The Immaculate Heart of Mary

Celebrated on the Saturday after the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, this feast honors the heart of Mary as the place where, the Gospel tells us twice, she "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart." Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart in 1942 in response to the request made at Fatima.

The devotion to Mary's heart is rooted in the conviction that no merely human heart has ever been so perfectly attuned to the will of God. From the fiat at the Annunciation to the silence of Holy Saturday, her heart was the first tabernacle — the place where the Word was received, treasured, and offered back to the Father for the life of the world.