Day 13 of 33 Day Novena - Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary - An Open Heart: The Desire of Heaven for Your Holiness
- Beata
- Feb 22, 2022
- 13 min read
Updated: Mar 4
Open Mary's Heart | Day 13 - March 4 | 33-Day Preparation for Consecration to the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
As the March sun invites me from dawn for a walk filled with reflection on today's words from Mary, it feels like the soothing embrace of a Mother. Sipping my morning coffee and reading the message below, I filled my heart with grateful memories from my own motherhood – the physical one, immersed in the spiritual motherhood of Mary. As I mentioned in my "About" section, I am a mother of five wonderful, now-adult children. And I tell you honestly: I cannot imagine getting through those years of raising them while living abroad on my own, without Mary.
In today's world, where women's roles are constantly being redefined, my reflection drew me back to the roots of Catholic spirituality – the very essence of motherhood.
Inspired by Mary's words from Her messages, which highlight Her role as a refuge and guide (something I have experienced many times myself), and by the profound insights of St. Edith Stein, I invite you – in the final part of this post – to reflect on physical and spiritual motherhood in the light of The Blessed Word.
These two dimensions are not opposed; they complement each other perfectly, leading to the fullness of holiness. As "TheBlessedWord," I share this reflection to inspire mothers, women, and all who seek deeper meaning. For the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is accomplished through the open, simple, and sincere heart of each one of us.
The Desire of Heaven for Your Holiness
Today's message is a gentle yet firm call from a Mother who desires only one thing: our holiness. She does not speak of great deeds, but of a heart ready each day to open the way for grace and lead us to sanctification.
Open Mary's Heart: Physical and Spiritual Motherhood - Mary's Message for Today
“Dear children, I wait upon the response of your hearts in a most precious way. I call to them, through My Immaculate Heart, to become my children.
Your hearts are the joy of My times to come - to be with you each in this extraordinary union. I tell you, dear children, I call you into this sacred refuge to guide and protect you in the times near ahead.
Please listen and receive My Heart in this way, for I have only one wish. This wish is to bring you to sanctification, because your holiness is the greatest desire of God in heaven.”
Mother, tell us, what you need most these days from us.
“My angel, I need and request only an open heart. Pray for this above all else, and all can be and shall be bestowed upon each soul.
Dear children, come to your mother and allow my Triumph to fill your hopes and wishes.”
10-1-93
Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary Preparation
Today's Lesson - Call to Consecration - Invitation to Open Mary's Heart
God the Son chose to be enclosed in the womb of a humble handmaid. He brought forth His glory in this hidden place of splendour. He glorified His Father and gave His majesty in this veiled conception. He gave His life into her care from His birth; through His thirty concealed years and even to her, He joined His suffering of the Cross.
It was she who bore Him, nurtured Him, supported Him and then sacrificed Him for us. He began His ministry by her humble request at Cana. The Holy Spirit chose to make use of the womb of a humble handmaid, though He had no need of Her to bring His fruitfulness into fulfillment. However, by conceiving in Her and by Her, Jesus, a mystery of grace unknown to the most learned, happened.
If God has chosen to come to the world through this means, who are we to deserve or even ask for a better or different route back to Him?
It was through the Immaculate Heart of Mary that the drops of blood were squeezed from, to create the conception of Jesus from Her Heart, into Her womb.
Here, we are requested to do the same once more; to open our hearts and allow Jesus to be spiritually conceived within our hearts, and then, into our being.
The Path Forward: Prayer as the Key to Inner Change
God deemed to create a fountain of graces within the heart of Our Lady. From there, He desires to pour forth these graces upon all, from the chambers of her heart.
He invites us to pay homage to Him, in the way He desires most, by devotion to His Mother’s most holy heart. God asks for the consecration to the Heart of Mary. Our Lady takes nothing to Herself; She wishes only that all the desires of God the Father come to fulfillment.
She wants to bring freedom to the world in a divine way.
Our Lady calls us to be joined through Her, to Jesus, and to every other heart that comes together in this bond.
This is a divine work of grace that shall be seen in the end as the hand of God. He sends His Mother among us today, to prepare us for a time we cannot anticipate.
She comes with a message to unfold and advise us personally, as to the requests of our Father in heaven.
