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| Immaculate Heart of Mary, Melissa Breeland |
Origin
The feast grew out of the exisiting devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
After the consecration of the world to the most sweet and motherly Heart of Mary in 1942, many petitions were sent to the Roman Pontiff asking him to extend to the whole Church the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary that already existed in some places. Pius XII agreed in 1945 cenain to find in her most loving Hean ... the safe haven in the midst of the tempest that everywhere assails us. Through the symbol of her heart we venerate in Mary her most pure and perfect love for God and her motherly love for each one of us. In that heart of hers we can find a refuge in the midst of all the and temptations of life, and we ask her to prepare for us the safe way - iter para tutum - the way by which we will soon reach her Son (In Conversation with God, Vol. 6, p. 330)Sweet & Immaculate Heart
St. Josemaria taught that we should "get accustomed to entrusting your poor heart to the Sweet and Immaculate Heart of Mary, so that she may purify it from so much dross, and lead it to the Most Sacred and Most Merciful Heart of Jesus" (Furrow, 830). This is what our Blessed Mother always does – leads us back to Jesus.
Blessed Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II prayed the following before the :
O Mother of all men and women, and of all peoples, you who know all their sufferings and their hopes, you who have a mother's awareness of all the struggles between good and evil, between light and darkness, which afflict the modern world, accept the cry which we, moved by the Holy Spirit, address directly to your Heart. Embrace with the love of the Mother and Handmaid of the Lord, this human world of ours, which we entrust and consecrate to you, for we are full of concern for the earthly and eternal destiny of individuals and peoples. In a special way we entrust and consecrate to you those individuals and nations which particularly need to be thus entrusted and consecrated. ‘We have recourse to your protection, holy Mother of God!' Despise not our petitions in our necessities.
