“There is, actually, only one person in all humanity of whom God has one picture and in whom there is a perfect conformity between what he wanted her to be and what she is, and that is his own mother. Most of us are a minus sign, in the sense that we do not fulfill the high hopes the heavenly Father has for us. But Mary is the equal sign. The ideal that God had of her, that she is, and in the flesh. The model and the copy are perfect; she is all that was foreseen, planned, and dreamed. The melody of her life is played just as it was written.”— Archbishop Fulton Sheen, p. 15
“May the Virgin Mary, who in her life never stopped trusting in God, reawaken in us the basic need of entrusting ourselves to Him each day.” Pope Francis
The sacred, pure heart of Jesus. The immaculate, undefiled heart of Mary. How does such a heart come to be? Clearly the initiative is God’s, who prepares the human heart to be his dwelling place. At the same time, the human heart must be receptive and cooperative with this work of God, open to the power of the Spirit at work within. Like Mary, who found favor with God.
Mary knew that a place must be readied, there must be room in her heart for God. It
must be rid of all clutter, the kinds of things that Jesus said rendered the heart defiled: evil thoughts, greed, malice, deceit, envy, arrogance, anger, and hatred. Such things are not of God. They leave no room in the heart for the Word of God to speak.
A pure heart treasures the Word and ponders it. As did Mary, as did Jesus. How else could they have recognized it as a word for their own lives? Mary, when visiting Elizabeth or when hearing the words Jesus spoke to her in today’s Gospel. Jesus, so often at prayer, finding help for his temptations and for direction in his ministry. A pure heart knows the power of the Word of God to reveal who we are and who we are to become. A pure heart knows the power of the Word of God to continually create anew.
Like mother. Like Son. So may the heart of each of us become.
There was a Marian apparition…in Wisconsin? It’s true! Discover the story below.
Adele Brise
When young Belgian immigrant Adele Brise arrived in Wisconsin with her family, she may have expected adventure, but not to witness the first approved Marian apparition in the United States.
In October 1859, while carrying grain to a mill, 28-year-old Adele experienced her first vision near the area now called New Franken. Adele saw a woman bathed in a bright light and dressed in white, a yellow sash, and a crown of stars. Unsure and frightened, Adele prayed until the vision disappeared.
Our Lady of Good Help, as described by Adele
The following Sunday, the lady appeared again on Adele’s way to Mass. Adele immediately consulted with her priest, who advised that she should ask the woman, “In the Name of God, who are you and what do you wish of me?”
Adele saw the apparition a third time on her way home from Mass the same day, and followed the priest’s instructions. Mary told her: “I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same.” Our Lady then gave Adele the mission to “gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.”
From that time onward, Adele dedicated her life to catechetical mission work. She traveled a 50-mile radius on foot to serve local families and teach children about the Catholic faith. At the site of the Marian apparition, Adele’s father built a small twelve-foot chapel, where many pilgrims visited and prayed for Our Lady’s intercession.
Twelve years after Adele first encountered the Blessed Mother, a great drought beset the Midwest. This drought caused the Peshtigo Fire, the worst recorded fire in U.S. history. As the fire approached Robinsonville, local families that Adele had served came together at the chapel grounds with their children and livestock to pray the Rosary, beseeching Our Lady to ask Jesus to save them. They prayed through the night—and while the fire destroyed the surrounding land, the chapel area and all who had gathered there remained untouched.
This became the first of many miraculous occurrences through Our Lady of Good Help’s intercession.
The National Shrine today
In 1942, a new church was constructed at the site. Devotion to Our Lady of Good Help flourished. In 2010, after much time and discernment by expert Mariologists, the Church formally pronounced Mary’s appearances to Adele as “worthy of belief.” The church constructed at the site was later designated as the National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help, making it the first and only shrine with a Church-approved Marian apparition site in the USA.
The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is celebrated on the octave day of the feast of Corpus Christi. In the 17th century Jesus appeared in a vision to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque asking her to request that this feast be celebrated in honor of his Sacred Heart in reparation for the ingratitude of mankind toward the sacrifice of his love on the Cross. Pope Pius IX extended the feast of the Sacred Heart to the universal Church in 1856. The imagery of Christ pointing to his heart, on fire with love, signifies his immense and infinite love for humanity which took Him to the Cross to die for our salvation. The Sacred Heart of Jesus desires that all mankind draw close to Him in love and trust. Today this devotion, given to the faithful by Our Lord himself, is among the most popular of the Catholic Church.
