Pope urges Sacred Heart devotion, solidarity for Myanmar and China disaster victims

(June 2, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday invited all Christians to rediscover in the Sacred Heart of Jesus the "centre" of faith, hope and love, and of the life of the world. "I invite everyone to renew, in the month of June, his devotion to the Heart of Christ, making use also of the traditional prayer of daily offering and including the intentions I have proposed for the whole Church," the Pope said at the start of June, a month which the Catholic Church traditionally dedicates to the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The devotion can be traced back to the Middle Ages, but it was emphasised and encouraged by the popes after the appearance of Jesus to St Marguerite Marie Alacoque in the 17th century. Pope Benedict recalled that his two encyclicals, on love and hope, have been inspired by the mystery of the Sacred Heart. "Every person ", the pope pointed out, "needs a 'centre' for his life, a source of truth and goodness to draw upon in various situations and in the struggle of everyday life. Each of us, when we pause in silence, needs to feel not only the beating of his own heart, but more profoundly the pulsing of a trustworthy presence, which is sensed through faith but nonetheless is much more real: the presence of Christ, the heart of the world". The solemnity of the sacred Heart of Jesus was celebrated on Friday, May 30.
Pope Benedict XVI concluded with an invocation to the "maternal intercession of the Virgin" for the populations of China and Myanmar, "struck by natural calamities", and "for those going through the many situations of pain, illness, and material and spiritual misery that mark humanity's journey". The Chinese authorities on Sunday updated the number of victims of the May 12 earthquake. The death toll is now above 69,000 and the number of missing persons is more than 18,000. Over 368,000 were injured and about 15.15 million people in the quake zones had been evacuated.