Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Summary of Headings
- The Importance of the Immaculate Heart
- Mary's Role as Our Mother
- Increasing Our Devotion
- Daily Consecration to Mary
- The Power of First Saturdays
- Public Testimony and Devotion
- Consecration and Eternal Happiness
The Importance of the Immaculate Heart
Yesterday we had the grace of being able to celebrate the Feast of Our Lady, the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady. As everyone knows, every first Saturday we say her Mass. It's a devotion that we encourage very strongly. The five first Saturdays, the devotion to the Immaculate Heart, because of who she is, what she represents. It's also the devotion that Our Lady herself has encouraged most during her most recent apparitions. And Fatima in particular. It's necessary that we understand why this feast, why this devotion is so very important for us. And being the chapel of Our Lady of Victory, I think it's a little easier and more apropos for us to be able to focus a lot more on the Feast of Our Lady, the Immaculate Heart, because she pointed out, in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.
Mary's Role as Our Mother
She is the victorious. She is the ever victorious warrior who will never quit, and who will always win. Because she is Our Lady, because she is Our Mother, because she is the Mother of God Himself. She is the only one who could make God Himself obey, because she was the authority in His life. Well, Saint Joseph also, but she's the only one who had power over Him by nature, being His mother. She is the Mother of God. This is so very crucial for us to understand, because unfortunately, we live in a world that despises her above everybody else, even above our Lord Jesus Christ.
They despise her, because she is the gate of heaven, because she is the one who reveals Christ to us. She is the one who brings Christ to us. She is despised by all, even groups who claim to be Christian. They follow Christ, they praise Him as their Lord and Savior, and yet they despise His mother, and they use every possible opportunity to cast her down. The Muslims who claim they revere her as a great woman of the scriptures, yet they also disrespect her because they deny her title, her most important title, from which all other titles come, that of Mother of God.
Increasing Our Devotion
She is the Mother of God, and she is the Mother of each and every one of us. Now this becomes all the more crucial for us to appreciate as we look at the world that hates her so badly, because it seems like we are surrounded by enemies. We, her faithful children, are surrounded by enemies. And unfortunately, it's easy for us to get discouraged or angry by this fact. It seems like there is no way that we can win this battle. But of course, we have the most important and most powerful instrument for our victory in her. She will always conquer. She will conquer every heart.
She will break down every barrier. She will save every soul if she could. She will do everything in her power to save us, her children, if we are just faithful to her. So, how can we be faithful to her? Well, first we need to increase our devotion to her. I'm not saying increase devotions, plural. I'm saying increase our devotion to her. Whatever we do, we need to do it. What we do must be a habitual devotion. When we pray to her, we must pray with true reverence. It's not just a question of ripping through our rosary as quickly as we possibly can so that we can move on to other things.
Our rosary must be a meditative process by which we contemplate the glories of Mary. Our rosary must be something that we say faithfully without fail. If for some reason we have to change our schedule around because of other eventualities, that's fine, but we must make sure that the rosary has its part of place
Daily Consecration to Mary
and that we do not let a day go by without saying our rosary. We should be absolutely faithful to that devotion. And each and every household should have a time where everybody is together. There should be two moments particularly where the family is absolutely together, all united at one time. The first one is the dinner table, and the second one is the rosary. Every household. As best you can manage it, that is necessary. Because she is the one that binds our families together. She is the one that will sanctify our family. She is the one who will bring God into our family.
She is our mother and she can never be excluded in anything that we do. But it's more than just saying the rosary. That is one action of a devotion. But the rosary is, shall we say, the gateway that we are able to have a true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It's not just the offering of ourself with the act of true devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the consecration of ourselves to the Blessed Virgin, that of Saint Louis de Montfort. And it's not just doing the five first Saturdays. It's not just wearing her scapular. These are all individual devotions. But these must be the expression of an everlasting, permanent, absolute dedication of our entire lives to her.
