Meditations on the Sacred Heart

Consider this meditation: DEVOTION to the Sacred Heart consists in honoring, with a worship of adoration, love, gratitude, imitation, and reparation, the heart of Jesus, which, united hypostatically to the vVord, is the heart of God, the source and fulness of graces, the perfect model of all virtues; and whose goodness, greatness, amiability, and generosity are alas! unrecognized on the part of men. This devotion, like that of the words of the cross, the sacred lance, the crown of thorns, and a multitude of others, has a double object: the one sensible and material, able to be perceived by the senses, or represented by the imagination; the other wholly spiritual, but having the closest relations with it. The sensible object is that heart, which living and animated was the organ of the feelings of our divine Savior, and which reminds us of them, as being their most direct, truest, and most expressive symbol. The spiritual object 'consists in those very feelings, the interior dispositions of Jesus Christ! his love for his Father, his love and tenderness for men, his joy, his sorrows, his wishes. . . . . . . The Blessed Margaret Mary gives us to understand and distinguish- this double object, when she says: " The divine Master assured me that he felt singular pleasure in seeing the sentiments and love of his heart honored under the emblem of a heart of flesh, as he had shown me." The Church speaks in the same way in her office, where we read: "The Sovereign Pontiff, Clement XIII, has authorised the feast of the Sacred Heart, so that the faithful may, under that symbol, celebrate with more devotion and fervor, the charity of Jesus Christ suffering and dying for the salvation of the human race, and instituting, in memory of his death, the sacrament of his body and his blood. While giving glory to the Sacred Heart of Jesus we celebrate the memory of the principal favors of his love towards us." Let us admire here the simplicity and fitness of the means Jesus Christ has wished to make choice of. The heart is in fact the most natural emblem of love, goodness, and whatever there is of great, generous, and heroic in the soul: moreover, it receives the impression of all the feelings we experience. 'What Christian, then, could by meditation place himself in presence of the heart of Jesus Christ without recalling the sentiments of charity, tenderness, and compassion, with which that divine Savior was filled. "The heart of Jesus," says Pere Gautrelet, "represents, and reminds us of the sacred humanity, whose noblest organ it was, and the divine pardon which penetrated it, raised it to the dignity of a divine heart, and imprinted the seal of divinity on all its movements and sentiments; the honor paid to Jesus Christ can be formalised in that we pay to his adorable heart." The end of devotion to the Sacred Heart, is to acknowledge, in a worthy manner, the love of Jesus for us; it is therefore to imitate the virtues of which he gives us an example to repair the crimes and ingratitude of men towards him, particularly in the adorable Eucharist. What Christian would not strive to realize that sublime end! Ah! how can we think of the wonders and the excess of the charity of the Son of God; how can we recall to mind that that love was the cause of the humiliations of his Incarnation, the labors of his life, the gift which he has given us of himself in his sacrament, the sacrifice he consummated on Calvary, and not be drawn to love him with the greatest love! All that is brought before us by devotion to the Sacred Heart. Therefore, whoever embraces its spirit and practice, cannot but share the sentiments of St. Liguori who exclaimed: " O all amiable heart of my Jesus, ' heart worthy to possess all hearts, heart resplendent with the flames of the purest love! O consuming fire, consume all my being, and give me a new life, a life of grace, a life of love." ....