2010-06-12 12:41:47

The Feast of the Sacred Heart


(June 12, 2010) The devotion to the Sacred Heart is a devotion that is deeply rooted in the Christian people. In biblical language, "heart" indicates the centre of the person where his sentiments and intentions dwell. In the Heart of the Redeemer we adore God's love for humanity, his will for universal salvation, his infinite mercy. The heart has always been expression of our love and existence and is the wellspring of our emotional and affective lives. Devotion to the Sacred Heart in the Church is part of the mainline of our faith: The reason is that it is basically honour paid to the love of God as seen in and symbolized in the Heart of Jesus. Without that Divine Love we would not exist at all, nor would we have been redeemed. For, every love, even divine love is to desire good for another person for the sake of the other. The church dedicates the month of June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and calls us to spend our time reflecting on what it means to live our lives so as to reveal the Love of a Merciful God to the world. The feast of the Sacred Heart is celebrated on Friday after the Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is devotion to Jesus Christ Himself, but in the particular ways of meditating on his interior life and on His threefold love, namely, His divine love, His burning love that fed His human will, and His sensible love that affects His interior life. Pope Pius XII in his Encyclical, On Devotion to the Sacred Heart, published in1956, explained this three fold love with which the divine Redeemer unceasingly loves His eternal Father and all mankind. He says that primarily, the Sacred heart is a symbol of that divine love which Jesus shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit but which He, the Word made flesh, alone manifests through a weak and perishable body, since "in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Secondly, it is the symbol of that burning love which, infused into His soul, enriches the human will of Christ and enlightens and governs its acts by the most perfect knowledge derived both from the beatific vision and that which is directly infused. Finally the Sacred Heart is the symbol also of sensible love, since the body of Jesus Christ, formed by the Holy Spirit, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, possesses full powers of feelings and perception, in fact, more so than any other human body.
Since the Sacred Scriptures and the Teaching of the Church instruct us that all things find their complete harmony and order in the most holy soul of Jesus Christ, and that He has manifestly directed His threefold love for the securing of our redemption, it unquestionably follows that we can contemplate and honour the Heart of the divine Redeemer as a symbolic image of His love and a witness of our redemption and, at the same time, as a sort of mystical ladder by which we mount to the embrace of "God our Saviour." Hence, says Pope Pius XII, His words, actions, commands, miracles, and especially those works which manifest more clearly His love for us, such as the divine institution of the Eucharist, His most bitter sufferings and death, the loving gift of His holy Mother to us, the founding of the Church for us, and finally, the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and upon us, all these, we say, ought to be looked upon as proofs of His threefold love.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart has two elements: consecration and reparation: We consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart by acknowledging Him as Creator and Redeemer and as having full rights over us as King of Kings, by repenting, and by resolving to serve Him. We make reparations for the indifference and ingratitude with which He is treated and for leaving Him abandoned by humanity. Pope Pius XII himself explained: "Certainly, among the other things which properly belong to the worship of the Sacred Heart, that consecration stands out and is notable, by which we, recognizing that we have received all that we are and have from the eternal love of God, dedicate ourselves and all that we have to the Divine Heart of Jesus." However, the Pope added: "if the first and chief thing in consecration is the repayment of the love of the creature to the love of the Creator, the second thing at once follows from it, that, if that Uncreated Love has been neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offenses, compensation should be made in some way for the injustice that has been inflicted: in common language we call this debt one of reparation."
When Pope Leo XIII consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart in 1899, he explained this consecration in the following word: "For we, in dedicating ourselves, not only recognize and accept His rule explicitly and freely, but we actually testify that if that which we give were ours, we would most willingly give it, and we ask Him to graciously accept from us that very thing, even though it is already His." In other words, in consecration we as it were say that we acknowledge He already has most full rights over us, as Creator and Redeemer, and we owe Him everything, and He would not need to repay us at all. But we say that we beg Him to kindly accept the very same service on a title of love, and propose to serve Him better.
