The devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary should
reflect all that the human heart of Mary suggests; all of
which it is, the expressive symbol and the living reminder:
Mary's interior life, her joys and sorrows, her virtues and
hidden perfections, and, above all, her virginal love for her
God, her maternal love for her Divine Son, and her
motherly and compassionate love for her children here
below.
The history of the devotion to the Heart of Mary is
connected on many points with that to the Heart of Jesus.
The Gospel invites our attention with exquisite discretion
and delicacy to the love and virtue of the Heart of Mary.
It was at the foot of the Cross that the Christian heart first
made the acquaintance of the Heart of the Virgin Mother.
Simeon's prophecy paved the way and furnished the
devotion with one of its favorite formulae: the heart pierced
with a sword. But Mary was not merely passive at the foot
of the Cross; "she cooperated through charity", as St.
Augustine says, "In the work of our redemption".
Another Scriptural passage was the twice-repeated
saying of St. Luke that Mary kept all the sayings and doings
of Jesus in her heart, that there she might ponder over
them and live by them. A few of the Virgin's sayings, are
recorded in the Gospel, particularly the Magnificat.
St. Ambrose, writing in his commentary on St. Luke,
holds Mary up as the ideal of virginity, and St. Ephrem,
when he so poetically sings of the coming of the Magi and
the welcome accorded them by the humble Mother.
Little by little, in consequence of the application of the
Canticle of the loving relations between God and the
Blessed Virgin, the Heart of Mary came to be for the
Christian Church the Heart of the Spouse of the Canticles
as well as the Heart of the Virgin Mother.
In the New Testament Elizabeth proclaims Mary blessed
because she has believed the words of the angel; the
Magnificat is an expression of her humility; who in order to
exalt the Son proclaimed the Mother blessed.
St. Leo says that through faith and love she conceived
her Son spiritually, even before receiving Him into her
womb, and St. Augustine tells us that she was more
blessed in having borne Christ in her heart than in having
conceived Him in the flesh.
It is only in the twelfth, or towards the end of the eleventh
century, that slight indications of a regular devotion are
perceived in a sermon by St. Bernard (De duodecim
stellis), from which an extract has been taken by the
Church and used in the Offices of the Compassion and of
the Seven Dolours. Stronger evidences are discernible in
the pious meditations on the Ave Maria and the Salve
Regina, usually attributed either to St. Anselm of Lucca or
St. Bernard; and also in the large book "De laudibus B.
Mariae Virginis" by Richard de Saint-Laurent. In St.
Mechtilde (d. 1298) and St. Gertrude (d. 1302) the devotion
had two earnest adherents. A little earlier it had been
included by St. Thomas à Becket in the devotion to the joys
and sorrows of Mary, by Blessed Hermann (d.1245), one of
the first spiritual children of St. Dominic, in his other
devotions to Mary, and somewhat later it appeared in St.
Bridget's "Book of Revelations".
Tauler (d. 1361) beholds in Mary the model of a mystical,
just as St. Ambrose perceived in her the model of a virginal
soul. St. Bernardine of Siena (d.1444) was more absorbed
in the contemplation of the virginal heart, and it is from him
that the Church has borrowed the lessons of the Second
Nocturn for the feast of the Heart of Mary. St. Francis de
Sales speaks of the perfections of this heart, the model of
love for God, and dedicated to it his "Theotimus".
On 21 July, 1855, the Congregation of Rites approved
the Office and Mass of the Most Pure Heart of Mary
without, however, imposing them upon the Universal
Church.