The Mother of Fair Love

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the Book of Ecclesiasticus we are told: “I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue” (Ecclus. (Sir.) 24:24-25).

St. Josemaría liked very much this title of Our Lady, the Mother of Fair Love.

The Feast of Our Lady, the Mother of Fair Love, is celebrated on the 14th of February, which is this coming Monday. It's the day that God chose to found the Women of the Prelature of Opus Dei.

Initially, St. Josemaría thought there would never be women in Opus Dei on the 2nd of October 1928, when he saw what God wanted of him.

But then he said, like an unexpected child, two years later, within the Mass, he saw very clearly that God wanted something very different. He wanted the Women of the Prelature.

One of the aspects of the life of St. Josemaría that I think has not been spoken enough about, perhaps, is what St. Josemaría did for women all over the world, encouraging them to take their place at the helm of society, to be leaders, to be very professional, to perfect themselves in all sorts of ways; real empowerment of many, many women all over the world, from different cultures, different backgrounds; teaching them to sanctify themselves in the middle of the world.

Truly, we can turn to Our Lady, the Mother of Fair Love, our sweetness and our hope, thanking God and Our Lady for all the good things that they have given to us.

The 14th of February is also the anniversary of the founding of the Priests of the Prelature of Opus Dei, in 1943. We have many reasons to make many acts of thanksgiving.

This coming weekend, you could also say, is like the weekend of the hearts. We find hearts all over the place coming to St. Valentine's Day. All these hearts, you find, are perfectly drawn hearts. The lines all link up perfectly with each other.

Pope John Paul II liked to say that our hearts are not like that, because God has taken a piece of our heart and He's kept it for Himself in heaven. That's why St. Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you.”

He used to say that we all suffer from a hole in the heart, and that hole can only be filled by God.

Another spiritual writer likes to say that our religion is a religion of the heart.

Scripture speaks a lot about the heart:

“Come back to me with all your heart. ... Rend your heart and not your garments” (Joel 2:12-13).

“God does not look at the outward appearances, but God looks at the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7).

“Create a clean heart in me, O God...” (Ps. 51:10).

“I will take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26).

All the time down through the Old Testament and into the New Testament, the importance of the heart is emphasized.

The Beatitudes are like directives for the right dispositions of the heart: “Blessed are the gentle. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

Almsgiving is measured not by the amount, but by the heart. “This woman...has put in all that she had to live on” (Matt. 12:44).

God reads the heart.

As we come to this Feast of the Mother of Fair Love, we could ask Our Lady that we might unite our heart to hers, and that she might fashion our heart after the model of her Immaculate Heart and the heart of her Son.

Our Lord's heart was willing to be on the Cross. It's through His heart that He gave us the meaning of love. God was willing to be on the Cross. He was willing to allow His heart to be pierced by a lance: “One of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34).

Pope Pius XII liked to call this a fountain of life, the fountain of the sacramental life of the Church.

Something flows from the heart of Christ into our heart and gives rise to new life. That's what our interior life, our spiritual life, is all about.

In the Preface of the Sacred Heart we say, “Joyfully will I draw water in joy from the wells of salvation” (Isa. 12:3). We come to the Blessed Sacrament, or to the Cross, precisely to draw water in joy from the wells of salvation.

When St. Josemaría was founding the Women of the Prelature, it was to that Heart that he went many times for strength, for courage, for faith, for meaning, for purpose.

We can look to those hearts—the heart of Christ and the heart of Mary—and see how the heart is like a symbol of the inner mystery of man. John Paul II says through the heart we reach that inner mystery.

Sometimes we talk about the heart as being the center of the life of a person.

In ancient Rome they taught that the kidneys were the center of the emotions of the human person, so two lovebirds on February the 14th in ancient Rome would have said to each other: “I love you so much, I give you my kidneys.”

We have now progressed enormously so we know that it's not the kidneys; it's the heart. But we also know scientifically that the heart is not really the seat of the emotions; it's the frontal lobe.

But if spouses or fiancés were to say to each other on February 14th, "I love you so much, I give you my frontal lobe” it doesn't sound too romantic. It’s much better to say, “I give you my heart.”

It's through the heart we reach the inner mystery of the human person. It's like a symbol of a person's innermost personality—the center of it, the innermost part of a person's being—through which we understand the person from within.

