband after many years of marriage is willing to listen to him tell the same story again and again and again. When our heart, the whole of who we are, is truly captivated, when our heart senses what it is that truly fulfills us, it will do anything.
Mary, Image of a Fuller Humanity
So true as this may be, what does this have to do with Mary? In Mary we see the picture of what the human heart, the whole of the human person, can be when it is fully open to God. By the working of God’s grace, Mary was preserved from the very moment of her conception from the stain of original sin. Unlike ourselves, “the poor banished children of Eve”, her heart was free from sin. Her heart was undivided, fully given over the Lord. Her heart was capable of receiving God’s Word in such a powerful way, that he would come to dwell in her, and through her, come to dwell among us. It was heart that was pierced, that shared in the Passion of her Son, through which we are ransomed from the power of sin. And it was her heart that rejoiced, as her Son rose, as he said he would, conquering sin and death itself.
Mary is one of us, “our tainted nature’s solitary boast”, and in her, we see the object of our desire, in her we see what is worth striving for; in her we see a heart fully open to the working of God; in her we see the fullness of what is possible for us. Only when we see what it is we desire are we able to truly pursue it. Looking to Mary, we see how different life can be with a heart that is pure, undivided, and radically open to the work of grace.
The Rosary: Keeping Our Eyes Fixed on the Hearts of Jesus and Mary
As Knights we have a special devotion to our Lady, and in particular to the Rosary. As Knights we promised to carry the Rosary with us every day. The beautiful prayer of the Rosary calls us to meditate on the life of Jesus and Mary. Through this prayer we plunge into his Sacred Heart and her Immaculate Heart. In meditating on the sacred mysteries, we pray that we might come to share in the promises of Christ. The Rosary keeps the Lord and his blessed Mother before our eyes, and in so doing, gives us something to strive after, not as a matter of dogged self-improvement, but as a response to a love that reveals itself to us, a love that stirs our hearts, stirs the very core of who we are, and leads us to want to follow with all that we have.
In the midst of this weekend of grace and joy, let us beseech Mary to open her immaculate, maternal heart to us, so that we may encounter the heart of Christ, her Son, and that we may share in the overflowing love of his heart. Through her example and prayers, may we follow Christ unreservedly, as we make our way through the forthcoming Fraternal Year, and may God bless us and keep us always in his love! Vivat Jesus!