(A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, found in St. Mary Major's in Marseilles, France)

Today is First Saturday, a day reserved to honor the Immaculate Heart of Mary, according to her wishes revealed to Sister Lucia.

"If as often as we approach a great fire, we are affected by its heat, does it not follow, and have we not great reason to believe that whoever approaches Mary, that mother of mercies, that heart ever burning with the most ardent charity, must be the more affected the oftener he addresses himself to her, and the greater his reliance and humility is? No created being ever bore such ardent love to Jesus Christ, nor showed so perfect a submission to His Will, as His Blessed Mother...Let us not hesitate to implore her pity; let us have recourse to her with great confidence in all our necessities..."

~ Dom Lawrence Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat

Put more colloquially, we become like those we hang around. So the more we spend time with the Mother of God, the more like her we become. I love the idea of her heart being a source of heat - the warmth of her love for God. Let us be warmed and inflamed by that fire... a little spark of which would be enough to make us saints.