Episode Details

It's the Feast of Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin, 2nd Class, with the color of White. In this episode: the meditation: "On the Road to Heaven", today's news from the Church: "Archbishop Lefebvre's Apostolic Journey - Part 3", and today's thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows? podcast@sspx.org

Sources Used Today:

• "On the Road to Heaven" — From Trinity Sunday to the Assumption
  • https://angeluspress.org/products/from-trinity-sunday-to-the-assumption
  
  
• "Archbishop Lefebvre's Apostolic Journey - Part 3" (FSSPX.news)
  • https://sspx.org/en/news/archbishop-lefebvres-apostolic-journey-part-3-60605
  
  
• The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
  • https://angeluspress.org/products/spiritual-life-archbishop
  
  

Please support our new project, the Archbishop Lefebvre Biography Audiobook:

• Learn more:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Wp4MQdK2o
• Donate:https://sspx.gifts/audiobook

The Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary celebrates something Scripture mentions almost in passing, but the Church has spent centuries thinking about.

Twice in Saint Luke's Gospel, we're told that Mary kept the events surrounding Christ and "pondered them in her heart." And when the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple, Simeon told her that a sword would pierce her soul. Mary's heart, then, became a way of speaking about her entire interior life: her love for God, her purity, her sorrow, and especially her complete union with her Son.

The devotion grew slowly.

By the Middle Ages, Catholics were already meditating on Mary's joys and sorrows, but one of the great figures who gave the devotion a clearer shape was John Eudes. In fact, we met him just a few days ago. In 1648, he composed a Mass and Office honoring the Holy Heart of Mary and began celebrating a feast with his communities.

That was more than two centuries before Fatima.

Then came 1917.

At Fatima, Our Lady told the three shepherd children that God wished to establish devotion to her Immaculate Heart in the world. The children described seeing her heart surrounded by thorns, a striking image of Mary's sorrow over sin and her maternal concern for souls.

The devotion suddenly took on a much greater urgency.

In 1942, with the Second World War raging, Pope Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Two years later, he extended the feast to the universal Church, assigning