The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

As we come up to the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation, the bishops of our nation yesterday, on the Eve of this Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, consecrated our nation to that Most Sacred Heart. They were going to do it today, but yesterday they were meeting in Florida for their spring convocation and wanted to do that consecration together. Today, we will join in that consecration after the Universal Prayers.

We’ve all heard the teaching that God is love.  And that’s a good thing to remember: I tell school students they should always remember that, and if they do, they’ll know quite a bit about our God.  God is love in its purest form, so pure in fact that it burns away all our imperfections and makes us new people, washed clean in the Blood of Christ.  True love wills the good of the other for the sake of the other, and God models that best by having sent His only Son to live our life and die our death and raise us to new life with him forever.

Today, the word “love” is tossed about in all sorts of ways.  Love can be construed as lust, or even affection, and real love isn’t any of that.  Real love isn’t bound by agendas, selfishness, or pride, and it is hard, no impossible, for us to avoid those things given our fallen human nature.  But, if we let Him, if we get out of his way, God will fill us with his grace, and give us love emanating from the Sacred Heart of Jesus that will fill our lives with love beyond measure.

And let’s be clear: God loved us first and loves us best.  He loved us into existence and sustains us in his love.  Because God is love, he cannot not love.  But our agendas, selfishness, and pride can certainly get in the way, and now is the time to root all of that out because our world, our communities, our families, our churches, and certainly our nation need our love.  Everyone needs to see the Sacred Heart burning in us, because this world, left to its own crime, sin, death, and blasphemy, is way too sad without it.

We are all broken and hurting and in pain, spiritually. We might ignore it, or offer it up, or worst of all, might try to mask it with alcohol or other addictions. But none of that really heals us. The only thing that really heals is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The same is true for our broken world.

We don’t trust God as much as we should; we don’t let God love us as much as we should. We want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, that’s such an American attitude: we want to take care of ourselves all by ourselves. Pope Francis said that God never gets tired of showing us mercy, it’s we who get tired of asking. And that’s so sad. We weren’t made for that. We were made to be cared for and to be loved so that we can take care of others and love them in the name of Christ.

God’s love is awesome. It doesn’t just cover our sins, it wipes them out, obliterates them so that they aren’t who we are any more. In the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, we find a love that is so pure and so powerful that it cannot be overshadowed by any kind of darkness, nor be snuffed out even by the grave.

But we absolutely have to let him love us, or we will miss it every time.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Quote of the day, 12 June: St. Teresa of the Andes

One day I was alone in my room. Because of my illness they spoiled me so that I couldn’t remain alone. I want to relate that one day Lucita (Lucía, her older sister) was sick and Elisea — a servant who took care of my dear grandfather — went to be with her.

Then I became envious and troubled and began to cry. My tearful eyes began to fix themselves on a picture of the Sacred Heart, and I heard a very sweet voice say to me:

“What! I, Juanita, am alone on the altar for your love, and you can’t even suffer for a moment?”

From that time, the dear Jesus spoke to me, and I spent entire hours conversing with Him. That’s the reason I enjoyed being alone. He went on teaching me how I should suffer and not complain, and about intimate union with Himself. Then He told me that He wanted me for Himself, that He would like me to become a Carmelite.

Ah! Mother, you can’t imagine what Jesus was doing in my soul. At that time I didn’t live in myself, it was Jesus who was living in me. I used to get up at seven o’clock, at the time Rebecca was going to school. I kept to a schedule for the whole day and I was doing all things with Jesus and for Jesus.

Saint Teresa of the Andes

Her intimate spiritual diary, 7

Griffin, M D & Teresa of the Andes, S 2021, God, The Joy of My Life: A Biography of Saint Teresa of the Andes With the Saint’s Spiritual Diary, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: Andrés López, The Sacred Heart of Jesus adored by angels, 1785, oil on copper. Peyton Wright Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. PI 4459B. Source: Ojeda, A 2005-2025, Project for the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art (PESSCA), viewed 16 August 2025, https://colonialart.org.

Quote of the day, 10 June: St. Thérèse

My God, I offer you all that I do today for the intentions and the glory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I want to sanctify every beat of my heart, my thoughts, and my simplest works by uniting them to his infinite merits. I want to repair for my faults by casting them into the furnace of his merciful love.

O my God! I ask you for myself and those dear to me the grace to fulfill perfectly your holy will and to accept for love of you the joys and sorrows of this passing life so that one day we may be reunited in Heaven for all eternity. Amen.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Prayer 10, Morning Offering

Note: On 10 June 1914, only nineteen years after the composition of this great prayer, Pope Saint Pius X signed the decree introducing the cause for the beatification and canonization of Thérèse of the Child Jesus that was submitted by the Diocese of Bayeux and Lisieux.

Thérèse, Gaucher, G & Kane, A 1997. The Prayers of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: The Act of Oblation, ICS Publications, Washington, DC.

Featured image: © Natalie Ewert (All rights reserved), used by permission.

Upon the Absent Beloved

I bless the hour, though it wounded me,
when first my eyes were taught to look and grieve,
and every joy I thought my heart could weave
was turned to golden thread of misery.

For Beauty came, and with her majesty
made captive all I had believed was free;
yet in that chain my soul learned how to see
the heaven hidden in captivity.

O gentle light, too distant to be mine,
you burn within me like a sacred flame;
I flee from you, yet follow all the same.

Thus love makes bitter water into wine:
I die of longing, yet I live by this—
the wound itself has taught my heart its bliss.

Author’s Note: My attempts at a poem in the style of Petrarch

Today: Scrubs - il ritorno

J.D. e Turk si ritrovano fianco a fianco per la prima volta dopo tanto tempo: la medicina è cambiata, gli specializzandi sono cambiati, ma la loro amicizia ha resistito alla prova del tempo. Nuovi e vecchi personaggi affrontano la quotidianità al Sacro Cuore, tra divertimento, emozioni e alcune...

Scrubs - The Return

J.D. and Turk run into each other side-by-side for the first time after a long time: medicine has changed, the residents have changed, but their friendship has stood the test of time. New and old characters face everyday life at Sacred Heart, among fun, emotions, and some...

#first #SacredHeart

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