Sacratissimi Cordis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi (The Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ)

Does Mary's heart go where Jesus' heart goes?

[The following text is taken from Chapter VI of Bread of Life, by Father Leonard Feeney, MICM (R.I.P); first published 1952. ]

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Let me answer this question slowly. I think the Sacred Heart wanted to let us know, through His apparitions to Saint Margaret Mary, that which we should have been seeing right along, and that is, that His great gift to us is of His heart. And I think that the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is to let us know that Our lady's great gift to us is of her heart.

We know that Mary has a glorified body, and that that glorified body can go through glass or wood or stone. It can travel with the speed of light. It can penetrate without destroying that through which it passes. Would it not be odd and strange, having now been given the power to indwell in any place, if she did not want her heart to indwell in the heart of Jesus?

Would it not be odd, if the Sacred Heart of Jesus is saying to us: "Son, give Me thy heart," if He does not make the same request of the Blessed Virgin Mary? And would it not be most odd if Our Lady did not want to give her heart to Jesus, or wanted to, and was unable to do so?

If, all through the years, love everywhere and always has been saying, "I give you my heart. Let us be one heart," would it not be odd that the hearts of Jesus and Mary were the two hearts that could not quite do that?

Would it not be odd if you could say to another, "Yours in the Sacred Heart," and you could go to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and find one another, but you could not find Mary there?

Our Lord's great condemnation of people who would not follow Him was always that they had hardness of heart, toughness and meanness of heart, hearts that resisted. Do you think He constantly would be saying that, if He had not found a heart so beautiful and clear and light, so full of penetration and assimilation, as the heart of Mary? Where is the light one, the bright one, the clear one, that makes Jesus so critical about other hearts?

I could go on, adding and adding, and adding!

I told you before, here in the Center, that the one thing in Jesus and Mary that made them most united, when Jesus was a Baby in Mary's womb, was their hearts – because Mary's heartbeat was the blood flow into the veins of Jesus.

The blood which coursed through Jesus came back into Mary's heart, when He was a Baby in her womb. Was there no Divinity flooding back with it?

When Jesus hung bleeding on the Cross, the drops of His Precious Blood which fell upon the ground remained Divine, and the angels had to guard them. It would be strange, would it not, if the blood which flowed back into Mary's heart from the body of her Divine Baby, while He was in her womb, were less Divine than His blood on the ground beneath His Cross?

Do I speak a mystery? I do. Do I dare not go too far? I do dare not. But I say, and must say, that once this blood has gone into Jesus' veins, it is Jesus' Precious Blood, even though it returns again to the heart of His Mother.

My dearest children, I tell you this without fear of heresy: Jesus and Mary are one heart! If you find Jesus' heart, you will find Mary's heart. And if you find Mary's heart, you will find Jesus' heart.

You go to the Eucharist to find Jesus' heart, and there you will find Mary's heart, too. If you go to Mary and put your head in her lap, the heart she will give you is the heart of Jesus. And if you receive Jesus' heart into your being, He will give you Mary's heart.

When Jesus' head was crowned with thorns, the soul of Jesus was still in His body, and He could feel the

crowning. When His hands were pierced with nails, He felt that pain. When His back was beaten with lashes, He felt that cruel scourging. But when the centurion pierced His heart, Jesus was dead. There was no soul of Jesus there to enable Him to feel that piercing.

But Jesus and Mary are one heart. And when that sword pierced the heart of Jesus, the only heart that could feel it was the heart of Mary. Only the alive heart felt – and the lance pierced it. Mary stood by the side of Jesus, and the lance went through her heart. "Thy own soul a sword shall pierce," Simeon had said to Mary. (Luke ii.35.) He was really saying, "His soul will be gone when the sword goes through your hearts!"

Out of the heart of Jesus, when it was pierced on the Cross, blood and water flowed – that out of the hearts of many, thoughts might be revealed. (Luke ii. 35.) What do you think – by way of salvation – of that blood and water coming from the heart of Jesus? Do you like it? That is the test. What do you think of that blood, and what do you think of that water? The blood signifies the Eucharist, and the water, Baptism!

You may say to me, "I give you one final problem. I can understand how the hearts of Jesus and Mary can be one heart when their bodies are glorified, but how about before their bodies were glorified? Does not Jesus' body have to be in one place, and Mary's in another? Does not Jesus' heart have to be here, and Mary's have to be there?"

There were times, even before Jesus died and rose from the dead and was glorified, when His enemies came to seize Jesus, – and He just vanished! They did not know where He was. He once made a journey of six miles in a boat – in one minute! He walked on water. He was transfigured in the sky. Even many of the saints are famous for bilocation. I do not know how it is done. But, it is strange that two hearts that wanted to be one could be kept from being one by the law of physical resistance, when One of them was God!

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Officium Parvum Sacratissimi Cordis Iesu

Little Office of the Sacred Heart of Jesu

Ad Completorium

At Compline, night time prayer before sleep

COR matris ad cor Filii

amoris ardens impetu,

indesinente anhelitu

suspirat, oblitum sui.

The heart of the Mother to the heart of the Son,

Burning with a rush of love,

With ceaseless yearning

Breathes sighs, forgetting self.

Utrumque amoris vinculo

nexu perenni iugiter:

hoc ardet huius ignibus

ignemque reddit aemulum.

Each bound by the bond of love,

Joined together eternally:

Her heart burns with His heart's flames,

and returns a fire of love the same.

Cor Iesu, o melle dulcius,

puris amicum mentibus,

puris amandum cordibus,

in corde regnes omnium. Amen.

Heart of Jesus, sweeter than honey,

Friend to pure minds,

Loved by pure hearts,

May Thou reignest in the hearts of all. Amen.

[Reproduced from the Treasury of Latin Prayers, copyright 2025 by Michael Martin]

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The Virgin of Tenderness. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen. 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam.