SHJIHM :: The Sacred Heart :: A meditation on the Sacred Heart. ~ Runboard
"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing." -Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
Placating terrorists, meeting with dictators, compassion for murderers... but no humanity for the unborn... incredible.
OOT
A meditation on the Sacred Heart. If you want to know the true devotion to the Sacred Heart, you must study the Passion. See [in your mind, your imagination] the agony the garden, the keen cutting pain at the kiss of Judas, the cold shiver at the denial of Peter, the dragging with cords; the blow on the sacred face, the hitting, the shame, the foul words, yet all this was nothing, it was little to the longing pain of God seeking man's love. The scourging, the crowning with thorns, the heavy cross placed on those poor, torn, bleeding shoulders, yet even this is little, and why? Because these still a greater proof of love. "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." Study the Crucifixion: see there what God rejoiced to suffer, if so He only might give us proofs which we might believe of this longing for our love. He chose gladly, nay even willingly, to suffer all this; it was even less pain to Him than the coldness of our hearts.
The devotion to the Sacred Heart is simply this: Devotion to a Heart that loves and is not loved, that is lavishing favors on His loved ones, and is in return treated with coldness, ingratitude, and outrage.
So the two special objects of this devotion are love and reparation. And now bow are we to do this? It is easy enough. Do what your own heart dictates. Do what you think would please this dear Lord and avoid what would cause Him pain. The dictates of a loving heart are sure to be unerring in this respect to the Prisoner of Love in the Tabernacle.
We know that he is there whole and entire, that His Heart is there, loving, praying, and suffering. That every drop of His precious Blood, and every fiber of His sacred Heart are there. Oh, how He longs for love and sympathy; let us try to be filled with this thought, so that it may become part of our very life, and thus render our every thought, word, and deed, a message of love and reparation to that loving, outraged Heart. Let us try to think how He loves us, and let us ever remember that it is on those hearts on which He has lavished the greatest gifts and graces, that He inflicts the deepest wounds. It may be only a simple aspiration of love we can offer Him, a simple thought of Him in His loving abjection, a little flower laid at His feet, but whatever it is it speaks to Him in language He understands, and which He will not forget.
