What Is the Heart of Mary? The Answer of Saint John Eudes

What Does the “Heart of the Holy Virgin” Mean for Saint John Eudes?

The heart means the divine Spirit, who is the heart of the Father and of the Son, and whom they wish to give us so that He may be our spirit and our heart:

“I will give you a new heart. I will put a new spirit within you” (Ezek 36:26).

In the Sacred Scriptures, the Son of God is called the Heart of the Eternal Father. The divine Father speaks of this heart to His divine spouse, the most pure Virgin, when He says to her:

“You have wounded my heart, my sister, my spouse (Song 4:9), or as they say in the translation of the Seventy: ‘You have ravished my heart’”. In the same Scriptures, the Son of God is also called “the Spirit of our mouth” (Lam 4:20), “our spirit”,

that is, the soul of our soul, the heart of our heart.

All these hearts are found in the Mother of love and constitute a single heart, both because all the faculties of the higher and inner part of her soul were always perfectly united, and because Jesus, who is the heart of the Father, and the divine Spirit, who is the heart of the Father and of the Son, were given to Mary to be the spirit of her spirit, the soul of her soul, the heart of her heart.

In God Three Hearts, One Single Heart

In order better to understand what is meant by the heart of the Most Holy Virgin, it is necessary to know that, just as in God we adore three hearts, which are one single heart, and as in the God-Man we adore three hearts that are one single heart, so in the Mother of God we adore three hearts that are one single heart.
The first heart in the Most Holy Trinity is the Son of God, who is the heart of the Father, as mentioned above.

The second is the Holy Spirit, who is the heart of the Father and of the Son.

The third is divine Love, one of the adorable attributes of the divine essence, which is the heart of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: three hearts that are one most simple heart, with which the three eternal Persons love with love without limits, and they also love us with incomparable charity.
The first heart of the God-Man is His bodily heart. Like all the other parts of His sacred body, it too is divinized by the hypostatic union with the divine person of the eternal Word.
The second is His spiritual heart, that is, the higher part of His holy soul, which includes memory, intellect and will and which is particularly divinized by the same hypostatic union.
The third is His divine heart, which is the Holy Spirit, by whom the adorable humanity of Jesus was animated more than by His own soul and heart.
In the admirable God-Man these three hearts are only one heart. In fact, since His divine heart is the soul, the heart and the life of His spiritual heart and of His bodily heart, it is for this reason that He constitutes them in so perfect a union with Him that these three hearts wholly constitute one single heart, full of infinite love for the Most Holy Trinity and of inconceivable charity toward men.

In Mary Three Hearts, One Single Heart

The first heart of the Mother of God is the bodily heart, enclosed in her virginal womb.
The second is the spiritual heart, that is, the heart of her soul, designated by these words of the Holy Spirit: “all the glory of the daughter of the King is within” (Ps 44:13): it is in her heart, in the innermost depths of her soul.
The third heart of this divine Virgin is the one of which she speaks when she says: “I sleep, and my heart is awake” (Song 5:2). As I said, this is the explanation of many holy Fathers:

“While I give my body the rest it needs, Jesus my Son, who is my heart and whom I love as my heart, keeps watch always for me and in me”.

The first of these three hearts is bodily, but wholly spiritualized by the spirit of grace and by the Spirit of God, with whom it is completely filled.
The second is spiritual and is divinized not by hypostatic union, as is the spiritual heart of Jesus, but by a sublime participation in the divine perfections.
The third is divine: it is God, because it is the Son of God.
These three hearts of the Mother of God are one single heart by the most holy and intimate union that has ever been or ever will be, after the hypostatic union.

Mary meditates on the divine mysteries in her heart:
Of these three hearts, or rather of this single heart, the Holy Spirit twice pronounced these divine words:

“Mary kept all these things, meditating on them in her heart” (Lk 2:19, 51).

First, Mary kept all the mysteries and wonders of the life of her Son in some way in her own sensible and bodily heart. In fact, the heart is the principle of life and the seat of love and of all the other inclinations. Thus all the movements and beatings of that virginal heart, all the functions of the sensible life that flowed from it, all the movements of her inclinations: all this took place in the heart of Mary in relation to Jesus and to all the events of His life. Love led her to love Jesus; hatred, to detest all that was contrary to Him, that is, sin; joy, to rejoice in His glory and His greatness; sorrow, to grieve over His labors and sufferings. And so it was with all her other inclinations.
In the second place, Mary kept all these things in her heart, that is, in the most noble part of her soul, in the innermost depths of her spirit. In fact, all the faculties of the higher part of her soul were constantly engaged in contemplating and adoring all that took place in the life of her Son, down to the smallest things.
In the third place, Mary kept all these things in her heart, that is, in her Son Jesus, who was the spirit of her spirit and the heart of her heart. The heart of the Son kept all these things for her. He suggested them and recalled them to her at the opportune moment, so that they might serve as nourishment for her contemplative soul, that she might render the honors and adorations due, and then narrate them to the holy apostles and disciples, called to announce them to the faithful.
This is what is meant when one speaks of the admirable heart of the beloved of God: a heart that is, as we shall see more clearly further on, the perfect image of the adorable heart of God and of the God-man.