He gave to us His Mother, that we could know the same gentle touch, and that she would lead us by the hand into His sacred embrace. For there is no touch like that of a mother for her child.
Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary ❤️
O’Immaculate Heart of Mary, guide us in this battle for the fulfillment of your Triumph. May all of mankind be joined together for all eternity in the depths of your Triumphant Immaculate Heart. Let us pass through the portal of heaven into the Sacred Heart of your Son.
Create in me a heart of purity adorned in virtue. Strengthen me in trials, surround my soul with your warmth, and join your smile to mine in times of rejoicing. Take my heart, dear Mother, make it unto Thine.
As we close this meditation, I warmly invite you to pray the Chaplet of Virtues of Mary – a lovely way to crown our longing to open our hearts to Her maternal love and Her guidance toward holiness. Pray the Chaplet of Virtues of Mary here:
THE BLESSED WORD 🌸 My Personal Reflection: What Mary's Message Means to Me Today 🌸 Physical and spiritual Motherhood - Lessons from Mary and Edith Stein
What Is Physical Motherhood?
Physical motherhood is the biological and everyday dimension of being a mother - giving birth, nursing, raising children. It is a vocation rooted in woman's nature, as St. Edith Stein emphasizes in her writings on the ethos of femininity.
Edith Stein, philosopher and martyr. In this post, you can get to know Edith—my first encounter, to begin with, if you don't know her yet:
A Walk with Edith - Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - In Search of Truth That Becomes Love
Edith, daughter of a traditional Jewish mother and daughter of Mary by mature choice, saw motherhood as an expression of God's will:
“A woman is destined to be wife and mother, both physically and spiritually.”
It is not only the act of procreation but a daily sacrifice - cooking meals, comforting in illness, shaping character while balancing professional work.
Mary as the Model and Archetype of Femininity
For Edith Stein, Mary is the ideal:
🌿 fiat—total surrender to God,
🌿 care for Jesus and the Church,
🌿 silence and contemplation alongside active engagement (visiting Elizabeth, standing at the Cross).
“The image of the Mother of God reveals the fundamental spiritual attitude that corresponds to woman's natural vocation.”
Woman in the Workplace—Yes, but with a Feminine Ethos
Edith defends woman's right to professional work outside the home, but stresses that she should bring her feminine sensitivity to it: empathy, care for the person, and the ability to build relationships. She critiques “masculine” competition and impersonal efficiency. She says:
“The world does not need what women have - it needs what women are.”
And she warns against pitfalls:
🌿 excessive emotionality without rational control,
🌿 ambition to imitate men at the expense of one's own nature,
🌿 escape from motherhood (physical or spiritual),
🌿 intellectual pride that closes one off to others.
What Are Edith Stein's “Essays on Woman” and Why Are They Important Today?
“Essays on Woman” by Edith Stein is an attempt to answer the question: What is the essence of femininity according to nature and grace? Edith rejects both radical egalitarianism (“woman = man in everything”) and rigid confinement of a woman to the home. She shows that femininity has a specific form of soul that is realized in various vocations: mother, wife, nun, teacher, doctor, and single woman.
What Are the Main Themes and Chapters of “Essays on Woman”?
The most popular Polish edition (Carmelite / Flos Carmeli / Apostolicum) groups the texts into the following blocks (order may vary slightly):
Woman. Her Task According to Nature and Grace – the programmatic essay, the core of the entire book.
Formation of the Feminine Personality / The Formation of Woman
Woman in Professional Life / The Ethics of Women's Professions
Woman and the Church / Woman in Public Life and Apostolate
Marriage and Family – a look at the sacrament and daily life.
Woman and Values – an analysis of what truly shapes a woman's soul.
Mary as the Model of Femininity – often appearing as a point of reference.
Edith Stein writes about a woman with love and respect. She neither idealizes nor belittles nor flattens her. She shows that femininity is a gift that can be shaped, not a problem to be solved.
In times when femininity is either superficially glorified or denied as a “construct,” Edith's voice after nearly 100 years sounds fresh and profound.
(“Essays on Woman” is a collection of lectures, talks, and articles that Edith Stein delivered in the years 1928–1932, mainly to Catholic women, teachers, students, and members of associations.
