The ardent, fiery love of the Holy Spirit is:
- hellfire for those in hell, because they don’t want it…
- purging for those in purgatory, because they are on their way…
- the glory of God as witnessed by those in heaven, because God is love.
In Luke 1:28 we read – in Greek – that Mary was perfectly transformed and perfectly always remained in this love (κεχαριτωμένη), in this grace, in this ardent fiery love of the Holy Spirit from the first moment, in context, of when she was able to receive the vocation to which she was called from all eternity, that is, to be the immaculate, virgin, Mother of God. It means that she had no weaknesses consequent to original sin. It means that she had such purity of heart and agility of soul and clarity of (spiritual) vision that she was actually able to be in solidarity with her Son as He laid down His life for us, interceding for us with Him with all motherly solicitude. The lack of all that which has do with sin ironically enabled Mary to see sin in all of its horror.
In Ephesians 1:6 Saint Paul uses the same verb, but in aorist, to describe how the rest of us, after we contracted all that which is consequent to original sin, with all the weaknesses, were transformed in the fiery love of the Holy Spirit, this grace as well (ἐχαρίτωσεν). We tend to blind ourselves to the horror of sin, struggling because of our weakness, struggling to cooperate with this grace, with this fiery love of the Holy Spirit. But it is the very weakness that we do notice which enables us to thank Jesus for having come into this world which we destroyed with sin so that He might stand in our place, the Innocent for the guilty, to have the right in His own justice to have mercy on us.
If we, in all of our ignorance, come to the point – by the fiery love of the Holy Spirit – come to the point of even momentarily noticing with humble thanksgiving even just a bit of the awesome and majestic glory of Jesus laying down His life for us, then… goodness gracious… how much more was Immaculate Mary struck by that same fiery love as manifested by the Heart of Jesus:
On Pentecost the Holy Spirit introduces us to this fiery love of the Holy Spirit, fiercely:
So, a flower for you Mary. Oh, and a blast from the past or two. This one from Holy Souls Hermitage:
And this one from a priest in India:
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 
Only 70 years ago, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary was very common in Australia and I suppose in the UK and US too, and elsewhere. I have heard it said that war turns men away from God. If such is true sometimes, it may be because they have not been introduced to these Two Hearts that love us so much and have suffered so much for us. My father and his brothers were in the armed forces during WWII and when my parents married two years after war’s end one of his brothers (he had returned from horrible experiences fighting in the jungles of New Guinea) bought for my parents as a wedding present two beautiful pictures, in matching frames, of Our Lord and Our Lady showing their Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. I grew up seeing these pictures in my home, side by side, daily, and they made an impact. I hope that it will become common again for images of these Two Hearts to grace Catholic homes and devotion increases once more. In darkest times those images remind us of all we need to know to keep going on the path to Heaven.
I’ll have to take a picture of the two hearts in the confessional!
Please do. I would like to see them.
Come Holy Spirit God bring your flame of love into my heart, I thank you through Your most holy Spouse, Mary Immaculate.
I love the final photograph :-)