My Thoughts on 11/06/2021

Our parish priest Fr Joe Sullivan came one evening when I was a boy and consecrated our family to the Sacred Heart. I still have the framed certificate on the wall in my bedroom. It read;

“The Scared Heart of Jesus has been solemnly enthroned in this house on the 22nd November 1961 by the consecration to Him of all the members f the family, present or absent, living or dead. By this act of love and reparation we desire to recognise Jesus as our Lord and Master. We accept in their entirety the Commandments of God and his Holy Church”

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Scared Heart. This devotion and feast arose from the experience and visions of Margaret Mary Alacoque. In 1675, during the octave of Corpus Christi, Margaret Mary received the vision which came to be known as the “great apparition.” Jesus asked that the modern Feast of the Sacred Heart be celebrated each year on the Friday following Corpus Christi, in reparation for the ingratitude of men for the sacrifice which Christ had made for them. Margaret wrote “He disclosed to me the marvels of his Love and the inexplicable secrets of his Sacred Heart.” Christ emphasised to her His love — and His woundedness caused by Man’s indifference to this love.

“Profound meditation on the pierced heart of Jesus on the cross becomes a source of fruitful and very timely theological reflection. The Evangelist who expressly emphasises the love of Christ in His passion and death, seems to want to call our attention to this love as the keystone of His redemptive work by showing us the open side of Jesus, from which gushed forth blood and water, those mystical symbols of the gifts of the Spirit to the Church.”

Fr Pedro Arrupe S.J.