Sacred Heart Solemnity

 

Today, the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Because today is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart it is also World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests.

The devotion to the Sacred Heart consists in the veneration of the very Heart of God. Our Lord’s Heart is mentioned in scripture. St. John, the beloved apostle, rested his head against the Heart of Jesus at the Last Supper. He stood faithfully at the foot of the Cross and watched the Heart of Jesus pierced with a lance. When Jesus was about to feed the multitude by multiplying bread and fish, His Heart was moved with pity for the crowd. Our Lord described His Heart as being meek and humble.

While not explicitly in Sacred Scripture, we know Our Lord’s Heart began to beat for love us--while within Mary’s womb.

Devotion has existed from the early days of the Church, when Christians meditated on the pierced Heart of Jesus. And this devotion was spread by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who had a vision of the Lord on June 16th, 1675, in which she saw His Heart surrounded by flames of love, crowned with thorns and pierced with an open wound in which blood flowed and inside which appeared a cross.

Jesus said to her, “Behold this Heart which has so loved men, that It has spared nothing even to exhausting and consuming itself in order to testify to its love. In return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude by their irreverence and sacrileges by the coldness and contempt they have for me in this Sacrament of Love.” After Jesus said these words, he then told St. Margaret Mary, “What is most painful to Me," added the Savior, in a tone that went to the Sister's heart, "is that they are hearts consecrated to Me". What caused His Sacred Heart the most anguish was the ingratitude, irreverence and sacrilege from those consecrated to the Lord, meaning priests and religious. One of the main reasons Jesus established the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, was to make reparation to His Sacred Heart for those who should love Him in His true presence in the Eucharist.

Every Eucharistic miracle tested by which the Host turned to flesh has always concluded myocardium muscle from the Heart. The Eucharist is the Heart of Jesus.

Today, reparation needs to be made for the priest scandal, injuring so many children and their families. For bishops and cardinals who covered up the scandal. For priests who left the priesthood and the religious who left their orders, over the past 30 years. Reparation needs to be made for priests who fail to warn the laity of their obligation to confess their mortal sins prior to receiving Holy Communion, which results in sacrilegious Communions. Reparation needs to be made for churches with tabernacles no longer in the sanctuary of the church. Reparation needs to be made for priests who treat the liturgy as though it was their own, changing this and that-- at their every whim. Reparation needs to be made for priests and religious who no longer have any devotion to the Eucharist, but treat Him with ingratitude and irreverence.

On this day dedicated prayer for the sanctification of priests, I encourage you to pray a rosary today for all priests and another rosary for a particular priest. I would like to close with the prayer of St. Therese for Priests: O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests; for your unfaithful and tepid priests; for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields. for your tempted priests; for your lonely and desolate priests;  For your young priests; for your dying priests; for the souls of your priests in Purgatory. But above all, I recommend to you the priests dearest to me: the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion; the priests who taught and instructed me; all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.