On May 31st 1992, Pope John Paul II at the Mass of canonization of the Jesuit Priest Saint Claude de la Colombiere, the Spiritual Director of Saint Margaret Mary of Alocoque proclaimed: "For evangelization today, the Heart of Christ must be recognized as the heart of the Church: It is He who calls us to conversion, to reconciliation. It is He who leads pure hearts and those hungering for justice along the way of the Beatitudes. It is He who achieves the warm communion of the members of the one Body. It is He who enables us to adhere to the Good News and to accept the promise of eternal life. It is He who sends us out on mission. Thus devotion to the Heart of Jesus reminds us that it is in the Sacred Humanity of Jesus that we find the pattern for becoming fully human ourselves. In His Incarnation, saving life, death and Resurrection, we receive both the pattern and the means to become more like Him.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a form of devotion to the person Jesus, and especially to His Love. From the earliest days of the Church, Christ's open side and the mystery of blood and water were meditated upon. It is observed that from the time of Saint John and Saint Paul there has always been in the Church something like devotion to the love of God, Who so loved the world as to give it His only-begotten Son, and to the love of Jesus, Who has so loved us as to deliver Himself up for us. But, accurately speaking, this is not the devotion to the Sacred Heart, as it pays no homage to the Heart of Jesus as the symbol of His love for us. From the earliest centuries, Christ's open side and the mystery of blood and water were meditated upon, and the Church was beheld issuing from the side of Jesus. But there is nothing to indicate that, during the first ten centuries, any worship was rendered the wounded Heart. It is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we find the first unmistakable indications of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Through the wound in the side the wounded Heart was gradually reached, and the wound in the Heart symbolized the wound of Divine Love. In the Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries devotion arose, although it is impossible to say what where the first texts.
It is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we find the first unmistakable indications of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Through the wound in the side, the wounded Heart was gradually reached, and the wound in the Heart symbolized the wound of love. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, the devotion was practiced as a private, individual devotion of the mystical order. In the sixteenth century, the devotion took an onward step and passed from the domain of mysticism into that of Christian asceticism. It was constituted an objective devotion with prayers already formulated and special exercises of which the value was extolled and practice commended. The first feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated on August 31, 1670, in Rennes, France, through the efforts of Fr. Jean Eudes. From Rennes, the devotion spread, but it took the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque for the devotion to become universal. In all of these visions, in which Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary, the Sacred Heart of Jesus played a central role. The “great apparition,” which took place on June 16, 1675, during the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi, is the source of the modern Feast of the Sacred Heart. In that vision, Christ asked St. Margaret Mary to request that the Feast of the Sacred Heart be celebrated on the Friday after the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi, in reparation for the ingratitude of men for the sacrifice that Christ had made for them. The Sacred Heart of Jesus represents not simply His physical heart but His love for all mankind.
This Visitation nun had a personal revelation involving a series of visions of Christ as she prayed before the Blessed Sacrament. She wrote, "He disclosed to me the marvels of his Love and the inexplicable secrets of his Sacred Heart." Christ emphasized to her His love and His deep hurt caused by Man's indifference to this love. In the vision, on the feast of Corpus Christi 1675, Margaret Mary reported that Jesus told her, "Behold the Heart that has so loved men...instead of gratitude I receive from the greater part of mankind only ingratitude." He promised that, in response to those who consecrate themselves and make reparations to His Sacred Heart: He will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life. He will establish peace in their homes. He will comfort them in all their afflictions. He will be their secure refuge during life, and above all, in death. He will bestow abundant blessings upon all their undertakings. Sinners will find in His Heart the source and Infinite Ocean of mercy. Lukewarm souls shall become fervent. Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection. He will bless every place in which an image of His Heart is exposed and honoured. He will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts. Those who shall promote this devotion shall have their names written in His Heart. In the excessive mercy of His Heart that His all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays in nine consecutive months the grace of final perseverance; they shall not die in His disgrace, nor without receiving their sacraments. His divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.
