The Sacred Heart for many is something unknown. For some, a devotion only for old ladies.
For others an obsolete representation.
In reality, the heart is one of the most used symbols by young people and not only young people: in messages, on social networks, or in photos, make the heart with joint thumbs and index fingers or in songs, poems, movies, memes. Hearts are everywhere.
The heart is love. The heart is loving, caring, suffering or rejoicing with someone.
The heart is life, it is the strength to live, it is friendship, it is the family.
Heart are the children and all the people we love.
This is why the Sacred Heart is the heart of God.
The heart of Jesus, true man, true God, is the heart of the one who gave us life, who guards us, who desires for us a life of good and full happiness. It is the Sacred Heart. The Sacred Heart that died and Risen for us.
It no longer beat after death on the Cross. He overcame death and returned to beat for us.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart is reminding us of so much love and giving love to God even for those who do not love him and reject the love of God or have forgotten the love of God.
And God himself has promised many Saints that whoever welcomes God’s Love, who consecrates himself (it is a way of saying that our life too becomes even more sacred by uniting with that of God), is committed, is deeply united Sacred Heart will receive countless graces.
He is represented with a pierced heart that bleeds. But it only bleeds for love.
It is crowned with thorns to remind us of the Passion of Jesus and has a cross that stands out.
All just for love. It is a living heart. And it comes to bring us new life. Eternal Life.
It is a concrete symbol. A joyful symbol. Even in fatigue our heart is not alone.
We are not alone. God is with us.
(Paolo Botti)
Here are some thoughts on this great devotion to be rediscovered especially, but not only, in the month of June which is the month historically dedicated to the Sacred Heart.
“The essential elements of devotion to the Sacred Heart therefore belong permanently to the spirituality of the Church throughout its history, since from the beginning the Church has turned her gaze to the heart of Christ pierced on the cross from which blood and water flow, symbols of the sacraments that make up the Church; and, in the heart of the Incarnate Word, the Christian Fathers of the East and West saw the beginning of the whole work of our salvation, fruit of the love of the divine Redeemer whose pierced heart is a a particularly expressive symbol. The much desired civilization of love, the Kingdom of the Heart of Christ, can be built on the ruins accumulated by hatred and violence! ”[John Paul II, Message to the Jesuits, 5 October 1986]
Showing his Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque one day, Jesus said:
“Behold the Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love … But what I feel most keenly is that it is hearts which are consecrated to Me, that treat Me thus. Therefore, I ask of you that the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi be set apart for a special Feast to honor My Heart, by communicating on that day, and making reparation to It by a solemn act, in order to make amends for the indignities which It has received during the time It has been exposed on the altars. I promise you that My Heart shall expand Itself to shed in abundance the influence of Its Divine Love upon those who shall thus honor It, and cause It to be honored.”
The saint describes His Sacred Heart with the following words: “The Divine Heart was presented to me in a throne of flames, more resplendent than a sun, transparent as crystal, with this adorable wound. And it was surrounded with a crown of thorns, signifying the punctures made in it by our sins, and a cross above signifying that from the first instant of His Incarnation, […] the cross was implanted into it […].”
