Consecration to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary (Part1)

Devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary is a French organization, “etiolenotredame”, or, in English, “Star Our Lady”.  Their devotion is deep and powerful.  They prayer and speak to the union of the hearts of Jesus and Mary and one’s consecration to these holy hearts.

The consecration to Mary begins on the cross when Jesus says to St. John, ""Behold your mother. And from that moment on, John took Mary home" 

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has spread like fire in the Western Church since the revelations made to St. Margaret Mary towards the end of the seventeenth century. The Church has given him special authority. The popes have recalled and still recall its importance. But today's discourse, if it insists on the Heart of Christ, leaves aside the word sacred that has taken on an ambiguous meaning in our secularized society, and it uses with the greatest discretion the word devotion that has become frankly pejorative. On the other hand, the word heart remains privileged and the drawing that represents it is experiencing a resurgence of topicality. But is it enough to draw a heart or use the word in a song to join what Marguerite-Marie and her contemporaries expressed in the 1680s?

To better understand what the Church is asking for when she invites Christians today to turn to the Heart of Christ, it is good to clarify what Margaret Mary meant when she once favored the word sacred and spread the emblem of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The teaching of Vatican II insists on the Mystery of Christ in its entirety and encourages a baptismal and Eucharistic liturgical life more than devotions.

Consecrating oneself and relying on the Hearts of Jesus and Mary what does it mean?  The essential, contained in the prayer of consecration to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, is constituted in the renunciation, conscious and absolute, of sin, the seductions of Evil and the Evil One and, as a response to their love, in the irrevocable gift of oneself to the Heart of Mary and by him to the Heart of Jesus. This consecration then marks the conscious renewal and deepening of our baptismal consecration to God.

They ask the rhetorical question, who will tell us the love of the Heart of Jesus for his divine Mother?
As God, he loved her as the purest, most perfect of creatures; he preserved it from all sins and adorned it with all graces, with all virtues.

As a man, he loved her as the most respectful, docile, submissive, affectionate child knows how to love. What favors, what holiness did the Heart of the Son not have to communicate to the Heart of the Mother, during the nine months he rested in his virginal womb as in a cradle and during the thirty years of intimate life he spent with her in Nazareth! In the course of his public life, it was often at the prayer of his Mother that Jesus performed his miracles, as at Cana of Galilee, to the point that the women of Israel, no doubt jealous of such great glory, cried out: "Blessed is the one who has nourished you!"

In heaven, he wants his mother to be the giver of his treasures, the channel through which his graces descend to earth. He delights in answering the prayers addressed to him and in confirming with wonders the trust that his servants show him. He wants his Church to have for her the deepest respect, the most tender love, the most complete trust. He likes to see his name always united with his own and when a temple rises to his glory, it is necessary for him to please that its vaults shelter the humble altar of Mary. Finally, he wants the Mother to be honored wherever the Son is worshipped: Invenerunt puerum cumMaia.

If we want to please Jesus, let us love, let us respect Mary. Let us love her as well-born children love their mothers; she has for us the tenderness, the dedication. His heart, like that of his Son, is an abyss of love and mercy.

Let us never, therefore, in our devotion, separate Mary’s heart from that of Jesus. Let us honor them, let us love them both with all the outpouring of our souls. They were always closely united, let us not separate them in our affection.

Let us address our requests to God the Father through the Heart of Jesus; let us supplicate Jesus through the Heart of Mary! We will obtain everything from the Father through the Heart of the Son and everything from the Son through the Heart of the Mother. Let us like to repeat this touching invocation:

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, have mercy on us!

Immaculate Heart of Mary,heart like the Heart of Jesus, pray for us!

Above all, because the decrees of the Magisterium and the liturgy speak of it (e.g. Feast of the Sacred Heart, memory of the Heart of Mary).

In this way, Jesus and Mary also present themselves in the revelations, made to individuals:

Saint Marguerite Marie Alacoque: The first Fridays
Saint Catherine Labouré: The Miraculous Medal
The Visionaries of Fatima: The First Saturdays
Saint Faustina: Feast of Divine Mercy
The biblical language as well as that of our daily lives conceive "the heart" as the very center of every human person and as the symbol of love.  To speak of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary means to speak of the riches of their intimate lives, especially of the love they feel for the Heavenly Father and for us human beings.

Today, humanity needs divine goodness, charity, and mercy more than ever. We participate in it through consecration to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and through the resulting life.