Through the heart, we understand the person of Mary and the person of Jesus. We enter their inner works. Through the heart we come to see what it is that makes them tick. We understand the why of the person: why they did what they did.

With great reason we turn to Our Lady, the Mother of Fair Love, to teach us how to love.

What is the great mystery that we find in the heart of Mary and in the heart of Christ? That willingness to be on the cross, and the willingness to have their heart pierced by a lance, a physical lance, or by a spiritual sword.

The secret that's there inside those hearts is love. Sacrificial love. A willingness to be on the cross. That's what it's all about.

We ask the Mother of Fair Love to teach us how to love, that we might learn what love means with her help. “I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue.”

In the prayer of the Hail, Holy Queen, we talk about Our Lady as “our sweetness and our hope.” Like all good mothers, she's there for us in all the moments of our life.

Little children turn to their mother in moments of fear or difficulty, or when they need some little bit of hope. We need to turn to that heart of Mary.

The Church talks a lot about the conversion of the heart. Each of us is asked for a new conversion: a new conversion in our heart to change, to be a more loving person.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matt. 5:7).

“May you be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful” (cf. Luke 6:36).

Our Lady is the Queen of Mercy. Pope John Paul liked to say that “mercy is another word for love”—a love that goes beyond justice, that goes the extra mile.

Love involves mercy: knowing how to forgive—to forgive everybody—hurts or wounds or little things that people may have said or done, or to forgive people that possibly we feel they don't deserve forgiveness.

We have to try and give that sort of forgiveness, to be more Christ-like, more Marian. Our Mother of Fair Love will teach us how to put that love into practice in concrete ways.

In our faith and religion, we don't need to do Bible quizzes and we don't need to go to the Holy Land. We just need to enter into the heart of Christ.

We don't know the heart of Christ enough, nor the heart of Mary—that reality that's there inside, which is love.

I was rather impressed this week. I was talking to two fellows aged maybe 13 and 14, two kids from a poor family. I happened to get them some football boots a couple of years ago.

I met them again and I asked them, "How are the football boots?”

“Oh, they've become too small.”

“And what are you using?”

“Well, we have some sports shoes.”

“Do they fit?”

“Not really. Our toes are coming out the front of it so that when we kick the football, our toes hurt.”

I said, “OK, bring me the other football boots. Let's see what size they were."

“We gave them away to a poor boy.”

I was rather taken aback. These two kids, most people would think were already poor boys, but every poor person knows somebody poorer than themselves.

It was rather beautiful to hear that these two kids had given them away to a poor boy, without any prompting from other people. They could have kept those football boots, the first they ever had in their life, on their shelf. They could have worshipped them and kissed them every day of their life and say, ‘This is our great treasure, my football boots.’

“We gave them away to a poor boy.” These are avid football fans: one follows Man City, another follows Chelsea, and their poor father follows Arsenal, who was always...

I had to tell them, "Look, if you keep doing that, keep living like that, you will have more joy in your life than all the joys that Man City can bring you, even if they're at the top of the league.” I hope that that got the message across in their language.

“Blessed are the merciful.” When we try to imitate the heart of Mary, the heart of Christ, we end up doing things that are really beautiful. We teach that sacrificial love to other people.

Our Mother of Fair Love shows us how to have a willingness to be on the cross. That's like a summary of the whole of our faith: the willingness to fulfill the plan of God for us, the love of God from man unto death.

Christ could have clicked His fingers and in that way, redeemed the whole of mankind. But if He had not died in the way that He did, we would not have known the extent of His love for man.

When St. Josemaría founded the Women of the Prelature and the Priests of the Prelature, he saw this as a great gift of God.

The pathway of holiness, he traced back in the history of the Church, started in a certain sense with the monks. They went off to monasteries. They withdrew from the world in order to be holy. That was the pathway that God led them on. You had the Cistercians and the Benedictines in the 5th century, or 4th century.

Then in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, it's as though God takes one further step out into the world with the Mendicant orders: the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Carmelites, the Augustinians. They don't just withdraw completely from the world to monasteries. They begin to go out into the world. They begin to teach. They begin to beg and do different things.

After the Council of Trent in the 16th century, the Church takes another step out into the world with the religious orders, who were going to be the backbone of the Church for the next four centuries. Now they teach. They run hospitals. They're a little bit in the world, but they're not withdrawn from it.

