Rosary Reflections: The Annunciation and Mary's Immaculate Heart
Little James is over a month old now, so we have spent several weeks adjusting to life with him here on the outside.
Fortunately, I've done this many times, James being my 9th baby, so I'm much less nervous and anxiety-ridden now than I was with my first. But even so, it takes both baby and me a hot second to fall into the rhythm of our new norm.
James is an awesome baby, but he still has moments where he is only comforted by snuggling up tight against me. When he lays his little head on my chest, he can hear the steady beat of my heart and quickly falls asleep to the cadence in his ear.
I thought about this one evening, a bit exasperated from a colicky spell, and too scared to lay him down, afraid that would wake him. I started thinking about how the sound of my beating heart was the first sound he ever heard, and was his constant companion for 9 months.
But what really blew my mind was that after the Incarnation, when the Word became flesh to dwell among us, the first thing the God-made-Man heard was Mary's heart beating.
Mary's heart is often called the Immaculate Heart.
Her Immaculate Heart represents her interior life, so the joys, sorrows, virtues, and love that the Blessed Virgin Mary possessed.
For most of Christianity, the Church was heavily populated with uneducated & illiterate people. Statues and Sacred Art were the schools of theology for so many.
So Mary's Immaculate Heart was depicted engulfed in fire, symbolizing her burning love. It was shown pierced by seven swords- her seven sorrows- and her heart was crowned with roses, a sign of her love and purity.
Before he became pope, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, “The Immaculate Heart is a heart which, with God's grace, has come to perfect interior unity & therefore 'sees' God.
So to be devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary means to embrace this attitude of heart, which makes the fiat, ‘Your will be done,' the defining center of one's whole life."
For most people, a quote like that is used to emphasize a point. But sometimes, when I hear or read a quote, my brain just shuts off.
If you found Pope Benedict's quote profound, good! That's the point! But for those of us who see erasers where quotation marks are supposed to be, let me unpack it a little.
He said that the Immaculate Heart has come to perfect interior unity, so therefore “sees” God.
Ok, so what is the interior life? Well, anything that isn't exterior... exterior meaning observable from the outside. So interior refers to what is going on with the soul.
For example, two people are serving in a soup kitchen, and one does it to look good; the other does it out of love. Same exterior life, much different interior life.
Why does any of this matter? Because contrary to what some may believe, the purpose of life isn't just to avoid hell. If that were the case, we would do the absolute minimum amount required to get to heaven.
Rather, the purpose is to spend a lifetime on earth loving Him who is Love, in preparation for an eternity of love!
St. Paul says, “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what things God has prepared for those who love him.”
So, to have a devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart means learning to love as she loved. And her secret weapon was her humility; her "fiat"- thy will be done.
In our own lives, adopting a fiat attitude means setting aside our wants and comforts to first say interiorly, "thy will be done," and then to act accordingly.
So as we pray the first Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation, let's dedicate ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and ask her to teach us how to have a fiat attitude so we may become humble and learn to love as she loved, to gain perfect unity with Christ.
Until next time, your sister in Christ,
Leah
*This blog post was adapted from a reflection given during the Marian Brunch that Catholic Country Chronicles hosted this spring.
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