Saint John Eudes, Priest
Optional Memorial  August 19th

(1601-1680) Born in France, he was a gifted preacher and encouraged devotions to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Specially concerned to council and defend endangered women, he founded an association of priest and the religious Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity

St. Pope Pius X called St. Eudes the Immaculate Heart’s Father, Doctor and Apostle. It was through him that this devotion was made public and received ecclesiastical approbation. At his canonization, Holy Mother Church emphasized his role in establishing the liturgical devotion to the Heart of Mary. St. John Eudes, as a theologian, was the first to explain this devotion. The feast was established first in his Congregation and later through out the French dioceses. He composed a mass and office. In 1680, shortly before his death, his book, The Admirable Heart of Mary, was completed and published. It consisted of 12 books, took him 20 years to write it, and was the first of its kind.

St. John Eudes wrote, “Jesus lives in Her (Mary) soul and body…His Heart abides in Her heart, His Soul in Her soul … His virtues, mysteries, and divine attributes are loving in Her heart…” These very words were later echoed by St. Margaret Mary, the recipient of the devotion of the Sacred Heart, when she said; “The most efficacious way to obtain devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” She taught this to her novices and also composed a prayer for them to pray.  In honoring the Immaculate Heart of Mary, it is not her heart of flesh that we are honoring but the affections symbolized by the heart. Thus we are lead by material heart to the spiritual heart, thereby honoring the whole person.

St. John Eudes wrote, “When, therefore, we honor the Holy Heart of the Mother of God, we honor the heart that, of all hearts, after the Heart of her Son, is the most worthy of our admiration, the most perfect, the most beloved of God, the most adorned with every kind of virtue, the most full of grace and love; the Heart that has the most tenderness for poor sinners, that is the meekest, the most compassionate, the most merciful, the most charitable, the most beneficent, the most amiable; in a word, the object that, after Jesus, has the greatest charm for heaven and earth. It is, therefore, for the best of reasons that we should make this Holy Heart the object of our tenderest devotion, and pay it all the honor and respect that its own excellence and the favor that we have received from it, demand of our gratitude and love.”

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The Graces of Mary’s Immaculate Heart  

We can say in truth that Jesus is the fruit of Mary’s heart as well as of her womb, and that the faithful are the fruits of the same heart, because the very virtues of faith, humility, purity, love, and chari­ty, which rendered her worthy to become the Mother of God, made her also the Mother of all God’s chil­dren.  

As the Eternal Father gave her the power to conceive his Son in her heart and in her virginal womb, by clothing her with the divine virtue where­by he generates his divine Son from all eternity in his own adorable bosom, so also did God grant her the power to form Christ and give birth to him in the hearts of the children of Adam, who thus became members of Jesus Christ and sons of God. Even as Mary conceived and will eternally bear her Son Jesus Christ in her heart, she also conceives and  holds forever in the same heart all the holy members of our divine Head. They are her beloved children, the fruits of her maternal heart, and she offers them to the divine majesty as a perpetual sacrifice. 

I could quote many holy Fathers and illustrious Doctors to show how Almighty God saved mankind “in the midst of the earth,” that is, in the holy heart of Mary, Mother of Jesus. Her heart cooperated with his divine mercy, having received such a plenitude of grace, according to the Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas, that she became enabled to cooperate with her Son in the sal­vation of all men. This inspires Saint Bonaventure to say that her heart is the source of universal salvation, “All salvation springs from Mary’s heart.”  

All this being conceded, what must be our obliga­tions towards the most charitable heart of our Blessed Mother! What gratitude can we show, what praises can we sing, what feast can we celebrate in honor of her heart, that will be worthy of her excessive charity towards us, and of the favors granted to us by divine mercy through her intercession?  

Mary is the center of the earth in which our salva­tion was wrought. She is also the center of the renewed world: the Christian world, the road of the new man, the world of divine love and holy charity.  

St. John Eudes (feast day is August 19th)

The post St. John Eudes: on the Immaculate Heart of Mary first appeared on AirMaria.com.

After having fulfilled our obligations toward the Son of God, we have three duties to his holy Mother.

The first is to prostrate ourselves in heart and in spirit at her feet asking her pardon for the cruel death of her Son, and for the most bitter sufferings of her pure heart which we have caused. In reparation, we must offer her all the honor, glory, and praise which have been, are, and will be forever rendered to her in heaven as well as on earth by the Most Holy Trinity, by the sacred humanity of her Son, by all the angels, and all the saints. We must also give ourselves to our Lady as her slaves, promising that we wish to serve and honor her all our lives in every way possible to us.

The second thing we must do for the Blessed Virgin is to remember that Our Lord Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, gave her to us as our Mother…

and gave us to her as her children, when, addressing her, he said: “Behold your son”; and speaking to each of us in the person of Saint John: “Behold your mother.” We ought to thank Our Lord with out whole heart for having given us his Mother to be our Mother; we ought to give thanks to the most holy Virgin for hav­ing received us as her children, and to beg our Savior that inasmuch as he has associated us with him as the Beloved Son of Mary, he also makes us share his per­fect filial devotion to his admirable Mother.

