Immaculate Heart of Mary

Memorial (1969 Calendar): Saturday following the Second Sunday after Pentecost
Double of the II Class (1955 Calendar): August 22

May our Lady guard us while bringing us closer to the Heart of her Son. The image of the Immaculate Heart goes back to Luke 2:35, as we recall the sword of sorrow that pierced Mary's heart.

It was our sins that crucified Our Savior, which tore a sword of sorrow through his Mother Mary.
As Mary revealed at Fatima in 1917, the thorns surrounding her heart are a symbol of sins. Each time we offend our Lord and crucify Him, we further increase the pain His Mother felt beneath the Cross. At Fatima Mary said: "Jesus wishes to establish devotion to my Immaculate Heart in the world. I promise salvation to those who embrace it. Tell everybody that God grants graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and that they must ask them of her. Tell them that the Heart of Jesus wishes that by His side should be venerated the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Tell them to ask peace through the Immaculate Heart of Mary; God has placed it in her hands."

The history of the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary as taken from the Traditional Breviary:

The liturgical worship, through which due honor is given to the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary, and for which many holy men and women have prepared the way, the Apostolic See itself first approved in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Pope Pius VII instituted the feast of the Most Pure Heart of the Virgin Mary, to be piously and reverently celebrated by all the dioceses and religious families who had asked for it. Afterwards Pope Pius IX added an Office and a proper Mass to it. But an ardent desire and longing, which had arisen in the seventeenth century, grew day by day, that namely, the same Feast, given greater solemnity, might be spread to the entire Church. In 1942, Pope Pius XII, graciously acceding to this wish, and during the terrible war then ravaging almost the entire world, pitying the infinite hardships of men, and because of his devotion and confidence in our heavenly Mother, in solemn supplication earnestly entrusted the entire human race to her most generous Heart, and in honor of the same Immaculate Heart he ordered a Feast to be kept forever with its proper Office and Mass.

Today is the Octave Day of the Assumption in the pre-1955 Calendar.

Act of Reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary:

O Most Holy Virgin Mother, we listen with grief to the complaints of your Immaculate Heart surrounded with the thorns placed therein at every moment by the blasphemies and ingratitude of ungrateful humanity. We are moved by the ardent desire of loving you as Our Mother and of promoting a true devotion to your Immaculate Heart.

We, therefore, kneel before you to manifest the sorrow we feel for the grievances that people cause you, and to atone by our prayers and sacrifices for the offenses with which they return your love. Obtain for them and for us the pardon of so many sins. Hasten the conversion of sinners that they may love Jesus and cease to offend the Lord, already so much offended. Turn your eyes of mercy toward us, that we may love God with all our heart on earth and enjoy Him forever in heaven.

Amen.

Prayer:

Almighty everlasting God, Who in the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary didst prepare a dwelling worthy of the Holy Ghost: grant in Thy mercy, that we who with devout minds celebrate the festival of that immaculate heart, may be able to live according to Thine own heart. Through our Lord...in the unity of the same Holy Ghost.

Prayer Source: 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal