(ANS – Rome) – In the article in the Salesian Bulletin of May 1886 dedicated to the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the inevitable object of reflection could only be the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The exegesis thus unites two central themes of Don Bosco’s spirituality, leading the reader on a journey of deepening and understanding of the few differences and many similarities in the cult and veneration owed to one and the other.
With the arrival of the month of May, traditionally dedicated to Mary, the author of the article, Fr. John Bonetti, proposes a profound reflection on the spiritual and theological link between the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary. The text opens with an evocative poetic introduction comparing Mary to the dawn, a figure of purity and hope. From here begins a meditation on the value of worshipping both Hearts, seen as inseparable in the one mission of saving humanity, as well as in their participation in human suffering.
The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are presented as united by a unique bond of consonance, love and sharing in the sacrifice of the Cross. ‘Certainly between the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary there is such a relationship and similarity of nature, such an intimacy of intelligence and love reigns, which could not be conceived of as greater or more perfect,’ it is stated.
The author emphasises the superhuman and at the same time fully human greatness of these two Hearts: most pure, untouched by sin, immense in love and sorrow. Their intimate union, according to Christian doctrine, is also reflected in the similar historical evolution of the cult reserved for them, albeit with a formal distinction. The Heart of Jesus is given “latria”, that is, full adoration, reserved only for God; while the Heart of Mary is given “hyperdulia”, superior to that of the Saints and Angels, but still referring to a creature.
The birth of the two devotions is traced back to 17th-century France, with two humble and devout figures: St Margaret Mary Alacoque for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and St John Eudes for the Heart of Mary. At a time marked by the beginning of Europe’s moral and religious decadence, these two devotions gradually spread to restore the link between nature and the supernatural, between humanity and divinity.
Significant, both for the stylistic elegance and the popularity of the reference, is the similarity with the river Nile, whose sources had not long been identified: just as that watercourse gradually swells and makes the lands through which it flows immensely fertile, so these two devotions restore and benefit those who come into contact with it.
In the second part of the paper, the reflection focuses on denouncing the opposition that these devotions have encountered, from the very beginning, from currents such as Jansenism and more generally from rationalist and anticlerical intellectuals. Such opponents accused these forms of piety of idolatry, misjudging the doctrinal precision and balance of Christian worship.
But this hostility should not discourage the faithful: first of all, they are almost the proof of the truthfulness and groundedness of these devotions, since difficulties, the author observes, arise ‘the prouder, the greater the good they aim to fight’; and, secondly, they must be answered with an even closer union, because if the enemies of God attack the two devotions together, the faithful must celebrate them together, recognising their unity and complementarity.
If anything good can be gleaned from these hostilities, however, it is a greater appreciation of the role of Mary and her Immaculate Heart as an opportune mediation towards Jesus and his Sacred Heart. She is the way, the ‘mirror’ that reflects the rays of her Son, she is the ‘monstrance’ that displays him: through her Heart one can come to contemplate the treasures hidden in the Heart of Jesus.
In the conclusion, the author invites the faithful to turn to her with particular fervour in the Marian month, so that she may intercede for humanity, hasten the consecration of the Church to the Heart of Jesus at the Castro Pretorio in Rome, and seal forever the union between the two devotions. The text closes by evoking the Salesian churches in Rome and Turin, symbols of the Sacred Heart and Mary Help of Christians, as eternal monuments of faith and charity.
The complete text of the article written for the Salesian Bulletin of 1886 is available in the original Italian version of the time, at the bottom of the page.
English translation:
The Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary
We are approaching the most beautiful and lovely of months. Like a ray of a well-known star in a stormy night, like a dawn that precedes the day in the most beautiful season, like a dawn of pure white light that gradually grows and takes on new and ever more vivid and sweeter colors, so Mary reappears in the May that is rising, dedicated to her. Let us greet her with reverent affection! Now what better way to honor the Heart of Jesus, to study its hidden greatness as far as humanly possible, to make known and bring forth the ineffable treasures that are contained therein, than to honor, study and investigate the Heart of Mary? Let us therefore turn to the Mother to know the Son. And certainly between the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary there exists such a relationship and similarity of nature, such an intimacy of intelligence and love reigns, as could not be conceived either greater or more perfect. Both are immense, like the love that created them; divinely human in the greatness of their piety and generosity, which extends to all humanity and welcomes and embraces all humanity; neither spoiled, nor offended, nor tarnished by the original stain; equal in the height of the sacrifice, which binds them together and fuses them into one, as in the abyss of pain, which reciprocally causes the torments, the anguish, the agonies of one to flow back into the other there at the foot of the Cross for humanity to be redeemed.
Now this perfect resemblance, which runs in the natural order between one and the other, and beautifully forms one heart of two, had to happen and really happened in the historical order as regards the origin and the events of the cult given to both. Here, however, it must first be observed that the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary are not honored in the same way or to the same extent; indeed, there is a profound distinction as regards the formal object. The cult of the Heart of Jesus is a cult of latria, that is, of adoration, since the Heart of Jesus cannot be considered otherwise than inseparably joined with the divinity, by that indissoluble union which the humanity of Jesus joins in a single person with the divinity of the Word or Son of God. The cult, on the other hand, which is given to the Heart of Mary, the highest, the most perfect of creatures, but still a creature, is a cult of dulia or rather of hyperdulia, that is, above servitude or above devotion, such as is particularly directed to honoring, in a way superior to all the Angels and saints, the most pure and most holy affections of the Heart of the handmaid of the Lord, in which, as the Church teaches us, God has prepared a worthy dwelling place for the Holy Spirit, that is, of Love.
