June is a special month in the Church set aside for devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. While this and many other devotions have become less prominent in recent decades, “the Church has always valued, and still does, the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus so highly that she provides for the spread of it among Christian peoples everywhere and by every means” (Haurietas Aquas, 8), and “it is altogether impossible to enumerate the heavenly gifts which devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has poured out on the souls of the faithful, purifying them, offering them heavenly strength, rousing them to the attainment of all virtues” (HS, 2). Through devotion to the Sacred Heart, men and women throughout the ages have been transformed into true Christians, and, even today, we can become the saints we are created to be through that same devotion. Devotion is an affective, expressive love; devotion adds rich sweetness to the love between lover and beloved. Through devotion to the Sacred Heart, our hearts become more and more like the Heart of Christ, because love always seeks to become like the beloved; if we love Jesus’ Heart with a real, deep, active love, our hearts become more and more like His, and we are purified more completely from our sins, we receive heavenly strength, and we attain all virtues, those stable habits ordered towards the good that leads to Heaven.
Being Christian means being like Christ; to be like Christ we must know Him, and when we want to know someone, we always go “to the heart”. On the Cross, our Savior opened His Heart and gave it to the Church – to each one of us. Nowhere else is God’s love revealed to us more perfectly than in the Heart of Christ, and from there flow three especially precious treasures: The Eucharist, the Priesthood, and Mary. These three gifts are special revelations of His Love, and devotion to them leads us more deeply into His Heart. In a world that has corrupted the real meaning of love – something on full and terrible display in our culture during the month of June – Christ offers His Heart as a refuge, strength, and healing. Through devotion to the Sacred Heart, we worship “the love with which God, through Jesus, loved us, and exercise our own love by which we are related to God and to other men…[this devotion] is directed towards the love of God for us in order to adore it, give thanks for it, and live so as to imitate it; it has this in view: that we bring that love, by which we are bound to God and to the rest of men, to perfect fulfillment by carrying out daily more eagerly the new commandment which the divine Master gave to His Apostles: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you” (HS, 107). This is how we are called to live as Christians, and through our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we learn what that love means, and receive strength to live it out in all that we do. May God bless you in the week ahead and may Mother Mary lead you more deeply into the Sacred and Merciful Heart of Jesus. I remain,
Affectionately yours in Christ,
Fr. Hess
