Mary's Heart and our hearts..."open doors"

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In my last few threads, I’ve been pondering Mary’s heart (beginning with the words from Pope Francis’ Angelus Address last Sunday). Today, in reading the Pope’s homily in opening the Holy Doors at a homeless shelter, I was blessed again to see how God gave Mary to us as Mother and Model of the Church.

Just as Mary’s heart was ever open to welcome God, so our hearts, individually and together, need to open wide to receive Him through her. Here are words of Pope Francis which helped me this morning to see Mary’s heart and our hearts in the Church as “open doors”:

…Today we open this Door and we ask for two things.

First: that the Lord open the door of our heart, of everyone. We are all in need. We are all sinners. We are all in need of hearing the Lord’s word and that the Lord’s word come.

Second: that the Lord make us understand that the way of riches, of vanity and of pride are not the ways of salvation. May the Lord make us understand that His caress of Father, His mercy, His forgiveness is when we approach those that suffer, those discarded by society. Jesus is there. This Door is the Door of charity, the Door where so many, so many discarded are assisted … May He make us understand that it will also be good if every one of us, every Roman feels discarded, and that we feel the need of God’s help. Today we pray for Rome, for all the inhabitants of Rome, beginning with me, that the Lord may give us the grace to feel discarded because we have no merit. He alone gives us the grace. And to have this grace we must approach the poor. We will be judged on our coming close to them.

On opening this Door may the Lord give that grace to every inhabitant of Rome. Embrace of the Father to the wounded Son but where the wounded one is the Father. The Lord is wounded of love. May He give us all this grace to embrace one another.

We are all made in the Image and Likeness of God. Jesus born of Mary tells us to learn of His Meek and Humble Heart. Mary’s heart was so transformed by grace that she resembles Him more closely than any other human person. May the Holy Spirit overshadow us, and mold our hearts to be like hers and thus more and more like His.

Full text of Pope Francis’s words can be read HERE

 

[Richard_White]

Than you for this! Again, may God bless you and your loved ones forever!

 

[MariaChristi]

Thank you for this! Again, may God bless you and your loved ones forever!

Dear Richard,

Good to hear from you again! Blessed Christmas Day! Mary’s Heart is the Model for ours. This morning I remembered reading in St. Louis De Montfort’s “True Devotion” a section in which the saint encourages us to ask Mary to “lend us her heart”. In paragraph 266:

…Implore Mary to lend you her heart so that you may receive her Son with her dispositions. Remind her that her Son’s glory requires that he should not come into a heart so sullied and fickle as your own, which could not fail to diminish his glory and might cause him to leave. Tell her that if she will take up her abode in you to receive her Son - which she can do because of the sovereignty she has over all hearts - he will be received by her in a perfect manner without danger of being affronted or being forced to depart. “God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved.” …

Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, also encouraged her sisters to consecrate themselves to Jesus through Mary, and to ask Mary to lend them her heart. Mary is our Mother who loves us and is willing to share all she has with us, for God has given her all she has!