This year, the novena to the Sacred Heart begins on Thursday, June 7th and ends on Friday, June 15th, the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
So let’s pause and ask ourselves: Am I really loved to the extent that Jesus claims to love me? If the answer to this question doesn’t come easily, I propose the following spiritual exercise. I ask you to call to memory a person or persons by whom you have felt loved. Then, let’s remind ourselves that these special people in our lives are “loving” us through their humanity: their hands, their gestures, their heart. Let us now recall that Jesus, the Son of God, did indeed become human and can love us just as much as others do. Jesus “worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart – He loved.” (CCC #470; GS 22 § 2) Now, although Jesus’ heart is human, He loves you with a divine intensity, an unconditional, faithful, free, fully invested presence and spirit. Can you see this?
We are His beloved! It was on the feast of St. John the evangelist, the beloved disciple, that Jesus appeared for the first time (Dec 27, 1673) to St. Margaret Mary. She was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament, she writes in her autobiography, when she began to feel overcome by a divine presence. She defines the feeling as being “wholly penetrated” to the point that she lost awareness of herself and her surroundings. Jesus appeared and exclaimed that His Sacred Heart is so inflamed with Love (for you) that He cannot contain the flames of charity from within. Next, He asked Margaret Mary for her heart which she “begged Him to take.” And the unthinkable happened! Margaret Mary saw Jesus placing her heart in “His own Adorable Heart” and her heart began to be “consumed in this great furnace.” Jesus then withdrew it and Margaret Mary could see her heart and Jesus’ heart united in the form of “a burning flame.”
Jesus said, “my well-beloved, I give you a precious 
token of My love,having enclosed within your side a little spark of its glowing flames, that it may serve you for a heart and consume you to the last moment of your life; its ardor will never be exhausted, and you will be able to find some slight relief only by bleeding. Even this remedy I shall so mark with My Cross, that it will bring you more humiliation and suffering than alleviation. Therefore, I will that you ask for it with simplicity, both that you may practice what is ordered you and also to give you the consolation of shedding your blood on the cross of humiliations. As a proof that the great favor I have done to you is not imagination, and that it is the foundation of all those which I intend further to confer upon you, although I have closed the wound in your side, the pain will always remain. If before, you have taken only the name of My slave, I now give you that of the beloved disciple of My Sacred Heart.”
St. Margaret Mary explains that His favor “lasted for a long time, during which I knew not whether I was in
heaven or on earth, I remained for several days, as it were, on fire and inebriated (with divine love) and so
completely out of myself, that I had to do myself violence in order to utter a single word. The effort I had to
make in order to join in recreation or to take food was so great that it was all I could do to overcome myself,
which was a cause of considerable humiliation to me. I was not able to sleep,because of the pain of the
wound, which is so precious to me; it produces such heat within me that it burns and consumes
me alive. I also felt such a plentitude of God, that I could not explain myself to my Superioress, as I should
have wished, regardless of any suffering and confusion which the recital of these favors might cause me.
I would rather have accused myself of my sins before the whole world than speak of these graces on
account of my extreme unworthiness. It would have been a great consolation to me had I been permitted
to read aloud my general confession in the refectory,in order thereby to make known the depth of
corruption which is in me, so that none of the favors I received might be attributed to me.”
(http://www.ewtn.com/library/christ/firstfri.txt)
Today, this Love is available to us. We are able to experience this very overwhelming experience which Margaret Mary felt by opening ourselves up to God’s daily graces. Times of solitude, reading the bible, gratitude and praise, and acts of Mercy are effective means to grow in closer union with God. This is what we strive for at The John Paul II Center. Even through our imperfections, we work to be the hands, the feet, and the heart of Jesus as we attend to those whom God has sent to our doors. We understand that one of the main issues in our modern world is that we have simply lost knowledge of what love is and what love looks like. Today, I encourage you to follow a merciful approach to life and love and forgive those who God has brought into your life. Always strive to become increasingly aware of their precious dignity as the images and children of God that they are. Being merciful in this way will in turn place us in a more intimate communion with our Savior and help us to understand the treasures hidden in Our Savior’s heart, His radical love for you and I.
Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
I. O my Jesus, you have said: “Truly I say to you,ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.”Behold I knock, I seek and ask for the grace of……(here name your request)
Our Father…Hail Mary….Glory Be To the Father….Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
II. O my Jesus, you have said: ”Truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” Behold, in your name, I ask the Father for the grace of……. (here name your request)
Our Father…Hail Mary….Glory Be To the Father….Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
III. O my Jesus, you have said: “Truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away.” Encouraged by your infallible words I now ask for the grace of….. (here name your request)
Our Father….Hail Mary….Glory Be to the Father…Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender Mother and ours.
Say the Hail, Holy Queen and add: St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, pray for us.
States: “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence… It is a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization with all of its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations.” (Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 9, 1978)
obtain the graces of love, faith, and hope. But moreover, in this confrontation, Mary – the mother of Mercy – is putting on her gloves a well. Let’s remember that she is our mother too who is going into battle. She is the Mother of Mercy.
exceptional way — as no one else.” (Encyclical Dives in Misericordia, section 9) She received what theologians called “prevenient” grace. This comes from the latin prae-venire, which means “to come before.” In other words, even before we ask for it, and quite apart from the fact that we do not deserve it, and have not earned it in the least, God graciously takes the initiative and comes to our aid. We see a reflection of it in a parent’s love to a child. Mary did not merit God’s Mercy and she could not have asked to be immaculately conceived. God took the initiative and fashioned her to be the created masterpiece of His Mercy in the world. The Immaculate Conception is really the supreme manifestation of God’s prevenient, unmerited mercy. In “Veritatis Splendor (1993),” we read that our Mother Mary literally brought Divine Mercy into our world. John Paul II, the author of such encyclical, expresses that God needed to reveal His Mercy and this brought forth the incarnation. Please noticed the beautiful rendering of God’s desire to save us when the Pope uses the word “need” implying God, who is perfect Love and needs nothing, did want to have us by His side and save us from the evil that pushes us the other way.
other. If Mary is our mother, my neighbour is also my brother. When I act wrongly against him, I’m acting wrongly against my very self. When I love my brother, I am loving my very self. We really are one body. Let’s ask Mary to pray that we might receive God’s graces to spiritually evolve above all the limitations that we put on ourselves. Let’s each of us be an apostle of Mercy.
them with all of our hearts, it is difficult to share their suffering. Why? Because we don’t want them to suffer; because we rather be in their place; because they don’t deserve it. And yet, we sit by their side and struggle through it because we love them. A friend told me once that she found herself in that situation when a relative was diagnosed with cancer. She would bath this person, care for this person, cried and prayed with this person. Today, I am in shock when I hear from her own lips that those were some of the happiest times in her life. She was the closest she could have ever been to her sick relative…and the presence of God, she exclaims, was so real that it was almost palpable.
fallen in love with Him. We give Him praises and we pray to Him. But now, your friend wishes that you spend time with Him during His Passion. I ask you – the reader – is Jesus asking you for a greater intimacy in your friendship with Him?
that we must ask for. That’s what contemplation is…it is not a moment of reflection; it is a moment where we ask for the graces we desire and God reveals Himself to us.
Adopting St. Ignatius’ description of his own soul, we can also claim to be pilgrims in journeying to a more intimate union with our Creator. Personally, I find great strength in this. To understand prayer from a pilgrim’s perspective allows me to be more conscious of the effects of original sin and redemption and how each of my actions could become a prayer. Moreover, I am reminded of the call to continuously surrender to God’s Will and the spiritual treasure found in humility.
Reconciliation is an important element of our spiritual growth. In the Diary of St. Faustina, we learn that we must forgive those who have offended us and that we must ask God to forgive us when we offend Him. Moreover, we must ask ourselves pardon when we offend our very selves. Reconciliation is necessary because it moves us into union with Love.
Angel to hold off for a few moments, and the world would do penance. But my plea was a mere nothing in the face of the divine anger. Just then I saw the Most Holy Trinity. The greatness of Its majesty pierced me deeply, and I did not dare to repeat my entreaties. At that very moment I felt in my soul the power of Jesus’ grace, which dwells in my soul. When I became conscious of this grace, I was instantly snatched up before the Throne of God. Oh, how great is our Lord and God and how incomprehensible His holiness! I will make no attempt to describe this greatness, because before long we shall all see Him as He is. I found myself pleading with God for the world with words heard interiorly. As I was praying in this manner, I saw the Angel’s helplessness: he could not carry out the just punishment which was rightly due for sins. Never before had I prayed with such inner power as I did then.
