What do the feasts of the Sacred Heart, Immaculate Heart, Miraculous Medal and Our Lady of Fatima have in common? More than you might realize.
Begin with this Friday (the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus) and Saturday (the Optional Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary). In 1969, Pope St. Paul VI placed them side by side in the liturgical calendar — the Sacred Heart on Friday, the Immaculate Heart on Saturday.
Of course, the pairing began at the Annunciation with Jesus’ Sacred Heart beating close to Mary’s Immaculate Heart.
At the birth of Jesus and after the visit of the shepherds, Mary “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). At the Presentation, Simon told her that Jesus would “be a sign that will be opposed … and a sword will pierce your own heart too” (Luke 2:35). That prophecy was fulfilled at the foot of the Cross. Returning home from Jerusalem and all that took place there when Jesus was 12, “His mother treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51).
Many centuries later, in November and December 1830, who appears to a quiet nun named Sister Catherine Labouré in the chapel on the Rue de Bac in Paris? The Blessed Mother. Who is the convent chapel dedicated to? The Sacred Heart of Jesus.
That’s where Mary showed Catherine (now St. Catherine Labouré) the image of what would become the Miraculous Medal. Catherine heard a voice say, “Have a medal made according to this model. For those who wear it with confidence, there will be abundant graces.”
The medal conveys several messages, two of which are especially significant here. First, on the front, around the Blessed Mother appear the words, “O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you.”
This teaching on the Immaculate Heart of Mary would become official on Dec. 8, 1854, when Blessed Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which states that Mary is without sin from the moment of her conception.
Keep in mind an often-forgotten detail. When Catherine was shown the image of the medal, Mary was near a painting of St. Joseph that was hanging there at the time. (A painting of Our Lady is there now.) St. Joseph appeared with her during the October appearance at Fatima, too.
And what is on the reverse side of the medal? Two hearts. One is encircled by the crown of thorns; the other is pierced by a sword. The official description from the Paris shrine states:
The heart crowned with thorns is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It recalls the cruel episode of Christ’s Passion before He was put to death, as recounted in the Gospels. It represents His passionate love for humanity. The heart pierced by a sword is the Immaculate Heart of Mary, his Mother. It recalls Simeon’s prophecy the day Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple, as recounted in the Gospel. It represents the love of Christ that dwells within Mary and her love for us: for the sake of our Salvation, she accepted the sacrifice of her own Son. Depicting these two hearts close together indicates that Mary’s life is one of intimacy with Jesus.
The flames represent Jesus’ and Mary’s burning love for us, with a cross and the letter “M” above the hearts, symbolizing Mary’s presence at the foot of the Cross.
Vincentian Father John Kettelberger, spiritual director of the Central Association of the Miraculous Medal, said that “those two hearts there, remind us of this tremendous love that both of them have for us, and on a medal that we wear touching us, always reminding us of God’s love and God’s care and God’s concern for each of us.”
Fatima Connection
In Fatima in Lúcia’s Own Words, the book Sister Lúcia wrote about the children and the visions, she described the time her cousin Jacinta went to the hospital. St. Jacinta told her:
It will not be long now before I go to Heaven. You will remain here to make known that God wishes to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When you are to say this, don’t go and hide. Tell everybody that God grants us graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary; that people are to ask her for them; and that the Heart of Jesus wants the Immaculate Heart of Mary to be venerated at His side. Tell them also to pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for peace, since God has entrusted it to her. If I could only put into the hearts of all, the fire that is burning within my own heart, and that makes me love the Hearts of Jesus and Mary so very much!
In the hospital, Lúcia gave Jacinta a holy picture of the Heart of Jesus that she began carrying with her. “She kept it under her pillow until it fell apart,” said Sister Lúcia. “She kissed it frequently, saying: ‘I kiss the Heart, because I love it most! How I would love to have a Heart of Mary! Don’t you have one? I’d love to have the two together.’”
The children received many strong and clear messages from the Immaculate Heart. For one, Our Lady gave the children this short prayer: “Make sacrifices for sinners, and say often, especially while making a sacrifice: O Jesus, this is for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for offences committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
In the July 13 apparition, after showing the children a vision of hell, “where poor sinners go,” Our Lady said, “It is to save them that God wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If you do what I tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace.”
In the same apparition, Our Lady referred twice more to her Immaculate Heart when she called for the consecration of Russia and the Five First Saturdays devotion in reparation for the blasphemies committed against her Immaculate Heart. She makes clear what will happen concerning the devotion to her Immaculate Heart:
If my wishes are fulfilled, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, then Russia will spread her errors throughout the world, bringing new wars and persecution of the Church; the good will be martyred, and the Holy Father will have much to suffer; certain nations will be annihilated. But in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.
Nothing and no one will prevent this. We just have to make sure we’re helping Our Lady by living out her requests because heaven wants our cooperation and devotion.
On Dec. 10, 1925, Our Lady appeared in the convent in Pontevedra, Spain.
Lúcia wrote, “She was holding her Immaculate Heart in her hand, and by her side stood the Child Jesus on a luminous cloud. Jesus said, ‘Have compassion on the Heart of your Most Holy Mother, covered with thorns, with which ungrateful men pierce it at every moment, and there is no one to make an act of reparation to remove them.’”
Then the Blessed Virgin Mary said to Lúcia:
Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for 15 minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.
Again, on June 6, 1929, at the convent in Tuy, Spain, Lúcia saw a vision of the Holy Trinity. Jesus appeared crucified, and, from the wound in His side, drops ran down upon a Host and fell into a chalice below. Lúcia wrote, “Beneath the right arm of the Cross was Our Lady, and in her hand was her Immaculate Heart. (It was Our Lady of Fatima, with her Immaculate Heart in her left hand, without sword or roses, but with a crown of thorns and flames.)”
The message of the two hearts and their connection is unmistakable. As Emily Malloy, an editor of Theology of the Home, says, “When you take a 50,000-foot view of salvation history, it is all so deeply interwoven.” The message is clear in every way that heaven gives it to us. We just have to put it into practice.