That said, who does not see, just by taking a quick look at history, what intimate relationships of place, time, and even contradictions and struggles, connect the one and the other devotion? The origins of the public cult of the Heart of Jesus are very tenuous, as are those of the public cult of the Heart of Mary; an image, a small altar, these are the beginnings of these two devotions, which in the religious-moral decrepitude of the world had to embrace all humanity to lead it back to God. Not otherwise, if such a comparison is permitted, happens to the Nile, to this most celebrated river of the land of the Pharaohs, which, drawing its for so long mysterious origin from a very thin thread of water, swells as it advances in its very long course, floods and fertilizes with its periodic inundations an immense land and all that a great people sustains and enriches, ending by paying its tribute to the Mediterranean through very large outlets. France is the place, the chosen seat at the origins of both; the instruments are two humble and virgin hearts, B. Alacoque and Fr. Eudes, because humility and purity are the two factors of the works of God; the predestined time is the seventeenth century, and more precisely that part of it which was already incubating that terrible disease, which was to bring damage and misfortune to so much of Europe. Blessed be Divine Providence!
When a pagan naturalism had also ruined the already healthy roots of literature and the arts, sacrilegiously separating them from Jesus Christ, when a superb philosophy, disregarding revelation and the system of duties, drawing only and entirely from the nature of man, gave body and life to the most disastrous, because most hypocritical, form of rationalism, merciful God came to the aid of poor humanity, re-establishing with the devotions of the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary that bond between the natural order and the supernatural order, on which all Christianity rests, and without which it will never be possible for any society to be called Christian – that is, human. And this inestimable benefit was well recognized by the Church, infallible teacher, who, while proceeding with the usual prudence, approved not only gradually, but also extended to all Catholicity the two devotions and the two feasts to the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary.
But contradictions arise, because a ceaseless struggle is the life of man on this earth, and these contradictions are always all the more fierce, the greater the good they aim to fight. New Pharisees, called Jansenists, or Riccians, or better still, non-Catholics, but certainly of the lineage of those who, there on Calvary, had at the same time insulted the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary, claim to see idolatry where there is the most rigorous precision of doctrine and sovereign harmony of worship, and under the cloak of a cruel rigorism they would like to keep the creature away from the Creator, the children from their father and their mother, using in this, as one who is in the wrong does, nicknames and insults against their adversaries, the Catholics. And in our own days, did we not see a famous philosopher, so benign towards Jansenism, in the one who posed as an enthusiastic champion of Christianity, lump together in one single hatred and one single contempt both of these devotions? Yes, it must be said.
While the truly Catholic genius sees in the Heart of Jesus the origins, the reasons and as it were the spiritual form of the Church, the idolatrous genius of the city of seven hills launches shameless jokes on the Rome of the feast of the Sacred Heart, which to him seems a trifle, an accessory. While the man of profound intellect and robust faith recognizes in the enthusiasm of the people to exalt the fortunate woman an invincible logical force, since the human perfections of Jesus are the perfections of Mary, the man, led astray by the appearances of some civil Christianity, repeats the aggrandizement of the cult of Mary, or, as he blasphemes, the femininity of Christianity by the tendency of the Nordic races, led, according to his phraseology, to idolize women, contrary to the Semitic or Pelasgian races. So it is unfortunately, Satan changes tactics in his old war, transfigured if, but he is always Satan.
Now, what must we do in such circumstances? The answer cannot be late or doubtful. When the enemies of God bind together in one hatred and one contempt the devotion to the Heart of Jesus and the devotion to the Heart of Mary, recognizing thereby the intimate and as it were necessary bond that links the one to the other, and we unite these two devotions in one love, in one veneration. Yes, it is true, our weak pupils cannot, nor would they dare, to gaze into the direct light of the radiant Heart of Jesus to scrutinize its majesty and wisdom, for fear that we poor mortals would remain crushed under the weight of its glory: Qui scrutator est maiestatis, opprimetur a gloria (Prov 25, 27). Well then, let us turn our gaze to the image of the Most Sacred Heart of Mary, which stands on His right; at that sight we will be encouraged; to that reflected light we will come to trace the ineffable treasures that are hidden in the Heart of Jesus. For Mary is the mirror that reflects all the rays that come from the Heart of her Son Jesus, and it is precisely in this reflection that the superhuman beauty of her Heart lies. Mary, as a learned and pious writer says, is the monstrance that shows us Jesus, nor can the idea of Her ever be separated from that of God the Creator, Redeemer and Glorifier.
Let us therefore turn to Mary, especially in this May, and pray to her to make us know and share in some way the treasures of goodness and wisdom of the Heart of Jesus; let us pray to her to spread upon us a ray of those holy ardors that blaze in the Heart of Jesus and His, and to regulate our life in accordance with these most pure ardors; finally, let us pray to her to hasten the moment of the consecration of the Church, sacred to the Heart of her Divine Son. And let She who began the holy enterprise complete it. Rome and Turin, the Sacred Heart and Mary Help of Christians will seal with the fact the intimate indissoluble bond that beautifully unites them to each other with such most sweet devotions, and will remain a perpetual monument of charity and faith.
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