Scripture itself supplies the ground of the devotion. Twice Saint Luke says that Mary kept the events of her Son's life and pondered them in her heart, and Simeon foretells that a sword would pierce her own soul. From these texts the Fathers and later spiritual writers spoke of Mary's heart as the place where faith, love, and sorrow met. Saint John Eudes gave the devotion its liturgical shape in seventeenth-century France, and the messages associated with the apparitions at Fatima in 1917 spread it widely in the twentieth century. Pope Pius XII consecrated the human race to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1942 and two years later instituted a feast for the universal Church, then assigned to August 22. When the calendar was revised after the Second Vatican Council the celebration was moved to the day after the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, so that the two hearts are honored together; it was kept at first as an optional memorial, and Saint John Paul II raised it to an obligatory memorial in 2000. Because the date depends on Easter, it is movable, falling on the Saturday of the third week after Pentecost. The Mass uses white vestments and proper prayers; the Gospel is Luke's account of the finding of the child Jesus in the Temple, which ends with the note that his mother kept all these things in her heart. The Church is careful about what the devotion means: honor given to Mary's heart is honor given to her whole person and to the grace of God at work in her, and it is always ordered to the worship of her Son. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy commends acts of consecration to the Immaculate Heart while insisting that they be understood as a total gift of self to Christ made through Mary, not as a substitute for the sacraments or for the moral life.

Memorial

memorial

Ordinary time

• Luke 2:41-51

memorial