Feasts of the Sacred & Immaculate Hearts

In the Roman Catholic faith, the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary are devotions that are often celebrated together:

Sacred Heart of Jesus
This devotion emphasizes Jesus’s love, compassion, and patience for humanity. It’s rooted in Sacred Scripture and began in the 11th century. The devotion is especially significant in June, when the Church honors the Sacred Heart on the Friday after Corpus Christi. The feast day is a time to make amends for humanity’s rejection of Jesus’s love.

Immaculate Heart of Mary
This devotion focuses on Mary’s love for God and humanity, as well as her interior life, including her joys, sorrows, and virtues. It’s often celebrated the day after the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The devotion is closely related to the Sacred Heart, and together they are seen as a way to deepen understanding of God’s love.

What is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus?

This is a moveable feast that honors the Sacred Heart. In 1675, Jesus told St. Margaret Mary that He wanted the Feast of the Sacred Heart to be celebrated on the Friday after the Corpus Christi octave. In 1856, the Feast of the Sacred Heart became a universal feast.

St. John Paul II, a great devotee of the Sacred Heart, said, “This feast reminds us of the mystery of the love of God for the people of all times.”

What is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus?

The Heart is the symbol of human love. This Catholic devotion honors the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, through which was manifested to us God’s eternal love for everyone. “God is Love” (1 John 4:8), and so in honoring the human expression of that Love, especially on the Cross, we honor Its Divine Source.

Why is the Sacred Heart important?

St. John Paul II said, “The Sacred Heart has given us everything — redemption, salvation, sanctification.”

The Sacred Heart is the actual heart of Christ and also indicates His love for humanity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The prayer of the Church venerates and honors the Heart of Jesus just as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins.” (CCC 2669)

What is the history of the Sacred Heart devotion?

The foundation for the Sacred Heart devotion began in early Christianity. Sacred Scripture, particularly the New Testament, mentions the love of God many times, and the Church Fathers discuss God’s love as well.

In the eleventh century, Christians often meditated on the Five Wounds of Jesus, and the specific devotion to the Sacred Heart came from this meditation. St. Gertrude the Great, who had private revelations regarding the Sacred Heart, helped further the understanding of Jesus’ Sacred Heart in the late 13th-century.

Several centuries later, in 1670, St. John Eudes celebrated the first Feast of the Sacred Heart. In 1673, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French Visitation nun, received her own revelations, in which Jesus explained His love for all people, even allowing St. Margaret to lay her head on His Heart, as He had also allowed St. Gertrude to do. He asked that Catholics receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays of the month and adore Him in the Holy Eucharist.

In 1675, Jesus told St. Margaret that He wanted an annual feast in honor of His Sacred Heart. In 1856, Blessed Pope Pius IX designated that the Feast of the Sacred Heart would be celebrated universally on the Friday after the Corpus Christi octave each year.

“In the Sacred Heart every treasure of wisdom and knowledge is hidden. In that Divine Heart beats God’s infinite love for everyone, for each one of us individually.” – St. John Paul II

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What does the Immaculate Heart of Mary mean?

The Immaculate Heart of Mary signifies, first of all, the great purity and love of the heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary for God. This purity is manifested in her “Yes” to the Father at the Incarnation, Her love for, and cooperation with, the Incarnate Son in His redemptive mission, and her docility to the Holy Spirit, enabling her to remain free of the stain of personal sin throughout her life. Mary’s Immaculate Heart, therefore, points us to her profound interior life, where she experienced both joys and sorrows, yet remained faithful, as we, too, are called to do.

Why do we honor Mary’s Immaculate Heart?

St. John Paul II said, “From Mary we learn to love Christ, her Son and the Son of God…. Learn from her to be always faithful, to trust that God’s Word to you will be fulfilled, and that nothing is impossible with God.”

When we honor the Immaculate Heart, we give ultimate honor to Jesus. As we honor the Mother, we honor the Son. In addition, the Blessed Virgin is our mother as well (see Revelation 12:17), and her mother’s heart is incomparable. St. Louis de Montfort said, “If you put all the love of all the mothers into one heart, it still would not equal the love of the heart of Mary for her children.”

What is the history of the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

The Immaculate Heart of Mary was honored to some degree prior to the 17th century, but St. John Eudes, a 17th-century French priest, popularized this devotion with his great love of the Blessed Mother.

What is the First Saturday devotion?

Part of the Fátima message is that God is asking us to make reparation for the sins of the world. The Angel in 1916 taught the children prayers of reparation and asked them to do penance. The Blessed Virgin also called for prayers and acts of reparation, and, on July 13, 1917, she promised that she would return to request a special kind of reparation. She did this in 1929, appearing to Lucia, now a novice in a Spanish community.

“Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.”

This is a request that is ongoing, and one as needed today, if not more so, than in 1929. It is also one within the reach of every Catholic. And in fulfilling it, we please Our Lord, who like any son is pleased by others coming to the defense of his mother’s honor.

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How do the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary relate to each other?

The Servant of God Lúcia de Jesus Rosa dos Santos, one of the Fátima visionaries, said, “The work of our redemption began at the moment when the Word descended from Heaven in order to assume a human body in the womb of Mary. From that moment, and for the next nine months, the Blood of Christ was the Blood of Mary, taken from Her Immaculate Heart; the Heart of Christ was beating in unison with the Heart of Mary.”

Also, Jesus Himself appeared to Sr. Lucia, saying, “I want My Church to . . . put the devotion to this Immaculate Heart beside the devotion to My Sacred Heart.”

“Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.” – St. Maximilian Kolbe

You must never separate what God has so perfectly united. So closely are Jesus and Mary bound up with each other that whoever beholds Jesus sees Mary; whoever loves Jesus, loves Mary; whoever has devotion to Jesus, has devotion to Mary. – St. John Eudes