June – The Month of the Sacred Heart

If you want to know the true devotion to the Sacred Heart, you must study the Passion. See the agony in 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 spitting, 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 this is little, and why? Because there is 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 how 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 very thought, word, and deed, a message of love and reparation to that loving, outraged Heart. Let us try to think of how He loves us, and let us ever remember that it is on those hearts on which He has lavished His 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 a language He understands, and which He will not forget. Let us try to make others realize this love and remember the great secret of influence over souls is – to make them know and feel that Jesus loves them, before we try to make them love Him, and in our work when we have to deal with souls who perhaps have very little intellect, but often a great deal of heart, this is the only means of doing real good. Let us when we come down before Jesus in the Tabernacle bring a lively faith in His presence and in His loving, suffering Heart. – Father Dignam, S. J.