A Heart "Black But Beautiful..."

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J.M.J.

Feast of the Immaculate Heart of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary

I am black but beautiful... therefore the King hath loved me and... brought me into His storerooms
(Antiphon of the Office of Matins, from Canticle of Canticles 1.4,3)

St. John of the Cross teaches us that "in the evening of life we shall be examined in love." That is, our hearts shall be scrutinized and we shall be taken only into the Heart of God, the abyss and Fount of our never-ending perfect happiness, if it be found like to the Heart of Mary - black but beautiful. Black, for though there was never found a spot in it (cf., Cant. 4.7) yet, nevertheless, it drank the deepest sorrow of God's Heart laid open assunder on the Cross and there conspicuously shared with Him His hatred for sin and the accursed impure proud spirits, who, by their most astute cunnings and subtle subversion of the truth, lead souls to turn their backs against Him, Who, Himself Most Tender Goodness to those who follow after Him in His way of mercy AND truth (cf., Ps. 24.10), by finding ways - their "New" disOrder - of how He ought to be good and nice. You who love the Lord hate evil (Ps. 96.10).

May Our Glorious Immaculate Mother, whose Scapular, the efficacious sign of our consecration to Her Immaculate Heart, we wear, inundate our hearts with tears of this holy sorrow and hatred She and Her Little Jesus knew that, at the end of our temporal life especially, we may present God a singular heart made thus so tender by the Most Sacred and Precious Blood of Our Lord, shed at our traditional Confessional and we partake of at our traditional altars, for so a tender eternal embrace.