These texts were written before she entered Carmel (1933), but after her conversion (1922). They blend phenomenology, Christian anthropology, and a practical view of a contemporary woman's life.)
Sacrifice and Joy – The Daily Experience of Mothers
In the context of Mary's messages calling us to open our hearts so that Jesus may be “conceived” in us spiritually, motherhood becomes holy because every mother becomes holy. Through her, Jesus is born anew in the world - in her child, in the people she serves, in daily life. Exactly as Mary, who first conceived Jesus in Her heart through Her “fiat,” full trust and surrender to God.
Wounds That Can Arise in Earthly Motherhood
Physical motherhood teaches empathy, patience, and unconditional love—it is a gift that shapes a woman from within. Yet the same closeness, responsibility, and constant self-giving can give rise to deep wounds. Here are the most common ones:
Chronic Fatigue and Burnout
When you are a mother of two, three, or more small children and have slept only 4–5 hours a night for years, you feel like a shadow of yourself. Your body aches for no clear reason, concentration fades, and the thought increasingly echoes in your head: “I am a bad mother because I don't even have the strength to smile.” You think laziness has taken over, but it is exhaustion of physical and emotional resources, leaving guilt and emptiness.
Parenting Mistakes and Guilt
It has happened that you shouted at your child in anger, snapped in frustration: “You're hopeless!” - and then for weeks the thought torments you: “I ruined his self-esteem forever.” Even if the child has long forgotten, the mother carries that moment like a stone in her heart.
Unconscious Emotional Neglect
If you lack daily support because that's your life situation, you focus on “handling everything” (food, clothes, extracurriculars, cleaning...), and you don't notice that your son has been withdrawing for months. Or your daughter stops talking about school because you respond: “Come on, don't whine, maybe later, I'm busy now...” The child grows up feeling: “I'm not important when I'm sad/angry/stressed.” The wound is quiet but very deep - the child learns to suppress emotions, and the mother later discovers a chasm in the relationship.
These wounds do not arise from a lack of love - often from an excess of love that finds no balance.
Edith Stein, in her reflections on the feminine soul, writes precisely about what is needed to protect delicate life (inner and outer):
“The soul of a woman must therefore be expansive and open to all human beings; it must be quiet so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy winds.”
This quote from the Essays on Woman, particularly in the context of “The Formation of the Feminine Personality,” shows the ideal:
🌿 The mother's soul must be a protective space - expansive, to hold the child's storms and her own;
🌿 quiet, so as not to drown out delicate signals (“small weak flames” are tiny, fragile lives, feelings, hopes).
When the storms of fatigue, frustration, or haste become too violent, they extinguish those flames in the child and in the mother herself.
In practice, this means that wounds in motherhood often arise where this quiet expansiveness is lacking:
🌿 shouting extinguishes the flame of the child's trust,
🌿 constant “later, not now” extinguishes the flame of feeling valued,
🌿 one's own sleep deprivation and burnout extinguish the flame of joy in the mother's heart.
Edith Stein does not idealize - knows woman is not made of stone. But she reminds us: the more open and quiet the soul, the better it protects both child and self from the deepest wounds. And when wounds have already formed, precisely this openness to forgiveness, to help, to grace - allows them to heal.
What Is Spiritual Motherhood?
Spiritual motherhood goes beyond biology; it is the care for the souls of others, regardless of marital status or fertility.
Edith Stein emphasizes that every woman carries within her the capacity for "motherliness," - protecting, nourishing, and fostering the growth of souls.
In her essay "The Ethos of Women's Professions," she describes a woman as "a shelter in which other souls may unfold" (or "fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold").
It is spiritual companionship: praying for others, offering counsel in difficulties, listening with empathy.
Mary is the model - as Mother of the Church, she leads us to sanctification, offering the "gentle touch of a mother." Spiritual motherhood fills the gaps of physical motherhood: nuns, childless women, or adoptive mothers live it out, becoming spiritual mothers to the world.
Edith, herself a childless Carmelite, lived this vocation, transforming society through her receptivity and maternal strength.
“Woman naturally seeks to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning.”
Edith stresses that motherhood is not merely biological; it is an attitude of the soul. Every woman (even the childless or a nun) is called to be a “mother of souls.”
How Does Mary Complement a Mother's Daily Life?
