SOME THOUGHTS ON
THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

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June is a special month for honoring our Lord’s Sacred heart, a devotion Jesus Himself established when in 1675 He commissioned St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French nun, along with Father de la Colombiere, S.J., to institute the feast of His Sacred Heart and to spread devotion to it worldwide.

According to the Rev. F. X. Lasance in his Sacred Heart Book the overall devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus comprises essentially of three separate parts, one of affection, or love of our Lord; one in reparation, or tears for the neglect, ingratitude, irreverence, and sacrilege He suffers, especially in the Blessed Sacrament; and one of imitation of Jesus’ virtues, especially those of meekness and humility in His Sacred Heart!

With this thought in mind, I’d like to offer this prayer to our Lord and His Sacred Heart:

Dear Lord Jesus, when I reflect on your hardships in your earthly ministry and in Your Passion, I can well imagine your deep sorrow over the hardness of heart you witnessed from others and how you might well feel that even to this day. As I carry my own crosses, let me not lose faith or harden my heart but rather seek to gladden Your Sacred Heart by offering up my troubles to you on the cross at Calvary and in loving obedience to Your Divine Will. When I receive you Body Blood Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist, fill my heart with compassion both for You and for my neighbor, so that I may give you some comfort {and solace} in your Sacred Heart!

We read one prominent example in scripture of Jesus’ anger at the Pharisees’ hardness of heart in Mark’s Gospel when they refuse to acknowledge both the lawfulness and the goodness of His healing of a man with a withered hand in their midst on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-5).

Indeed even Our Lord’s disciples are said to have had a hardness of heart at times regarding their inability to see our Lord’s working miracles in their midst (Mark 6:52 and 8:14).

It is important to note that when Jesus’ heart was pierced with a lance by a Roman soldier, at the end of His crucifixion, blood and water flowed out. One of the Church Fathers, St. John Chrystostom, recognized these elements as signs of Christ’s Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist (the Blood) and Baptism (the Water).

When we reflect on the Eucharist, when Jesus gives us His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in Communion and is otherwise present in Eucharistic Adoration, it is important to note that all the pagan gods, various types of Molochs and the like, would cry out in effect if they could “feed me! Feed Me! More human sacrifices!”, in a Satanic echo. Jesus says to us instead “feed on Me; let me feed You” in Holy Communion, so as to strengthen us in holiness with His grace!

These many pagan idols may not be able to eat per se as we would, but we’ve given them innumerable child and other human sacrifices over the millennia to devour supposedly to appease their wrath for better crops, good weather, and other such “favors”.

By contrast, when we think of our Lord’s Sacred Heart we are reminded of something quite important, as Harold Buetow put it so well in his book on the Sunday readings for Cycle A in the LIturgical Calendar entitled God Still Speaks: Listen. When commenting on the passage in Chapter 11 of St. John’s Gospel, in which our Lord reacts to the death of His friend Lazarus, Buetow writes that

The shortest verse in the Bible verse 35 shows Jesus the fine human being: it tells us that “Jesus Wept” For the Greeks, for whom St. John’s Gospel was written, weeping was incredible for any eminent person, and most especially for a god. (Note: the editors of the Ignatius Study Bible note that “although it was once popular to interpret John’s Gospel against the backdrop of Greek culture and thought, more recent scholarship has led to a fuller appreciation of its Jewish background and themes”)

They believed in a god who had apatheia, a complete inability to feel any emotions. They reasoned that one who feels deep emotions-- joy, grief, love,--has allowed an outside influence to enter. That in turn means that someone or something, at least for that time, had power over him or her---in other words, that someone or something else is greater. These things simply couldn't be true of a God. Jesus demonstrates a completely different picture of God: as One who cares.

This seeming weakness is actually one of our Lord’s greatest strengths that He manifested in HIs human nature: His ability to have great love and empathy for us! We see that in many images of Jesus with His Sacred Heart ablaze with love for us!

