From the Immaculate Heart to the Sacred Heart
Votive Mass of Our Lady on Saturday
Our Lady Church
Keizersgracht 218, Amsterdam, Netherlands
5 September 2026
Eccli 24, 14-16
Lk 11, 27-28
Sermon
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Your Eminence Cardinal Eijk, Your Excellency Bishop Hendriks, brother priests and deacons, consecrated persons, seminarians, and brothers and sisters in Christ, it is with deepest joy that I celebrate the Solemn Pontifical Mass on the First Saturday of the Month in this most beautiful church dedicated to Our Lord and Our Lady, His Virgin Mother. I offer the Holy Mass for all the intentions you are carrying in your hearts as you join today in the International Rosary Rally organized by Radio Maria.
Celebrating the Votive Mass of Our Lady, we rejoice in the perfect union of her Immaculate Heart with the Most Sacred Heart of her Divine Son. From the moment of her conception, Mary’s heart was preserved from every stain of sin, so that she would be prepared to conceive God the Son in her womb at His coming into the world to save us from our sins and to win for us eternal life. By God’s special favor, she shared beforehand in the grace of the salvation which her Divine Son would win for us by His Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension. She was always totally for Christ.
For that reason, the Church has found in the inspired text of the Book of Ecclesiasticus, which applies principally to Christ, the Wisdom or Logos of God the Father, the fitting expression of Our Lady’s unique participation in the Redemptive Incarnation of God the Son. From all time, God had chosen Mary to be the Mother of His only-begotten Son at His coming in our human flesh: “From the beginning, and before the world, was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be, and in the holy dwelling place I have ministered before him.”[1]
Likewise for all eternity, from the moment of her glorious Assumption into heaven, she remains “the handmaid of the Lord,”[2] serving Our Lord faithfully in the Church for the salvation of souls. By God’s all-merciful plan for our eternal salvation He has given us the Virgin Mother of God as the Mother of Divine Grace: “And I took root in an honourable people, and in the portion of my God H is inheritance, and my abode is in the full assembly of the saints.”[3] The Immaculate Heart of Mary is unceasingly drawing our hearts to her own, so that we who, at our baptism, received the vocation to be saints, may place our hearts completely into the glorious-pierced Heart of Our Lord.
Pope Saint John Paul II, in a visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary at Pompei in Italy on October 21, 1979, provided us with a wonderful instruction on the great mysteries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which illuminates for us the Mystery of Faith, the Mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation. He taught us with these words:
The mission of this Son, the eternal Word, begins then, when Mary of Nazareth, a “virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David” (Lk. 1:27), on hearing these words of Gabriel, answers: “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk. 1:38). The Son’s mission on earth begins at that moment. … The Son’s mission begins in her, under her heart. The mission of the Holy Spirit, who “proceeds from the Father and from the Son” arrives first, too, at her, at the soul that is His Bride, the most pure and the most sensitive.[4]
At the Annunciation, God the Son took a human heart, His Sacred Heart, in the Virgin Mary’s womb, under her Immaculate Heart. At the moment of the Archangel Gabriel’s announcement, Mary became the Mother of God Incarnate, and, at the same time, His first and best disciple. Thus, when the people praised His Mother, Our Lord, referring to the perfection of her discipleship, responded: “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”[5]
Mary was one in heart with Her Divine Son. She who had conceived Him by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit and had brought Him into the world, would continue to participate, in a singular way, in His saving mission, for her heart was perfectly united to the Heart of Jesus. At the foot of the Cross, her Immaculate Heart was mystically pierced at the piercing of the Heart of Jesus by the spear of the Roman centurion. At her death, Our Lord assumed her – body and soul – into Heaven and crowned her Queen of Heaven and Earth, so that she might continue to be the Mother of Divine Grace which flows, without measure and without cease, from the glorious-pierced Heart of her Divine Son.
Our Blessed Mother, drawing our hearts to her Immaculate Heart, leads us to reflect more deeply upon our relationship with Christ, God the Son and her Son, in the Church. Today, in a most special way, our Blessed Mother reminds us that the relationship of faithful and enduring love, which Christ has formed with us through Baptism, Confirmation and the Holy Eucharist, is the greatest treasure in our lives. There is nothing that can be more important to us. Everything else in our lives is only good to the degree that it serves communion with Christ in our daily living.