Mary, as the Immaculate One, complements a mother's everyday routine by bringing grace and strength. In the messages I speak of, she calls us to take refuge in Her Heart, promising protection and guidance.
For a busy mother, Mary is a support in the routine: through the Rosary or an Act of Consecration, She helps endure fatigue, turning daily duties into acts of love.
She becomes a friend and companion, a mentor with whom I could talk while playing in the park with the children, teaching them, reading to them, answering their questions, or in any other everyday task, especially when I was running at full speed, in a rush, with no time for myself.
Her motherly tenderness reminds us that God works through weaknesses. Mary teaches how to spiritually conceive Jesus in the heart, giving meaning to laundry, cooking, or conflicts with children. This childlike trust and immersion lead to a deep, simple relationship: by entrusting her worries to Her, a mother gains peace, and Her words guide to depth - from external duties to inner union with God. Can you imagine it? Through battling in the kitchen, I become Mary's warrior - with Her and thanks to Her.
How Does Mary Heal Wounds Inflicted by a Mother?
Wounds inflicted by a mother - consciously (e.g., harshness) or unconsciously (e.g., emotional distance) - hurt deeply, affecting relationships and self-esteem.
Mary, as the perfect Mother, heals them by offering unconditional love. Through Her intercession, as in Fatima or Medjugorje, she invites healing: "Come to your Mother." Prayer to Her fills the emptiness - Her gentle touch soothes traumas, building trust.
Mary's words lead to depth: from forgiving one's earthly mother, through healing of the heart, to spiritual rebirth. It is a process: contemplating Her life (e.g., in the Magnificat) shows how motherly love overcomes pain. Mary does not replace but complements, leading to the Father, where wounds become sources of grace.
What Else Do Mary's Words Offer - To What Depth Do They Lead?
Mary's words, such as "Your hearts are the joy of My times to come," lead to the depth of union with God. They encourage the spiritual conception of Jesus, meaning transformation: from egoism to holiness.
The depth is the Triumph of Her Heart - the fulfillment of hopes and desires in sanctification.
Hopes? Peace, love, salvation. Desires? Closeness to God, healing of relationships.
Mary advises in accordance with the Father's will, leading us by the hand into His embrace. It is not superficial consolation but transformation, preparing us for the "times ahead." Her words inspire holiness, where motherhood becomes a path to Heaven.
Sirach 51:29-30 closes today's reflection:
“Let your soul rejoice in the mercy of the Lord, and do not be ashamed of His glory! Fulfill your work before the time, and He will give you your reward in its appointed season.”
“Let your soul rejoice in the mercy of the Lord” - rejoice that God is merciful, that He forgives, guides, and bestows grace (including wisdom). “And do not be ashamed of His glory” - do not be ashamed to publicly praise God, thank Him, bear witness to Him - even if the world mocks or disregards it. This is a call to bold, joyful faith.
“Fulfill your work before the time” - do what is yours to do - your work, your mission, seeking wisdom - now, in the right moment of life - do not postpone it. “And He will give you your reward in its appointed season” - God Himself will reward you in His time. Not necessarily immediately, but certainly - in eternity or already here, according to His plan.
Earthly motherhood (with its wounds and fatigue) is also “fulfill your work before the time” - an encouragement to continue maternal service with faith, despite the wounds. God will reward in His time with healing, fruit in the children, and eternal reward.
The spiritual conception of Jesus is precisely this joy in the Lord's mercy - the joy of receiving Christ in the heart.
Rejoice in God's mercy, do not be ashamed to praise Him, and do your part now - He will reward you in due time. ❤️
🌸🌿🌸🌿🌸🌿🌸
Today, tomorrow, and every day, Mama Mary invites us to the refuge that is Her Heart. There we will find protection for the times ahead and peace that surpasses all human understanding. All it takes is one thing: to say "yes" to Her.
Invitation to the Heart 🤍🌿
In this time of deep interior preparation, Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary calls for nothing less than the full opening of our hearts to the desires of Heaven.
Return to previous day reflection 🤍
Go to the next day🤍Here is the link:
Have you prayed today for the grace of an open heart? Take a quiet moment to offer your heart to Mary, and let Heaven’s desire for your holiness take root.
💬 Reflect. 🙏 Pray. ❤️ Share.
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