Mary's heart is mentioned three times in Luke: twice when she "ponders" the events unfolding around the child Jesus "in her heart" (Luke 2:19, 51) and once when Simeon prophesies, "thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed" (Luke 2:35). In the 17th century, at the same time as the growing worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, St. John Eudes and other Roman Catholics promoted a parallel devotion to Mary's heart. This devotion led to an iconographic type in which Mary shows the viewer her heart, burning with love and pierced by the sword of Simeon's prophecy, as in the first picture at right. It was referred to sometimes as the Sacred Heart of Mary, sometimes as the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
In the 20th century Roman Catholic interest in the Heart of Mary, now firmly fixed to the "Immaculate" epithet, was stimulated by the visions of the three children at Fatima, one of whom reported that Mary had told her, "Jesus wants you to make me known and loved. He wants to establish in the world the devotion to my Immaculate Heart." Because the focus in the 19th and 20th centuries was less on Mary's suffering than on her love and her dignity as the virgin mother of Christ, pictures in this era often replace the sword with a chaplet of roses around the heart, as in the second picture at right. Sometimes they also add a stalk of lilies (example).
Prepared in 2014 by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English, Augusta University.
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