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The Union of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary

In St. Francis de Sales and St. John Eudes

Arthur Burton Calkins

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Summary

With the beginning of the seventeenth century we come to the golden age of the theology of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and their union. Our attention is focused first on the great Doctor of the Church, St. Francis de Sales who sowed the seeds of devotion not only to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as Pius IX noted, but also to the Holy Heart of Mary. In his writings the word “heart” has reference primarily to the “superior portion of the soul” [psyche] and its “extremity and summit” [pneuma]. With regard to Christ he says that in his agony the superior portion of his soul was filled with incomparable sadness and desolation while the highest point of his spirit remained in communion with the Father and love for us by means of His beatific vision. Likewise it is in the superior part of her soul that Mary suffers in union with Jesus during His Passion and in the highest point of her spirit that she “remains perpetually inflamed with the holy love she received from her Son” [Œuvres de Sales IV:195].

Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle focuses on the dispositions and inward feelings of Christ and Mary in their ‘mysteries’ (the events of their earthly lives), which he describes as their “states”. Whereas the exterior dimension of' their mysteries is transitory, according to him, the interior dimension is eternal: “His Heart is eternally open, eternally wrung with anguish”, [Œuvres complètes de Bérulle 1046]. As Mary shares mutatis mutandis in all the states of the God-Man, her soul partakes of all the dispositions of her Divine SonWith Jean-Jacques Olier there is the further emphasis on Jesus living in Mary not only during his nine months in her womb, but above all on His mystical presence in her, His reign in her heart.

 

St. John Eudes is the heir to the rich doctrine of St. Francis de Sales and the French School. In the words of St. Pius X he is “the father, doctor and apostle of the liturgical cultus of the Sacred Hearts.” His great intuition was to see the Heart of Mary as the great model and means of our union with the Heart of Christ. In his Marian doctrine he insists on (1) never separating Mary from Jesus; (2) that each Christian should reproduce in himself the dispositions of Jesus towards His Mother; (3) that the dispositions of Mary are totally oriented to God, (4) that Jesus lives in Mary and is, in effect, “the Heart of her heart”; (5) that Mary “of herself and by herself is nothing, but Her Son Jesus is everything in her” [Œuvres complètes dEudes I:338].

Eudes’ first point of reference is the physical hearts of Jesus and Mary, but he makes his primary point of reference the spiritual hearts (what Francis de Sales means by the “superior portion of the soul” and “its summit,” what Bérulle indicates by ”states” and Olier by “interior life”). To this he adds a third  dimension, the divine hearts (which in Jesus is His Divinity and in Mary is Jesus Himself who lives mystically in her heart) to whom she is not essentially, but morally united. By this insistence Eudes shows himself to be the “doctor of the alliance of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.” Because of his profound conviction of the intensity of this moral union or alliance, he insisted that by establishing a Feast in honor of the Admirable Heart of Mary he was honoring the Heart of Jesus as well. For the sake of greater theological precision he later established a separate Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but never ceased insisting that “from the very beginning of our Congregation it has been our intention to regard and honor these two Hearts as one! [Œuvres complètes dEudes X:459-460).

Copyright ©; Msgr Arthur Calkins 2014

Version 22nd February 2014


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