Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

On the Friday following the second Sunday after Pentecost, Holy Mother Church celebrates the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On the following day the Church celebrates the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Since this devotion is of vital importance, we transcribe below an excerpt from an article written by Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.

Real piety aims to give glory to God and lead man to virtue. To achieve both ends, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a true gift of Divine Providence to this unfortunate century. Our Lady is the Mediatrix of all grace. To try to pray without her intercession is the same as trying to fly without wings, says Dante. If we want our acts of love, praise, thanksgiving and reparation to reach the throne of God, we must place them into the hands of Mary Most Holy. It would be ridiculous to imagine that devotion to Our Lady would be a deviation and that we could reach God more directly by not addressing ourselves to her. The opposite is true. We can only reach God through her. To try to reach Jesus Christ, without Our Lady, on the false pretext that Our Lady is an obstacle between us and her Divine Son is as foolish as trying to analyze the stars with the naked eye, supposing the telescope’s lenses to be an obstacle between us and the stars. Let us seek grace at the fountain from which it really flows and, with its help, become fortified for all the austerity that the Holy Ghost demands of us. Undoubtedly, devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Maryholds an utmost important place among these sources of grace. In the Apocalypse, chapter 3, verse 8, we find: “I know thy works. Behold, I have given before thee a door opened, which no man can shut: because thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.” This door, open to the weakness of contemporary man, is the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The preceding article was originally published in O Legionario, on July 30, 1944. It has been translated and adapted for publication without the author’s revision. –Ed.