Our third debt to the Mother of Jesus is to acknowledge and salute her as our Mother, declaring that we desire to serve, love, and honor her as our Mother, obey her as a Mother and study to make ourselves like unto her as children should resemble their mother; and, consequently, to imitate her humility, her patience, her obedience, her purity, her mildness and docility, her charity, and all her other virtues. We must beseech our Lady to look upon us, her unworthy children, to protect and to guide us in all things and to be a mother to us both in life and in death.

Saint John Eudes

The post Our Duties to Our Lady first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Hail Mary! Mother of God the Son. Hail Mary! Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary! Temple of the Most Blessed Trinity. Hail Mary! Pure Lily of the Effulgent Trinity. Hail Mary! Celestial Rose of the Ineffable Love of God. Hail Mary! Virgin pure  and humble, of whom the King of heaven willed to be born and with thy  milk to be nourished.

Hail Mary! Virgin of Virgins, Hail Mary! Queen of Martyrs, whose soul a sword transfixed. Hail Mary! Lady most blessed! unto whom all power in heaven and earth is given. Hail Mary! My Queen and my Mother! my Life, my Sweetness and my Hope, Hail Mary! Mother Most Amiable, Hail Mary! Mother of Divine Love, Hail Mary! Immaculate! Conceived Without Sin! Hail Mary! Full of Grace! The Lord is with Thee! Blessed art thou among women! And blessed is the Fruit of thy womb, Jesus!

Blessed be thy spouse, Saint Joseph, Blessed be thy father, Saint Joachim, Blessed be thy mother, Saint Anne, Blessed be thy guardian, Saint John, Blessed be thy holy angel, Saint Gabriel, Glory be to God the Father, Who chose thee, Glory be to God the Son, Who loved thee, Glory be to God the Holy Spirit, Who espoused thee.

O Glorious Virgin Mary, may all people love and praise thee.

+St. John Eudes, Feast Day is August 19th

The post Prayer to the Immaculate by St. John Eudes first appeared on AirMaria.com.

On this First Saturday in June let us consider that “After having fulfilled our obligations toward the Son of God, we have three duties to his holy Mother: The first is to prostrate ourselves in heart and in spirit at her feet asking her pardon for the cruel death of her Son, and for the most bitter sufferings of her pure heart which we have caused.

In reparation, we must offer her all the honor, glory, and praise which have been, are, and will be forever rendered to her in heaven as well as on earth by the Most Holy Trinity, by the sacred humanity of her Son, by all the angels, and all the saints. We must also give ourselves to our Lady as her slaves, promising that we wish to serve and honor her all our lives in every way possible to us. 

The post Our Duties to our Blessed Mother first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Mary Now #5 ( 05min) Play – Dr. Mark Miravalle, based on the writings of St. John Eudes, recommends consecrating ourselves to the hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Ave Maria!

Audio (MP3)

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Ave Maria!

Pope Francis said at Fatima this year: “To be Christian, you must be Marian.” When we don’t respond to Our Lady, we miss out on the graces of her maternal mediation, we miss out on divine mercy, which He wishes to give us through her.

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“All the greatness of the Blessed Virgin was accomplished by the humility of her most holy Heart. From the first to the last moment of her life, her humility never ceased to invoke and draw upon her grace after grace, perfection after perfection, holiness upon holiness, until it brought her to the summit of the grace and holiness that, next to that of Christ, ever was or shall be greatest among men. As St. Bernard puts it: “It was just that she who considered herself the least of creatures, even though she was above all others, should have been honored as the worthiest and holiest of all.” Would you observe the admirable effects of such prodigious humility in the Heart of the Queen of the humble? Consider Mary throughout the course of her life, and you will see that, just as the life of Jesus was a constant exercise of humility, so the life of His Blessed Mother constituted a perpetual practice of the same virtue.”  (The Admirable Heart of Mary by St. John Eudes )

The post Fra Angelico’s Virgin of Humility first appeared on AirMaria.com.

Ave Maria Meditations

Among other considerations, we must remark that we are indebted to the holy childhood of Mary for three great favors. The Son of God then about to be born into the world could have created a virgin of perfect age and become incarnate in her. But His infinite goodness towards us obliged Him to choose for His mother a daughter of Adam, just to honor all the human race with three signal favors. 

First, by this birth of the infant Mary, divine Bounty gave us two treasures of sanctity, Saint Joachim and Saint Anne. 

The second favorite is that, by the birth of the holy infant Mary, God bestowed upon the race of Adam another inestimable gift, an immense treasure of good, the holy and precious mother of God, born of Adams race, our sister and our mother.

The third favorite consists in the treasure of Our Lady herself has given us, the God-man, our Brother.

Weigh well these three great favors God has given us in the birth of the most holy infant Mary and let these considerations excite in us a great desire to honor our Blessed Lady in every way possible.

Saint John Eudes

The post The Other Holy Family of Sts. Joachim, Anne, and Mary first appeared on AirMaria.com.

“God inspired in the heart of the pure Virgin Mary His own intense love for humility, and abhorrence of pride. She possessed, even from her infancy, a far greater horror of pride and ambition, and a far deeper love for humility than all the saints together. It was the first virtue that she practiced. She abased and humbled herself before all. She esteemed herself, and would have been happy to be treated by others, as the last of the creatures.

The post Thoughts on the Humility of Mary first appeared on AirMaria.com.