'God wants to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart in the world, because the world must recognize with utmost gratitude what this heart has done for it.'

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Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is more pressing than ever and essential if humanity is to turn from an era dominated by a culture of death towards entering the mystery of the true love of God, a Franciscan Mariologist has said. 

Italian Franciscan Father Alessandro Maria Apollonio believes that the image of true love par excellence can be witnessed through devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, “the first maternal cooperator, closest to us, of our joy, which will only be complete in paradise.”

In this recent interview with the Register on the sidelines of “A Day With Mary” conference in London, Father Apollonio observed the inadequate response to the Lord’s invitation to establish a global devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and why a proper response by mankind is so urgently needed. 

A teacher of philosophy and theology currently living in Slovakia, Father Apollonio chaired the Aug. 6-8 London symposium, which brought together Mariologists from across the world. 

On the General Roman Calendar, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the first Saturday following the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was celebrated on June 28 this year. It is celebrated on Aug. 22 in the traditional Roman Rite.

Father Apollonio, what to you is the most urgent aspect of Mariology that you think needs to be conveyed at this conference? 

I think the first object of this conference is to realize that there has been a poor general response to the request of God to establish in the world devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This request is so deep, so demanding, that it is necessary first to understand better the singular words of this request. 

What is the Immaculate Heart of Mary? What are the mysteries involved in the Immaculate Heart of Mary? What is the devotion? What are the expressions of these devotions? And in which manner can the Church live this request of heaven in a public, social and universal way, all the way up to the individual? 

For those unaware, what is the importance of distinguishing between the Immaculate Heart of Mary and her other titles, Our Lady or the Blessed Virgin Mary? 

We enter here a theological field. My opinion, shared by many others, is that the Immaculate Heart of Mary represents the mystery of her immaculate love towards God and towards man. And this word “love” is the center of Revelation because in ancient times, pagan philosophers, for example, didn’t understand what true love was. They confused love with the passions, with concupiscence or blind ineluctable attraction. On the contrary, according to Catholic theology, true love is the higher expression of human freedom and dignity.

The pure concept of love is the center of Revelation because “God is love” (1 John 4:16) and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is the image par excellence of this mystery: the pure love shared with creatures, starting with those closest to him. 

How important is faith in fulfilling the devotion?

Faith is very important, it is necessary, but it is not the end of Revelation. Faith is the condition for pure love, but in fact, it is possible to have great faith without love. According to St. James, this faith is dead. You could have great faith, be a famous theologian, but you would not be alive without uniting your existence with the mystery of God revealed by his and our mother. The Immaculate Heart of Mary helps humanity enter into the mystery of the true love of God. It is a largely unknown mystery, also in the Church, because it’s easy to speak about “love, love, love.” But if you observe it more deeply, what does this word “love” really mean? What is the love of God that you experience in your life? Many Christians confuse love with feelings, the passion, attraction, pleasure. No, true love is the act of self-giving to God and, consequently, to our brethren because they are created in the image of God: “There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

We are capable of this love because God loved us first and wants us to love him in return.

How is the Immaculate Heart connected with the Sacred Heart of Jesus?

The Immaculate Heart of Mary is not only the model of this pure love, but is also, together with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the meritorious cause of our redemption. The Sacred and Immaculate Hearts of Jesus and Mary offered to God the sacrifice that God himself had prepared, to reconcile all humanity to himself. Through the sacrifice of those two hearts, God’s love flows once again into the souls of men. Because of this love, we can say “Our Father” because we have truly become his children. But we can and must also say “Hail Mary” because, through this love, she truly became our Mother.

God wants to establish devotion to the Immaculate Heart in the world, because the world must recognize with utmost gratitude what this heart has done for it: It sacrificed itself for its eternal salvation. Jesus and Mary, the Redemptor and the Co-Redemptrix, are the universal mediators of supernatural love, that is divine life in us, like Adam and Eve were mediators of human-natural life.

You’ve mentioned the importance of England in spreading this devotion. Why is that?

England has a possible important mission in spreading devotion to the Immaculate Heart throughout the world because it was in England that a greater theology of the Immaculate Conception began, with William of Ware and [Blessed John] Duns Scotus, during the last part of 13th century in Oxford. They belong to that current of theology — that is, the current of the primacy of love, the primacy of free acts of will in accordance with the truth of faith, where all theology converges. 

The primacy of true love, that is charity, is a great vision of our faith in which we find the mystery of Our Lady, the Immaculate Heart of Our Lady, that helps us to better arrive at some intuitions as to what is the pure love of God, in itself and shared in humanity; it helps us — and this is what matters most — to respond as generously as possible to the love with which God, Jesus and Mary loved us first.

And this is needed very much today, this understanding of and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary so we know what true love is, would you say? 

Yes. Also because true love is the condition of true happiness. Without true love, there is no true happiness. because if you love the sin, it gives you some appearance of happiness, but it’s not true happiness. It’s pleasure, but one that finishes with ashes, especially now in our time, which is characterized by the culture of death. 

Thus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary is the first maternal cooperator, closest to us, of our joy, which will only be complete in paradise.

This article was originally published on National Catholic Register.