Une Minute avec Marie
Faire connaître et aimer Marie
In a time of increasing isolation, conflicts and fragmentation – within society, and within the heart of man – what does the world need most if not hope? But as faiths become more disparate, and conflict continues to intensify between different beliefs and ways of living, where is our resolution? Where is our aide to mercy? Where is the turning point in the path which will prepare the way for the return of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ?
Surely it takes something, or someone supremely elevated, to transcend above the poverty and despair of our competitive self-aggrandising world to bring us this hope? And the answer, as presented here, exists within the Immaculate Heart, the pure heart of Mary, Mother of God. (...)
Her courage, her discerning faith she at once articulated and sought loving truth before her affirmation of her humble response to God’s plan as being “handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
In this “how can this be?” God, through the angel, is able to annunciate the fullness of His plan, a beautiful coming together between Mary’s simple purity and virginity, and the mightiness of divine miracle wed within her in the newness of Christ.
Mary is fully human but is described by her cousin Elizabeth as being “full of grace” and that is because of the Immaculate Conception which prepared her for the immense task God had chosen her for.
In Mary’s pure and immaculate heart, Dominican Sister Rose Rolling of St Catherine’s Convent, Cambridge, describes Mary’s perfect example of the three main applications of purity of heart: charity, chastity and truth.
Charity: purity enables us to love others as our neighbours, and not for what we can get from them, or because of our natural chemistry, or because of their human “loveliness”.
Chastity: purity lets us perceive the human body – ours and our neighbour’s – as a temple of the Holy Spirit, a treasure to be honoured and not used. It means observing the norms of sexuality set out by Christ and the Church.
Truth: purity enables to see according to God and His vision, and not according to our human preferences and limited understanding.
Perhaps the vision then is to learn to renounce control over our own lives, to take a leap of faith and place God’s will, in charity and chastity, ahead of ourselves.
Purity of heart is not self-serving or profit seeking. It brings clarity, is honest, morally good. It is imperative in modern society because it is so counter-cultural and is the seat of truth, justice and mercy. Purity of heart as lived out in Mary is the opposite of the search for revenge.
Purity of heart will demand that the Christian proclaims the Good News of the Kingdom, in speech and action, which must challenge and attempt to change the values of the world around. It is totally generous, totally focused on the other. Mary was the ideal human agent in that work. This is what she expressed throughout her life. ‘Let it be done unto me according to your word (Luke 1:38).’