The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Devotion to the Sacred Heart is devotion to a Person. When the Church lifts up the Heart of Jesus, she is pointing to the living heart of God made man, taken as the sign of a love that is real, particular, and poured out for each of us. The God who flung the stars into place chose to beat with a human heart, and He gave that heart away completely.

Before you ask Him for anything, begin by adoring that love. Kneel for a moment before the Heart that beats for you, and let the first word of this novena be worship. Everything you will ask in the days ahead rests on this: that the One you approach loves you already.

The Church calls the Heart of Jesus a burning furnace of charity. His love is no mild sentiment. It is a fire He longed to set loose in the world, a love strong enough to go to the Cross and patient enough to wait for us through every delay and every refusal.

Our own love is often a small and flickering thing, quick to cool. Ask the Sacred Heart today to lend you His fire, to burn away what is cold and selfish in you, and to kindle a love that can warm the people around you. A heart held near the furnace does not stay cold for long.

To St. Margaret Mary, the Lord showed His Heart wounded most of all by the indifference of those He loved, and still He asked for love in return rather than punishment. This is the mercy at the center of the devotion. The Sacred Heart is patient with sinners and generous toward all who turn back to Him.

Bring Him your sins today, without hiding and without despair. He already knows them, and He calls sinners precisely because they are the ones who need a physician. The shame that keeps a man away from God is itself a thing the Heart of Jesus wants to heal.

Among the promises the Lord made through St. Margaret Mary was this, that those who place their trust in His Heart will not be lost. The devotion lives or dies on confidence. The Sacred Heart asks to be trusted, especially by the man who feels he has run out of strength.

Whatever you are carrying as you pray these days, the work, the family, the fear you mention to no one, you do not have to carry it alone or solve it first by yourself. Hand it over. The Heart that opened on the Cross is wide enough to hold all of it.

When the soldier opened the side of Christ, blood and water flowed from His Heart, and the Fathers of the Church saw in that stream the sacraments by which the Church is born and fed. The Heart of Jesus is a fountain, and it was opened so that we could drink.

This is why the devotion has always led men back to confession and to the Eucharist. Grace is not an idea to admire from a distance. It is poured out, and there is a fountain you can actually go to. Let this novena draw you toward the sacraments, where the Heart of Jesus gives Himself.

The Sacred Heart is shown wounded, crowned with thorns, and opened by a lance, because love that goes all the way costs something. He was pierced for our offenses, and He asks, gently, that we look on what our sins have done and answer it with love rather than turning away.

This is what the tradition calls reparation. It is the love of a friend who, seeing the one he loves wounded, draws closer instead of fleeing. Offer the Lord today some small act of love to console His Heart, a sacrifice, a prayer, or a kindness given for His sake.

Among the promises of the Sacred Heart is one dear to every father and head of a household: I will give peace in their families, and I will bless every home where the image of My Heart is honored. The Lord wants to reign not only in our souls but at our tables and in our marriages.

Bring your home to Him today. Name the tensions, the strained relationships, and the worries you carry for the people under your roof. Ask the Heart of Jesus to be the peace of your household, and consider giving Him His rightful place there by honoring His Heart in your home.

The Lord promised to console those who come to His Heart in their troubles and to bless them in their undertakings. The devotion has never been a flight from real life. It is a way of bringing the whole of life, the burdens and the hopes and the daily work, under the goodness of a Heart that wills our good.

Lay before Him today the things you are anxious about and the things you are working toward. Ask His blessing on your efforts and His comfort in your trials, and then let His peace, which is stronger than your worry, stand guard over your heart.

The novena ends where the devotion has always pointed, in consecration. Having adored His love, asked His mercy, and brought Him our trust, our homes, and our needs, we give Him the one thing He has always wanted, which is the heart itself. He asks to be more than a guest in a corner of your life. He asks to be its King and center.

Give Him everything you have prayed for these nine days, and give Him yourself with it. A heart consecrated to the Sacred Heart loses nothing. It finally finds the One it was made for.