"Hearts Revealed" is the title of the Meditation of the Day in Magnificat for today. It is a short extract from Adrienne von Speyr's chapter on the Presentation in the Temple, a chapter in her book Handmaid of the Lord. The chapter is an extended reflection on the significance of the episode of the Presentation in the Temple for the Virgin Mary; Magnificat selects from a section about how the piercing of her soul provides an access for us to the Passion foretold by the words of Simeon.
The meaning of the piercing of the Mother is this: "that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare". If the Mother did not suffer, then these thoughts would never be released of themselves.... Suffering as a simple human and yet raised up to the state of grace and in it participating in the Son's sufferings, the Mother is understandable to everyone. And everything that lives in hearts as an unclear longing for God can, at the sight of the Mother's suffering, take on form and become conscious and evident to the heart itself. Thus, through her suffering, she mediates hidden hearts to the Son; she opens them, because her own heart had been opened by the sword.... The Mother's suffering is like a stairway up to the Cross, which before seemed inaccessible. In her it becomes evident that there really exists the Christian possibility of participation in the divine, redemptive suffering...
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