Israel Risquet, priest of the archdiocese of Seville, Spain, shares with Exaudi readers this article about the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, titled “Sacred Heart of the Virgin: In the Heart of the Mother.”
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The Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary is celebrated the day after the feast of the Heart of Jesus, the Saturday after the second Sunday after Pentecost. In February 2020, just when the pandemic was beginning to enter Europe, I made a pilgrimage to the Heart of the Mother, to the Basilica of the Holy House in Loreto (Italy), in the words of Saint John Paul II: “The authentic Marian heart of Christianity.”
There is the house where the archangel Saint Gabriel announced divine motherhood to the Blessed Virgin Mary and where the Holy Family lived, in Nazareth, Holy Land. During the crusades and for fear of its destruction, it was taken to Loreto.
In the basilica, as we took turns entering the Holy House, which is very small, we prayed the Rosary singing; curiously, the Laurentian litanies were composed for the Virgin of Loreto, in her honor. I think it is the closest I have ever been to the Heart of the Virgin Mary.
In those same days, walking through Rome, I entered one of its basilicas and noticed in a chapel where there was a small painting on the altar, with an oval tondo of the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary, which sublimed me, having been in the heart of the Mother.
I grew up as a child in a parish in Seville in the Nervión neighborhood, in whose tabernacle there is an inscription that says: “Caro Christi, caro Mariae” (Flesh of Christ, flesh of Mary). This phrase always helped me, it seemed deeply close and comforting to me that God was there in that little box (the tabernacle), and that he also carried our flesh, that of one of our race, that of the Virgin Mary.
The Heart of Jesus, like every human heart, would have unique heartbeats, each person’s heartbeat follows a different pattern, so much so that it seems that it will be the password of the future, and that of the Lord was formed in Mary… then our prayers, how are they not going to be heard?, having the Virgin pulling her Son’s tunic so that he does not forget us, because he carries his Heart, ours… We know the password for heaven, it is the Heart of Mary.
Mary kept everything in her heart, there she endured with strength the sword of pain of passion and there she waited, full of faith, for the resurrection of her Son. How can she not understand us… no matter how deep our pain, our sword…?
My parish priest asked me when I was sixteen years old, preparing to receive my First Communion: “Who is the Virgin Mary for you?”, to which I responded: “My Mother,” (I am an orphan raised by my maternal grandparents). Our Mother is all Heart.
In these moments of pandemic I pray to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin for my dear friend and parishioner Ana María, sick, blind (and with her for all the sick), who we visit weekly and who is admitted to the Hospital, falling asleep in the Lord. The only thing that consoled her was listening to her Radio María radio station, she spent the day and part of the night lying in bed clinging to her radio station next to her ear… it was the only thing she asked of us after receiving the sacraments of her, her radio.
She only sleeps now. How much good our Mother, her Immaculate Heart, does.
I end with the words of the holy bishop of Seville, Saint Manuel González: “My mother, may we not get tired!”
Big hug in Christ and my blessing +.
