From Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque’s letter to Mother de Saumaise, on December 22, 1689:
The devotion to the Sacred Heart must not be forced. He wants to insinuate Himself into hearts gently and sweetly through charity, like oil, or rather, like a precious balm, whose perfume and unction spread gently. Let us not worry if we do not see our desires for the glory of this divine Heart accomplished at once. He permits delay only because of the pleasure He takes in seeing our eagerness and longing for that increase. Also so that the fervor which comes from this holy devotion may last longer, by His granting us little by little the things we desire.
Nonetheless, He urges me constantly to make Him known and loved. I offer myself to Him for this, so that He may sacrifice and immolate me as His victim for the accomplishment of all His designs, according as His love and good pleasure dictate.
Ah, my dear Mother, why are we not aflame with the divine fire He came to cast upon the earth? Yes, we must be consumed with it. I want to make a practice of loving Him and of being consumed in these holy flames. Let us love this Sacred Heart which will be the altar on which we offer our sacrifices.
Oh, how powerful is this Heart to appease the wrath of God aroused against us by our many sins! They have drawn down upon us all these calamities that afflict us. We must pray lest still worse things befall us. Prayer in common has great power with this Sacred Heart, which will turn aside the rigors of divine justice and place Itself between God’s wrath and sinners and obtain mercy for them.
From the encyclical “Dilexit Nos” (“He Loved Us”) by Pope Francis:
In the deepest fiber of our being, we were made to love and to be loved. For this reason, when we witness the outbreak of new wars, with the complicity, tolerance, or indifference of other countries, or petty power struggles over partisan interests, we may be tempted to conclude that our world is losing its heart. We need only to see and listen to the elderly women—from both sides—who are at the mercy of these devastating conflicts. It is heartbreaking to see them mourning for their murdered grandchildren, or longing to die themselves after losing the homes where they spent their entire lives. Those women, who were often pillars of strength and resilience amid life’s difficulties and hardships, now, at the end of their days, are experiencing, in place of a well-earned rest, only anguish, fear, and outrage. Casting the blame on others does not resolve these shameful and tragic situations. To see these elderly women weep, and not feel that this is something intolerable, is a sign of a world that has grown heartless.
Whenever a person thinks, questions, and reflects on his or her true identity, strives to understand the deeper questions of life and to seek God, or experiences the thrill of catching a glimpse of truth, it leads to the realization that our fulfillment as human beings is found in love. In loving, we sense that we come to know the purpose and goal of our existence in this world. Everything comes together in a state of coherence and harmony. It follows that, in contemplating the meaning of our lives, perhaps the most decisive question we can ask is, “Do I have a heart?”
….Saint Bonaventure tells us that in the end we should not pray for light, but for “raging fire”. He teaches that, “faith is in the intellect, in such a way as to provoke affection. In this sense, for example, the knowledge that Christ died for us does not remain knowledge, but necessarily becomes affection, love”.
Along the same lines, Saint John Henry Newman took as his motto the phrase “Cor ad cor loquitur” (“Heart speaks to heart”), since, beyond all our thoughts and ideas, the Lord saves us by speaking to our hearts from His Sacred Heart. This realization led him, the distinguished intellectual, to recognize that his deepest encounter with himself and with the Lord came not from his reading or reflection, but from his prayerful dialogue, heart to heart, with Christ, alive and present. It was in the Eucharist that Newman encountered the living Heart of Jesus, capable of setting us free, giving meaning to each moment of our lives, and bestowing true peace: “O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus, Thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and Thou beatest for us still… I worship Thee then with all my best love and awe, with my fervent affection, with my most subdued, most resolved will. O my God, when Thou dost condescend to suffer me to receive Thee, to eat and drink Thee, and Thou for a while takest up Thy abode within me, O make my heart beat with Thy Heart. Purify it of all that is earthly, all that is proud and sensual, all that is hard and cruel, of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the time may have power to ruffle it, but that in Thy love and Thy fear it may have peace.”
….In the end, that Sacred Heart is the unifying principle of all reality, since “Christ is the heart of the world, and the paschal mystery of His death and resurrection is the center of history, which, because of Him, is a history of salvation” (Saint John Paul II, L’Osservatore Romano, 30 June – 1 July 1998, p. 7).
All creatures “are moving forward with us and through us towards a common point of arrival, which is God, in that transcendent fullness where the risen Christ embraces and illumines all things” (Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’). In the presence of the Heart of Christ, I once more ask the Lord to have mercy on this suffering world in which He chose to dwell as one of us. May He pour out the treasures of His light and love, so that our world, which presses forward despite wars, socioeconomic disparities, and uses of technology that threaten our humanity, may regain the most important and necessary thing of all: its heart.
“O my Lord, You know my great desire to become a victim of Your Sacred Heart, [to be] wholly consumed by the fire of Your holy love. May Your Heart be the altar upon which my holocaust will be made, and You be the priest Who will consume this victim by the flames of Your burning love.” –Saint Teresa Margaret Redi of the Sacred Heart