We must give ourselves to her. We must give ourselves to Mary. She is our general. She is the warlord who will win every battle for us. And so our lives must belong to her. She's not despotic. She's not tyrannical. She is a loving mother. So why don't we love her as we should? Why don't we give ourselves as we should to her? Because we're prideful creatures. We're silly children. We don't do what we're supposed to do. We don't love our mother nearly enough. As our life progresses, we need to lean more heavily on her. We need to consecrate ourselves more perfectly to her.
When we wake up in the morning, our first prayers must be to the Blessed Virgin Mary. To the Blessed Trinity and to Our Lady. The very first action of our day must be to consecrate our day to her. To God through her. Adiesum per Maria. That's the very first action of our day. Then everything subsequent to that, we must renew our devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She must be ever present in our thoughts. She must be ever present in every one of our actions. When we drive from home to work, maybe we should say a decade of the Rosary. Consecrate that action of driving.
At the very least, it might help us keep the temper down as the traffic goes nuts. The very least. Before we have to deal with somebody we don't want to deal with, maybe our boss, maybe someone in the family, maybe it could be anybody, it doesn't matter. Say a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Good Counsel. If we have to deal with a very delicate subject, she is there always to be the voice in our ear. To guide us and to help us through that situation. If we have to go through a terrible ordeal, she is always there as our loving mother to make sure that we can get through it and get through it well and be blessed with it.
If we have to suffer and go through terribly painful situations, she is there sharing her compassionate, sorrowful heart with us so that we are able to overcome and more than overcome, be sanctified by that pain. When we are surrounded by enemies, she is there, as Chesterton says, seven swords in her heart and one in her hand. There to fight for us and to defend us, to conquer our enemies for us. To lay waste to all of the enemies of her son. So therefore, we must now consecrate ourselves to her. Each and every moment of our day must belong to her. We must be her faithful slaves, not just her children, but her slaves.
Giving every part of ourselves away to her. This is the way to true victory.
The Power of First Saturdays
Every obstacle in our lives to our salvation, she can destroy. It's easy for us to think of our mothers as the gentler side of the family. The ones who don't, shall we say, don't punish quite as severely as we do. The ones who are the same as their father, are the like. Absolutely. They tend to be the more tender ones. But there's also the mama bear side of them, that tears apart anybody who tries to harm their child. Our Lady is very much like that. She will destroy our enemies. She will fight to defend our souls. She will overcome every obstacle to make sure that we are safe.
That our souls are safe. If we let her. Because like, she will. Children, sometimes we want to pull our hand away from our mother and run on ahead, even though it means putting ourselves in danger. We want to be willful. We want to do things our way, even though she knows what's best. And that never goes well. We always end up in disaster. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. There is no doubt of this. She is our Lady of Victory. She will conquer everything. So with this, what is one concrete thing that I would like everybody to do, apart from what I just said about the Rosary being an integral part of everybody, every family's day?
One thing that I think we need to encourage a lot more is the First Saturday devotion. Five First Saturdays with some of the most glorious promises ever made to man. Be faithful to those. And it shouldn't be just a one and done. You shouldn't just come. Let's go to the First. First Five Saturdays. Five First Saturdays, excuse me. And then consider that to be it. But that must become a habit. The reason that Our Lady encourages that isn't just so that we can achieve the promises, but that it can change our lives. And that is why we should go. We should really participate in the meditations.
We should work. We should come to those First Saturdays so that we can work on praying the Rosary better. So that we can meditate in the Rosary. So that we can connect. So that we can pray the Rosary and the devotion to the Immaculate Heart, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and to Holy Communion. And since we have all -night adoration, also to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, her Son, her most beloved Son. That is what we must start connecting all things constantly in our lives. When we wake up, we give ourselves to Our Lady so that she may give us to Him.
