I would like us to continue to reflect on the devotion and the mystery of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially because last Friday we have celebrated in our Roman-Catholic Church the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The feast of the Sacred Heart was approved for specified dioceses by Clement XIII in 1765 and extended to the whole Church by Pius IX in 1856. In 1889 Pope Leo XIII elevated it to the rank of first class, and through an encyclical letter in 1899 dedicated the whole Catholic world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart was also an essential component of Pope St. John Paul II’s hopes for the “new evangelization” called for by the Church.
“For evangelization today,” he said, “the Heart of Christ must be recognized as the heart of the Church: It is He who calls us to conversion, to reconciliation. It is He who leads pure hearts and those hungering for justice along the way of the Beatitudes. It is He who achieves the warm communion of the members of the one Body. It is He who enables us to adhere to the Good News and to accept the promise of eternal life. It is He who sends us out on mission. The heart-to-heart with Jesus broadens the human heart on a global scale.”
Understood in the light of the Scriptures, the term “Sacred Heart of Jesus” denotes the entire mystery of Christ, the totality of his being, and his person considered in its most intimate essential: Son of God, uncreated wisdom; infinite charity, principal of the salvation and sanctification of mankind. The “Sacred Heart” is Christ, the Word Incarnate, Savior, intrinsically containing, in the Spirit, an infinite divine-human love for the Father and for his brothers.
Excerpted from the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy.
Viva Cristo Rey!
Download: 2021-06-13 St Pats Bulletin