They're separated from it, yes. They're not completely in it, but they're more in it than the monks were or the friars were. Now they're a little bit more visible.

But then St. Josemaría said on the 2nd of October 1928 and the 14th of February 1930, God played His trump card. He takes one further step out into the world with the message that all persons are called to holiness—a universal call to salvation, a sanctity which the Second Vatican Council was going to write very clearly in its decrees.

That message is still trickling down to us. It takes a long time. Many people say that was the key message of the whole of the Council: the calling of every lay person to be holy wherever they are, wherever God has placed them.

This is the message of the 14th of February in and through the Women of the Prelature: to open up all the pathways of the earth to this great reality; to bring the love of God into our work, into our family life, into our marriage, into our responsibilities that we have to try and fulfill every day.

To help us to find that holiness and to fulfill it and make it a reality, we have the sacraments, the Sacraments that flow from the heart of Christ, so that we can be born from grace, so that we can have a new life in the Spirit, so that we can begin again all the time.

Our Lord gave us the central message of His teaching: “Love one another” (John 13:34). This is like the driving force of the Holy Spirit in our life, the force of love that God wants us to put into everything that we do.

The Mother of Fair Love speaks to us about this warmth and security that we have to try and bring to everybody. Her message goes straight to our heart. She was one of us.

We can always turn to Our Lady, turn our eyes to her again, petition her under all of her various titles. Yesterday we had the Feast of Our Lady of the Lourdes, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comfort of the Afflicted.

Her message of Lourdes was a message of conversion, of penance, and also of charity. That apparition gave rise to the premier Shrine of Our Lady in the whole world. Millions of people are drawn there.

I was rather impressed a couple of years ago hearing some statistics about the venues in France that had the highest visitation rates by tourists. I expected to hear some well-known resorts in the French Riviera to be top of the bill—but lo and behold, Lourdes was top of the bill. Far more people, millions of people, go there every year than to all the other popular French resorts. A rather interesting message.

We can ask the Mother of Fair Love to lead us along this pathway so that we can place her in everything. We can learn all sorts of things at her feet. Her name goes straight to our heart, teaches us new things, how to begin again.

She's the Lady of the Sweet Name, as St. Josemaría liked to call her. Our sweetness and our hope.

The Mother of Fair Love has something to say to us in all the situations of our life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that she's the model of all the virtues.

When we need to put more industriousness into something, or more charity, or more faith, or more hope, or more punctuality, or more order, or more silence, or whatever, we can turn to Our Lady, and she will teach us how to do all of these things.

St. John Paul says the history of fair love begins in her, with this woman who radiates divine goodness and the beauty of a life given to Our Lord.

We learn to love God and to love souls in and through Our Lady. Our love becomes enriched and embellished by hers. She shows a great sensitivity and refinement in all the things she does.

She goes to her Son at Cana and says, "They have no wine” (John 2:3). Our Lady doesn't play the heavy with her Son. She doesn't say, ‘Look, I am your mother. I've never asked you for anything in your life, so you better listen to me this time. You better do what I tell you, otherwise there's going to be trouble.’

Our Lady doesn't talk like that. She just says very simply, "They have no wine.” She teaches us an awful lot about human relationships, how to be refined, how to be cheerful, how to be peaceful.

We know that she won't refuse us anything we ask for, so we can have a lot of confidence when we go to her.

The First Eucharistic Prayer says, "In union with the whole Church we honor Mary, the ever-virgin mother of Jesus Christ Our Lord and God.”

We can thank Our Lady for all the blessings she's given to the Prelature of Opus Dei in the last almost-90 years.

The Prelate of Opus Dei has liked to mention how in 2028, and in the coming 2030, it’s going to be the hundredth anniversary of Opus Dei in in the world. All sorts of incredible things have happened in the past almost a hundred years, but he also calls us to look to the next hundred.

We find ourselves with this great message of the universal call to holiness at the start of the 21st century. So many souls are in need of hearing that message—great ideals for our life.

We know that the Mother of Fair Love wants to bring this message to every last heart on the planet, so that that heart can find itself fulfilled. They can find the goal of their heart in the things of God.

We also know that human hearts need the heart of Christ and the heart of Mary. They’re looking for it. This world occasionally can be a bit impersonal: voice messages and email, press this button and press that button, and credit cards. We need to bring back a culture of the heart a little bit. Heart is very important.