The devotion became quite popular after St. Margaret Mary’s death in 1690, but, because the Church initially had doubts about the validity of St. Margaret Mary’s visions, it wasn’t until 1765 that the feast was celebrated officially in France. Almost 100 years later, in 1856, Pope Pius IX, at the request of the French bishops, extended the feast to the universal Church. It is celebrated on the day requested by our Lord, the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi. On May 25 1899, Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Annum Sacrum, declared that all Catholics should consecrate themselves to the Christ's Sacred Heart, and expressed his intention to solemnly consecrate all mankind to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The church recognises that the Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a wonderful expression of the Church's piety for Christ and calls for a fundamental attitude of conversion and reparation, of love and gratitude, apostolic commitment and dedication to Christ and his saving work. Pope John Paul II reflecting on the Heart of Jesus said that to celebrate the Heart of Christ means to turn toward the profound centre of the Person of the Saviour, that centre which the Bible identifies precisely as his Heart, seat of the love that has redeemed the world. If the human heart represents an unfathomable mystery that only God knows, how much more sublime is the heart of Jesus, in which the life of the Word itself beats. In it, as suggested by the beautiful Litanies of the Sacred Heart that echo the Scriptures, are found all the treasures of wisdom and science and all the fullness of divinity. In order to save human kind, said the Pontiff, God wished to give him, his Son a "new heart," faithful to his will of love. This heart is the heart of Christ, the masterpiece of the Holy Spirit, which began to beat in the virginal womb of Mary and was pierced by the lance on the cross, thus becoming for all the inexhaustible source of eternal life. That Heart is now the pledge of hope for every man.
Pope Benedict XVI in his Angelus message said that the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is deeply rooted in the Christian people. In biblical language, "heart" indicates the centre of the person where his sentiments and intentions dwell. In the Heart of the Redeemer we adore God's love for humanity, his will for universal salvation, his infinite mercy. Practicing devotion to the Sacred Heart of Christ therefore means adoring that Heart which, after having loved us to the end, was pierced by a spear and from high on the Cross poured out blood and water, an inexhaustible source of new life. From the infinite horizon of his love, said the Pontiff, God wished to enter into the limits of human history and the human condition. He took on a body and a heart. Thus, we can contemplate and encounter the infinite in the finite, the invisible and ineffable Mystery in the human Heart of Jesus, the Nazarene. The Pope then added that every person needs a centre for his own life, a source of truth and goodness to draw from in the daily events, in the different situations and in the toil of daily life. Every one of us, when we pauses in silence, need to feel not only our own heartbeat, but deeper still, the beating of a trustworthy presence, perceptible with faith's senses and yet much more real: the presence of Christ, the heart of the world.
While inaugurating the year for Priest on the 19th of June 2009, Pope Benedict XVI said that the heart of God burns with compassion. In the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus the Church presents us this mystery for our contemplation: the mystery of the heart of a God who feels compassion and who bestows all his love upon humanity. It is a mysterious love which in the texts of the New Testament is revealed to us as God’s boundless and passionate love for mankind. God does not lose heart in the face of ingratitude or rejection by the people he has chosen; rather, with infinite mercy he sends his only-begotten Son into the world to take upon himself the fate of a shattered love, so that by defeating the power of evil and death he could restore to human beings enslaved by sin their dignity as sons and daughters. But this took place at great cost, the only-begotten Son of the Father was sacrificed on the Cross: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end”. The symbol of this love which transcends death is his side, pierced by a spear. The Apostle John, an eyewitness, tells us: “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.”
Then the Pontiff called on the priests to live in a spirit of fidelity to the heart of Christ. He told them that “The Church needs holy priests; ministers capable of helping the faithful to experience the Lord’s merciful love, and convinced witnesses of that love. In the Eucharistic Adoration which is to follow our celebration of Vespers, let us ask the Lord to set the heart of every priest afire with that “pastoral charity” which can make him one in heart and mind with Jesus the High Priest, and thus to imitate Jesus in complete self-giving.”







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