The Union of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary
In St. Francis de Sales and St. John Eudes
Arthur
Burton Calkins
Back to Contents
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 Son. With 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 d’Eudes 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 d’Eudes X:459-460).
Copyright ©; Msgr Arthur Calkins 2014
Version 22nd February 2014
Back to Contents
|