“Mary has to be the Mother of God himself. According to a philosophical principle there has to be a certain proportion between the form and the dispositions of the matter: the dignity of Mother of God is here like form and the Heart of Mary is the matter that has to receive this form. Oh, what a summit of graces, virtues and other dispositions are put together in that most holy and purest Heart” (Letter of Father Claret to a devotee of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in EC, II, p. 1499).

MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

Before so many virtues and graces, these admirations of Claret´s soul are certainly a strong invitation to contemplate Mary. When looking at her – tells Benedict XVI in his message on 8 December, 2005- “she is alive in us, her sons, the aspiration to her beauty, goodness and the purity of heart. Her heavenly candor attracts us towards God, helping us to overcome the temptation of our life of mediocrity”.

Many of us are shorter in our stature than we think as did Zacchaeus. The solution to be able to look at and understand our Lady with the amazing eyes is trying to journey in the footsteps of the saints as Bernard de Chartres expressed already in the 19th century. “We are dwarfs on the shoulders of the giants and if we hit the target to see beyond, it is not because our eye sight is sharper, but because they are lifting us on their gigantic height”.

We can go up to the shoulder of the liturgy of the Church, to glimpse the horizons we do not see because of our shorter spiritual stature. In the preface of the Mass of the Heart of Mary, there is a solemn thanks giving to God, “because you have given the Virgin Mary a wise and docile heart, always open to please you, a humble and new heart to engrave in it the law of the New Covenant, a simple and pure heart which made her worthy of conceiving virginally your Son, a firm and willing heart to bear the sword of pain and awaiting full of faith, the resurrection of her Son”. Here we have a beautiful panorama that contemplates and a strong motivation to desire ardently a heart similar to her heart.

Let us climb up on the shoulders of the poets, “It was She and nobody knew it, but when it happened, the trees were kneeling.  The Ave Maria was making the nest in their eyes and litanies were woven in her long blend hair” (Gerardo Diego).

Have you thought sometimes to create your own litany of praises to Our Lady?