The Heart of the Most Holy Virgin Is the Center of the Christian World

The marvelous heart of the Mother of God is presented to us by these divine words of the Holy Spirit:

“God, our King, has worked salvation in the midst of the earth” (Ps 73:12),

in the midst of the earth, but of an earth that is holy and holier than all the heavens, in which and through which God worked our salvation. I now conclude this chapter by revealing to you another mystery that I see contained in these same words, in the midst of the earth, also for the honor and praise of the lovable heart of the Queen of Heaven. Let me explain.
Whoever says midst of the earth says the center of the earth. Therefore, if the Most Holy Virgin is represented by this earth, if she is truly the holy earth of the holy world, that is, of the Christian world, of the world of the new man, of the world of divine love and of holy charity, may it not also be said that the midst of this precious earth, which is her heart, is the center of this new world? Without doubt, yes, for three reasons.

The Heart of Mary, Cause of Salvation

First. Is it not true that everything regards its center as a place of salvation and, let us say, of preservation and rest? Is it not true that the salvation of men was worked in the heart of Mary? Therefore all Christians must see in the Virgin, after God, the source of their life, the cause of their joy, the center of their happiness. This is in conformity with the language of the holy Fathers.
Here is what Saint Bernard says fittingly of the person of the Holy Virgin, but which can also be applied with all truth to her heart: “with admirable precision, Mary is called the medium of the earth. In fact, the inhabitants of heaven and of hell, those who went before us and we who are living, those who will follow us and the children of their children and those who will be born of them. Those who are in heaven to be renewed, those who are in hell to be delivered, those who went before us to see the prophecies fulfilled, those who will come after to be glorified”.
[According to Saint Bernard] Mary is rightly called the medium of the earth. In reality, all the inhabitants of heaven and those of the underworld, those who went before us and we ourselves who now live, those who will come after us, the children of their children and all their posterity: all regard her as the one who, after her Son, is mediatrix between God and men, between the head and the members, between the Father and the children, between the old and the new Testament, between heaven and earth, between justice and mercy. In her they recognize the midst and the center of the world, the ark of God, the ark of the covenant between God and His people, the cause of good things, the work of ages past and to come. Those who are in heaven, that is, the angels, regard her as the one through whom the ruins caused by sin are to be repaired. Those who are in purgatory, as the one through whom they are to be delivered. Those who went before us, as the one in whom the divine prophecies were to be fulfilled. Those who will come after us, as the one through whom they will one day be crowned with immortal glory.
These words of Saint Bernard can not only be applied to the heart of the Mother of God, but are more fitting to it than to the person of the Virgin herself. The cause is in fact more noble than its effects, and the heart of Mary, full of humility, is the cause and source of all the above-mentioned qualities with which it is endowed and which make her worthy to be the term, the refuge and the center of all the creatures that have been, are and will exist in the universe. I conclude, in the first place, that the marvelous heart of the Virgin is the midst and the center of the world of the new man.

The Heart of Mary, Center of Love

Second. I say that the heart of the Virgin is the center of the new world, that is, of the world of divine love and of holy charity: a world of love and of delight that knows no other law than that of charity. I affirm that in the heart of the Mother of fair love are gathered all the holy love and all the divine charity that are found in the hearts of the Angels and of men who love God for the love of God Himself and love their neighbor in God and for God. It is as if all the rays of the sun were concentrated in the depth of a beautiful mirror capable of gathering them all.

The Heart of Mary Is Jesus, the Center of the Universe

Third. Please recall what was said at the beginning of this book. The most humble and most pure Virgin ravished and drew to herself the adorable heart of the eternal Father, that is, His Son, thus becoming the heart of her heart, so much so that Jesus is the true heart of Mary. Now, is this lovable Jesus not perhaps the love and the delight, the center and the joy of heaven and earth? Can it not be said, therefore, that Jesus, the true heart of Mary, is also the center of all the hearts of men and of all the angels, the center toward which they must always be turned in order to contemplate Him without end, to aspire continually to Him and to strive unceasingly for Him? Yes, certainly, because Jesus is the place of their perfect rest and of their supreme happiness. Outside of Him there is nothing but disturbance, restlessness, anguish, death and hell.

Prayer

Jesus, true heart of Mary, draw, take, attract our hearts to Yourself.
Grant that we may love, desire, seek and savor You alone.
Grant that we may aspire to You and cling to You, that we may find no rest or satisfaction except in You, that we may remain continually in You: may we be consumed in the burning furnace of Your divine heart and be transformed in it forever. Amen.

(translated and adapted from: J. Eudes, Le cœur admirable de la très sacrée Mère de Dieu, in Id. Oeuvres complètes, VI, 165-168.)