We offer up our sufferings and pains so that she can pass them to Him and offer them up in union with the altar. We give her our very essence so that she may give it to Him and we may disappear in Him. Work on those five First Saturdays. It's not that big an ask. Once a month, spending a little time in the church, going to an extra Mass, receiving an extra Communion. And it's not like this is such a burden. These are good things. There's a very good crowd that comes for First Saturdays in general. And it's not like this is such a burden. But the church should be packed.
This little chapel should be absolutely bursting at the seams with people who are here for Our Lady. When we do our Marian procession, everybody should be here. When we consecrate the new land and the new church to her, everybody should be a part of it. Our Lady is too important in every little public testimony that we can give of our devotion to her. We must give.
Public Testimony and Devotion
In a day and age where even the Vatican is insulting her by taking away titles that are hers. We must publicly confess her. And we must defend her above everyone else. We must fight for her just as she fights for us. We must defend her honor just as she defends us from our enemies. And the first place, the first battlefield that we must win for Our Lady, is the first place where we must give our devotion to Her. Because our devotion to Her is in our very soul. We must belong to Her. When we wear the scapular, it isn't just an extra piece of cloth that we wear against our skin.
It is a consecration of our lives to Her service. When we wear the miraculous medal, it is a proclamation of our faith in Her power. When we say the rosary, it is because we want to divide the world. When we devote ourselves more completely to Her. To lose ourselves in the meditation and contemplation of Her. When we attend the five first Saturdays and we participate in all the devotions and we receive communion, it is because we are giving ourselves to Her so that we can belong wholly and entirely to Her and be gifted by Her to our blessed Lord on the altar.
When we go out in procession, like we will on October the 7th or the Sunday before, it isn't just simply because the hymns are nice and it's beautiful to take a little walk around in October down here in South Florida. It's because we are proclaiming to the world, this is our Mother. And I love Her above all things besides our Lord. And I love our Lord by loving Her. God is the Lord. God gave Her unprecedented, unparalleled power on this earth. He gave Her an ability to conquer His own heart more than anyone else, which is why Her heart is a reflection of His.
And He gave Her all that power for a reason so that we could take advantage of it and by that power we may be saved despite ourselves. She can overcome even our hard heart. She can overcome even our stubborn will. She can overcome even our blind ignorance. She can overcome every enemy that we have that surrounds us and wishes to drag us down to hell.
Consecration and Eternal Happiness
She can cut loose every cord that ties us to this earth and keeps us away from heaven. But we must devote ourselves to Her. We must dedicate ourselves to Her. She is our Mother and She is all that we must dedicate ourselves to. We must consecrate ourselves to our Lord but through Her. We must sacrifice our lives to Him through Her. We must enter heaven through Her. We must find eternal happiness in the presence of the Blessed Trinity with Her. Do not be afraid to fight for your mother. Do not be afraid to fight for her honor. Do not be afraid to fight for your mother.
Do not be afraid to stand and to sacrifice yourself to her so that she can sacrifice you to her son. It's painful, it's scary because we don't understand it but it's an act of faith. But we must believe in Her because if we can't believe in Her, in whom? If you can't trust your mother, in whom can you trust? You must lose yourselves in Her. No one will fight harder for your soul. No one will give you more to be able to save your soul. No one will elevate you more. No one will do more for you. So now it's time that we give a little back and it's time for us to fight for her as well.
And it's time for us to consecrate our lives irrevocably to her so that we may be able to find her and live with her in this life so we may be eternal happy with her in heaven. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Summary
The homily begins by emphasizing the significance of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the devotion associated with it. The preacher highlights Mary's unique role as the Mother of God and our spiritual mother, urging the faithful to deepen their understanding of her importance in our lives. The sermon calls for an increase in devotion to Mary, particularly through the practice of the First Saturday devotions. These practices are presented as transformative, offering spiritual benefits and aligning us with Mary's victorious heart, which will ultimately triumph over all adversities. Finally, the preacher encourages a deeper commitment to Marian devotion, urging the faithful to consecrate their lives to Mary and embrace her guidance in daily actions. Through this consecration, believers find strength and protection in her maternal care, leading to eternal happiness.