Tragically, Fallen Humanity has been worshiping all kinds of, what Moses referred to in the book of Deuteronomy as “gods of wood and stone, the work of men’s hands that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell” (Duet 4:28) over millennia both before and after Christ’s earthly ministry.

It would be all too easy and quite understandable if you could ask Jesus in effect “why do you, as Goodness incarnate, permit your heart to be broken by allowing us, your beloved children to be tempted and tormented by evil, and to choose to worship so many false gods, including ourselves?”

His response might very well challenge all of us nonetheless, that where Sin abounds Grace may abound all the more, as Saint Paul touches on, in an historical context, in his letter to the Romans (Rom 5:20).

The big tragedy is that so few of us are aware that God allows evil to occur both to respect our ability to freely choose to love Him or not, and also so that we might grow in virtue by resisting vice with His necessary help in prayer and our living sacramental lives. So many more people need to be made aware of this, especially these days with all the diabolical chaos and misery all around us!

The Exorcist Father Chad Ripperger has pointed out that God allows the devil and his demonic minions to afflict us with both temptations and troubles so that we may learn to resist them and thus grow in virtue rather than vice with God’s help.

Father echoes the words of God the Father in the book The Dialogue from the 14th century of words in effect dictated by him to St Catherine of Siena while she was in ecstasy.

God the Father pointed out to her that indeed he allows the devil to be His “Instrument of Justice to those who have miserably offended Me” but also that “I have set him in this life… not for My creatures to be conquered, but that they may conquer, proving their virtue, and receive from Me the glory of victory…For one does not arrive at virtue except through knowledge of self, and knowledge of Me, which knowledge is more perfectly acquired in the time of temptation, because then man knows himself to be nothing, being unable to lift off himself the pains and vexations which he would flee; and he knows Me in his will, which is fortified by My goodness, so that it does not yield to these thoughts. And he has seen that My love permits these temptations, for the devil is weak, and by himself can do nothing, unless I allow him.

And I let him tempt, through love, and not through hatred, that you may conquer, and not that you may be conquered, and that you may come to a perfect knowledge of yourself, and of Me, and that virtue may be proved, for it is not proved except by its contrary. You see, then, that he is my Minister to torture the damned in Hell, and in this life, to exercise and prove virtue in the soul. Not that it is the intention of the Devil to prove virtue in you (for he has not love), but rather to deprive you of it, and this he cannot do, if you do not wish it.”

Going back to a point made earlier, when you think of Jesus' heart breaking, don't think of this as if our Lord were some kind of weakling, or he’s just some “bleeding heart”, to use that derogatory term. He’s far from it! Christ’s power and might are such that the demons tremble at His name and presence just as much today in exorcisms as they did in the Gospels.

And remember they can only do what he permits them to do which again gets us back to our own necessity to be in a state of sanctifying grace and stay as close to him as possible.

This will enable us to resist those “wickedness and snares of the devil” as we say in the St. Michael Prayer, those smarmy Satanic suggestions demons make constantly to try to turn us against ourselves and each other which they seem to be doing rather well these days don't they?

I always wonder now, how is that “we don’t need God” thing working out for you folks? Where instead of locking up criminals in our cities we lock up toothpaste so they can't steal it.

Where human trafficking seems to be off the charts; where “wars and rumors of wars” seem to be flourishing and increasing in deadly intensity with World War III possibly on the horizon; where drug abuse and nihilistic thinking are running rampant among our young people intoxicated by Marxists peddling Paradise that can never really exist in our fallen state, especially without the help of God!

Honor Jesus’ Sacred Heart! Place a picture of our Lord with His Sacred Heart blazing with love for us, in spite of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune he’s endured, as shown by the crown of thorns around His Sacred Heart, in a special place in your home that He may have a special place in your heart as well!

And as with so many aspects of our Liturgical Calendar use not just the month of June to have this devotion, the month dedicated to our Lord's Sacred Heart, but in July, in September, and in December, just as we can honor the little baby born in Bethlehem in summer and keep our Lord's Passion, Death and Resurrection for us in our minds always and not just as spring approaches! Amen!