The greatest blessing of our lives is not some material good or worldly success but the revelation of the “mysteries of the kingdom,” which God the Father has made to us, His “little ones,” through the Redemptive Incarnation of His only-begotten Son.[6] His Son, Divine Wisdom Incarnate Who, from all eternity, has ever been at the right hand of the Father,[7] leads us into an ever deeper understanding and love of the great Mystery of Faith, unveiled in the many mysteries taught to us by our faith. It is these mysteries which the Blessed Virgin Mary always “kept … in her heart”[8] and which she teaches her children to keep in their hearts.
When we truly treasure the great gift of God’s immeasurable and ceaseless love of us in Our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, the Mystery of Faith, we, “out of joy,” gladly order everything else in our lives to respond fittingly to the incomparable treasure which is God’s love. One in heart with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we give our hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We follow always the maternal counsel of the Virgin Mother of God, given to the wine stewards at the Wedding Feast at Cana: “Do whatever he tells you.”[9]
On the First Saturday of the month, the Mother of God and the Mother of the Church urges us to observe the First Saturdays to make reparation for our sins and to console her Immaculate Heart. By her apparitions at Fatima in 1917 and subsequently at Pontevedra in 1925, Our Lady made clear the substance of the devotion of the First Saturdays: 1) a profound realization of how sin offends Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother, 2) a humble and contrite heart which strives to make reparation for sins committed and the offense they cause Our Lord and His Immaculate Mother, and 3) trust in the promise which accompanies the devotion, that is, Our Lady’s promise to assist at the hour of death, with all the graces necessary for salvation, those who observe the First Saturdays, repenting of sin and making reparation. The devotion is not an isolated act but expresses a way of life, namely, daily conversion of heart to Christ’s Most Sacred Heart, under the maternal guidance and care of the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
Our Lady’s insistence on the devotion of the First Saturdays is a wonderful expression of her unfailing maternal love. She appeared at Fatima to the three shepherd children and at Pontevedra to the Servant of God Lucia dos Santos to show her children the way to freedom from the rebellion before God, which is grievous sin with its fruit, eternal death. Through the devotion of the First Saturdays, Our Lady maternally draws our hearts to her Immaculate Heart, so that we may place our hearts ever more perfectly into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, treasuring in our hearts the great mystery of Christ alive within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Thus, we, under the maternal care of Our Lady, will give powerful witness in the world to Christ, to His divine truth and divine love, even at the cost of indifference, ridicule, misunderstanding, persecution, and even death.
Privileged to participate in the Solemn Pontifical Mass, in all the rich beauty of the More Ancient Usage (the Usus Antiquior) of the Roman Rite, we are led by the Virgin Mother of God to her Divine Son. The beauty of the Sacred Liturgy manifests to us the reality of the descent of the glorious Christ from His place at the right hand of the Father to come to us, by sacramental signs, to heal us and to lead us to eternal life. Drawing our hearts to her Immaculate Heart, the Blessed Virgin Mary teaches us that nothing can be more important to us than the gift of God’s love, immeasurable and unceasing, which destines us for eternal life with Him, in the company of the angels and of all the saints. She teaches us to consider every aspect of our daily living within the context of the Mystery of Faith, in which we participate most perfectly through the Holy Mass. She counsels us to engage the challenges of our daily lives always with reference to Christ and to His life with us in the Church.
Let us now lift up our hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, ever open to receive our hearts, to heal them with His saving mercy and to inflame them with His pure and selfless love. Making reparation for our sins through the First Saturdays Devotion, let us console Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart by placing our hearts completely into the Heart of Jesus.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] Eccl 24, 14 (Sir 24, 9).
[2] Lk 1, 38.
[3] Eccl 24, 16 (Sir 24, 12).
[4] “La missione di questo Figlio, Verbo eterno, inizia allora, quando Maria di Nazaret, Vergine «promessa sposa di un uomo della casa di Davide, chiamato Giuseppe», ascoltando queste parole di Gabriele, risponde: «Eccomi, sono la serva del Signore, avvenga di me quello che hai detto». In quel momento inizia la missione del Figlio sulla terra…
La missione del Figlio inizia in Lei, sotto il Suo cuore. La missione dello Spirito Santo, che «procede dal Padre e dal Figlio», giunge pure prima a Lei, all’anima che è la Sua Sposa, la più pura e la più sensibile.” Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, Vol. II, 2 (1979) (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1980), p. 814, n. 1. English translation: Osservatore Romano English Edition, n. 610, p. 3.
[5] Lk 11, 28.
[6] Mt 11, 25.
[7] Cf. Sir 24, 9-10.
[8] Lk 2, 51.
[9] Jn 2, 5.