In our apostolate, people have to see that we speak from the heart. When people see that we're speaking from the heart, they realize that we're serious. We have something serious to say. We're on the level. It's very convincing. It's coming from deep down.

And when we feel loved by God in a concrete way, we feel the need to respond to that love. If God has loved me, what can I do for God? How can I respond? How can I correspond? “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16).

Then He leaves the ball in our court. How are you going to respond to that love?

If we begin to see all the ways that God has blessed us or all the ways that Our Lady has looked after us down through our life, we come to a certain moment and we say, "What can I give back to God for all that He's given to me?"

There's a moment in the Mass when the priest is meant to say precisely those words from a Psalm. “What shall I give back to God for all that he has given to me?” (Ps. 116:12).

We should try and love God with the same heart with which He loved us.

Some look at a cow as something from which we can get something. We get milk from the cow. If we love God just for what He gives us, then it's like the love of a cow. If we love God only for the cookies He gives, that’s the love of a dog. He gives me cookies. He gives me nice things. Solve this problem, solve that problem.

If we love God only because of His power, that's like the love of a slave. If we love God only because of a dull sense of duty, that's the love of a servant.

Our Lord has said to us, “No longer do I call you servants, but I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Christ calls us to a heart-to-heart relationship.

“When you pray, enter into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6).

Our prayer is also measured by the heart. That's what's important. We have to put our heart into things.

When we see that the heart of Christ is offended, insulted, forgotten, neglected, that leads us to want to say “sorry,” to atone to the heart of Christ and to the Mother of Fair Love for all the times when we have not been responsive or corresponded, not been sensitive to that love, so that we cultivate a culture of the heart a little more.

There was a famous singer in the early 1960s that your mother might remember, or your grandmother, called Elvis Presley. He had a song that was called “I Don't Have a Wooden Heart.” “Treat me nice, treat me kind, treat me like you really should, because I don't have a wooden heart.”

Maybe Our Lord is telling us too that you don't have a wooden heart; I want you to cultivate that heart.

In modern culture, sometimes the heart is forgotten a little bit. We have heavy metal, and we have rock music, and something of the heart is missing in all these things. It can be rather impersonal. There can be a feeling of anonymity that causes a lot of pessimism in young people.

We need to reintroduce that culture of the heart so that people can become persons again: the culture of life, the civilization of love. Pope Benedict has talked about the cult of beauty.

People have to feel our heart for that convincing witness that we want to give them one to one, heart to heart. People have to feel a heart burning in us for our faith so when they see that, they love it. That’s what they need. They feel attracted to it.

In the prayer that we say on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the 15th of September, there's a phrase that says, "Make my heart burn in loving Christ the Lord.”

To the Holy Spirit, we say, "Fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love."

To the Mother of Fair Love, we can say the same thing: Give me that fire of love that you had, and if my heart gets a little bit cold, warm it up again. You are the Mother of Fair Love. Help my heart to be on fire with your love.

There was a lake that was discovered somewhere in the Arctic Circle, far away from the sea, way back in the mountains. Some of the explorers discovered that this lake was always warm. In spite of the freezing temperatures and the snow and the cold around the place, there were some sort of underground channels that fed this lake that kept it fairly warm. You could catch fish in it, you could swim in it.

Somebody said that strange lake—hundreds of miles from the oceans, a real oasis of warmth, of life amid the desolation of the Arctic winter—that's a bit like the heart of Christ. He's trustworthy in the heart of Mary. He's the fulfillment of the Father's promises.

No matter how much this fallen world may cause us to suffer, no matter how cold the world may get, no matter how many Valentine's Day cards we don't get and we feel neglected or whatever, the love of Christ never weakens.

His goodness never freezes over. We can always find solace in that warm lake that is the heart of Christ. He's like the warm lake in the midst of the Arctic ice. He keeps His promises. He's always there for us, welcomes us, sustains us.

We know that the Mother of Fair Love will lead us to that heart of Christ, so that we can experience all these good things.

We can ask the Mother of Fair Love, as we approach this feast day, that we might foster all those good things, learn how to keep our heart in the things of God and the things of the apostolate, thank God for the great graces that He gives us, and that she might keep us going very strongly along that pathway of authentic love that she wants to give us.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JM