“When we appeal to the throne of grace we do so through Mary, honoring God by honoring His Mother, imitating Him by exalting her, touching the most responsive chord in the Sacred Heart of Christ with the sweet name of Mary.”— St. Robert Bellarmine
Mystical ecstasy is the elevation of the spirit to God in such a way that the person is aware of this union with God while both internal and external senses are detached from the sensible world. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi was so generously given this special gift of God that she is called the “ecstatic saint.”
Catherine de’ Pazzi was born into a noble family in Florence in 1566. The normal course would have been for her to have married into wealth and enjoyed comfort, but Catherine chose to follow her own path. At 9, she learned to meditate from the family confessor. She made her first Communion at the then-early age of 10, and made a vow of virginity one month later. At 16, Catherine entered the Carmelite convent in Florence because she could receive Communion daily there.
Catherine had taken the name Mary Magdalene and had been a novice for a year when she became critically ill. Death seemed near, so her superiors let her make her profession of vows in a private ceremony from a cot in the chapel. Immediately after, Mary Magdalene fell into an ecstasy that lasted about two hours. This was repeated after Communion on the following 40 mornings. These ecstasies were rich experiences of union with God and contained marvelous insights into divine truths.
As a safeguard against deception and to preserve the revelations, her confessor asked Mary Magdalene to dictate her experiences to sister secretaries. Over the next six years, five large volumes were filled. The first three books record ecstasies from May of 1584 through Pentecost week the following year. This week was a preparation for a severe five-year trial. The fourth book records that trial and the fifth is a collection of letters concerning reform and renewal. Another book, Admonitions, is a collection of her sayings arising from her experiences in the formation of women religious.
The extraordinary was ordinary for this saint. She read the thoughts of others and predicted future events. During her lifetime, Mary Magdalene appeared to several persons in distant places and cured a number of sick people.
It would be easy to dwell on the ecstasies and pretend that Mary Magdalene only had spiritual highs. This is far from true. It seems that God permitted her this special closeness to prepare her for the five years of desolation that followed when she experienced spiritual dryness. She was plunged into a state of darkness in which she saw nothing but what was horrible in herself and all around her. She had violent temptations and endured great physical suffering. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi died in 1607 at age 41, and was canonized in 1669. Her liturgical feast is celebrated on May 25.
Reflection
Intimate union, God’s gift to mystics, is a reminder to all of us of the eternal happiness of union he wishes to give us. The cause of mystical ecstasy in this life is the Holy Spirit, working through spiritual gifts. The ecstasy occurs because of the weakness of the body and its powers to withstand the divine illumination, but as the body is purified and strengthened, ecstasy no longer occurs. See Teresa of Avila’s Interior Castle, and John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, for more about various aspects of ecstasies.
Here in Ephesus, she was now as she was then: a girl, a woman, waiting and watching for the angel who would announce the word of her passing into the heaven where her Son ruled at the right hand of the Father. She was not afraid. She needed no Gabriel to reassure her. She’d lived too long in the immensity of the mystery to doubt. Nor did she wonder who she would be in eternity. She would be who she always was: Mary, the mother of God’s Son. She suspected that would be her role for all eternity: mother, woman, the completion of the love of the mysterious faces of God—Father, Son, Holy Spirit—the mystery moving through the three of them into her, visible in eternity as it is invisible on earth.
“Love Mary! She is loveable, faithful, constant. She will never let herself be outdone in love, but will ever remain supreme. If you are in danger, she will hasten to free you. If you are troubled, she will console you. If you are sick, she will bring you relief. If you are in need, she will help you. She does not look to see what kind of person you have been. She simply comes to a heart that wants to love her.” — St. Gabriel Possenti of Our Lady of Sorrows
Mary would have to remind herself whenever she would remember and start to dwell on Jesus’s suffering, that love redeemed it all, and with the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, she again saw in a flash of light that love was the reason from all eternity. Jesus came to love us and show us the love of the Father and how we are to love the Father. And with that vision, there seemed no past anymore, or even future. Everything was now, everything was new and exciting in the present. And how marvelous to live in that reality that was a preview of what was to come but more importantly, was already here, happening in her. She was living in the kingdom and all that needed to happen was that moment when she entered and saw the kingdom of love that was already there inside and all around her.
