In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters, today we celebrate a votive mass in honour of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
That is the Immaculate Heart of the woman who is the new Eve,
the woman who stands alongside the new Adam, who is also her Son and her Lord,
and if we understand correctly how God's loving providence has worked in respect of the Blessed Virgin,
also her Saviour, which we recall to mind every time we sing the Magnificat.
My soul rejoices in God, my Saviour. That is, in my Jesus, who is my Saviour.
Jesus saved his mother in a unique way, not redeeming her after she had contracted sin,
but saving her even from coming into contact with the least spot or stain of sin.
For such was fitting to the Ark of the Covenant, which was to hold not just symbols of the Messiah,
bread, the bread of the Presence, the tablets of Moses, the rod of Aaron, as the old Ark contained,
but who was really to hold Jesus Christ.
Our Lord and our God, our Lord Jesus, truly the Son of the Eternal Father,
for whom, through whom, in whom all things were created,
and indeed in whom has been accomplished the re-creation of the whole world.
The Immaculate Heart of Mary, God's own mother.
We know that God wants us,
to get to know this woman's Immaculate Heart,
and to love it with all our hearts.
For Mary herself said at Fatima,
God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart.
How do we venerate and love the Immaculate Heart of Mary?
I think an important clue is given to us in our Gospel reading today.
These words, which we have heard, as has been said before, indeed by our present Holy Father,
were very dear to blessed now John Paul II.
Benedict XVI also has loved to comment on them.
Let us go now to the cross, he said in a general audience, which he gave in 2009.
Let us go now to the cross.
Before dying, Jesus sees his mother beneath the cross, and he sees the beloved Son.
This beloved Son is certainly a person, a very important individual,
but he is more, he is an example, a prefiguration of all beloved disciples,
of all the people called by the Lord to be the beloved disciple.
Jesus says to Mary,
Woman, behold your son.
It is a sort of testament.
He entrusts his mother to the care of the son of the disciple.
But he also says to the disciple,
Behold your mother.
The Gospel tells us that from that hour,
Saint John, the beloved son, took Mary, his mother, to his own home.
This is what it says in the English translation,
the Holy Father continues,
but the Greek text is far deeper, far richer.
We could translate it,
He took Mary into his inner life, his inner being, into the depths of his being.
To take Mary with one means to introduce her into the dynamism of one's own entire existence,
and into all that constitutes the horizon of one's own apostolate.
Dear brothers and sisters,
here we see a deeper truth revealed in the mystery of the Immaculate,
of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
If we think about the very term, heart,
well, we understand that we're talking precisely about the deepest part of a person.
But precisely because it is the deepest part of a person,
and in this case, a singularly noble and preeminent person,
this is something which needs to be received, not just with respect,
but just as,
our dear Holy Father said in a different context,
heart speaks unto heart.
So we understand, when we think about the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
that the only way we can worthily receive her is with the totality of our hearts.
We must go out to meet the Immaculate Heart of Mary
with the fullness of our own heart.
We must throw open the doors of our heart,
and let this woman, who is the dawn of salvation, enter in.
This requires a personal choice on the part of each one of us.
We don't have to be saints to make this choice.
We need to have a certain amount of faith.
We need to think about Scripture.
We need to read it in the light of the tradition of the Church.
We do well to listen to the words of our dear and beloved Holy Father.
I say in passing,
that to be completely honest,
I have been profoundly impressed with the Marian teaching of Benedict XVI.
Someone said, as he came to power,
that perhaps in this area he would not be able to equal his predecessor,
who is really great, Blessed John Paul II.
I think that we have seen how history has been proven to be otherwise.
Benedict XVI is demonstrating a wonderful understanding of the mystery of Mary,
and he is proclaiming her at every opportunity.
He sees her, quite rightly, as the remedy to the Church's problems,
to the source, shall we say, of renewal in the Church and in the whole world.
For Mary's Immaculate Heart not only shows us where we must go,
but when we receive her, she also makes it possible for us indeed to go there.
It is through Mary that the Church will reach the fullness of its perfection
and accomplish its vocation in full,
to bring the reign of Christ into the world,
to build up Christ in souls.
Saint Louis de Montfort, for his part, was very clear about this.
He said many times in his masterpiece, True Devotion to Mary,
that it is through the Blessed Virgin Mary
that the Holy Spirit even now forms and generates,
or perhaps we could say generates and forms, Jesus in souls.
For she is always the Spirit's faithful spouse,
and he has never repudiated her because she has always been faithful to him
and always been fruitful besides.
So we need to say yes to Mary,
and this is the beginning of that opening of our heart to receive her heart.
But as we've just implied, when we receive her heart,
when we say yes to her and we open the door to her,
then we open up the way to a wonderful journey in holiness.
I repeat again, we don't have to be saints to begin this journey,
for just as her son said, so also Mary would say,
I came not to call the virtuous, but sinners.
Mary has come to meet us, so to speak, where we are.
She just asks that we say yes to her maternal presence in our life.
This is the beginning.
But dear brothers and sisters, a little bit like the accelerator in a car,
which opens a certain valve somewhere in the engine and lets all the fuel in,
we must work every day at living out our Marian consecration,
our belonging to Mary,
in this way that we strive to eliminate every obstacle to her action,
her presence in our hearts,
and that we strive in every way to fit ourselves so that her activity can be more perfect.
For act if she is, act if she is.
Mary is actually the one, or one of the persons we can say,
or things spoken of in that beautiful passage,
in one of the books from the wisdom literature which talks about the good wife.
This good wife goes about doing all sorts of useful things in the heart of the household,
making things for her children so that they don't have to be afraid of the cold and so forth.
Everybody is proud of her.
So also one of the Psalms talks about how the good wife is like a fruitful vine at the heart of one's house.
Now listen to these words from Benedict XVI again.
And you will understand the relevance of all of this.
The expression, he says,
he received her into his own home,
is singularly compact.
It indicates John's decision to make Mary share in his own life,
so as to experience that whoever opens his heart to Mary
is actually accepted by her and becomes her own.
The motto that stands out in the coat of arms of the pontificate of John Paul II,
totus tuus,
sums up this spiritual and mystical experience well,
in a life completely orientated to Christ,
through Mary,
to Jesus,
through Mary.
You understand, when we open our hearts to Mary,
and when we labour at making our consecration more real every day,
living it out fully,
Mary becomes like that fruitful vine at the heart of our house,
and she and the Holy Spirit set charity in order in us.
That is, they purify us of all the dross of our vices, our faults and failings,
and they advance us rapidly on the way to the full accomplishment of God's holy will.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is a beautiful way,
and we see that through the Blessed Virgin Mary,
it's not so difficult to become a saint.
How wonderful it is to distinguish, to discern her presence in our life,
and how much more wonderful it is when, after a little bit of faithfulness on our part,
perhaps she will be pleased to reveal her presence in a special way,
in the interior of our heart.
For Mary lives there in a way that is analogous,
analogous, that is, it shares some similarities, though it is also different in some ways,
to the presence of the Holy Trinity in our hearts through sanctifying grace.
And when we discover her within us, dear brothers and sisters,
what joy that can bring us, for what a gentle and loving, beautiful person she is.
Let us give thanks to God for the beautiful things that he has told us through his saints
and through our own Holy Father, Benedict XVI and his predecessor, John Paul II.
Let us try then to put into practice their teaching,
for they really do believe that Mary is the way to the perfect fulfilment of the mission of God
in the world and the building up of the Church and the salvation of souls.
Indeed, may this come about then in the shortest, surest and most beautiful way,
that is, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
to the greatest possible glory of God, now and to endless ages. Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Holy Spirit is with you.