Sacred Heart Devotion

The Year of St. Joseph has been a bonanza for litany and consecration enthusiasts. 

Most recently church parishes gathered for a consecration to St. Joseph on May 1, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker and the beginning of the Month of Mary. Some Holy Family ties evident there.

Then 19 days following the birthday of the church, Pentecost, the third member of the Holy Family and the second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus, is honored in the feast of the Sacred Heart. The feast, which falls on a Friday, will be June 11 this year.

Devotions to the Sacred Heart began with the early church fathers. The writings of the Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries revived the devotions in the 11th century.
 

Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus 

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, to Thee I consecrate and offer up my person and my life, my actions, trials, and sufferings, that my entire being may henceforth only be employed in loving, honoring and glorifying Thee. This is my irrevocable will, to belong entirely to Thee, and to do all for Thy love, renouncing with my whole heart all that can displease Thee.

I take Thee, O Sacred Heart, for the sole object of my love, the protection of my life, the pledge of my salvation, the remedy of my frailty and inconstancy, the reparation for all the defects of my life, and my secure refuge at the hour of my death. Be Thou, O Most Merciful Heart, my justification before God Thy Father, and screen me from His anger which I have so justly merited. I fear all from my own weakness and malice, but placing my entire confidence in Thee, O Heart of Love, I hope all from Thine infinite Goodness. Annihilate in me all that can displease or resist Thee. Imprint Thy pure love so deeply in my heart that I may never forget Thee or be separated from Thee.
I beseech Thee, through Thine infinite Goodness, grant that my name be engraved upon Thy Heart, for in this I place all my happiness and all my glory, to live and to die as one of Thy devoted servants.

Amen.

– St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

In the 13th century St. Gertrude, a German Benedictine nun, had a vision on the feast of St. John the Evangelist in which Jesus allowed her to rest her head near the wounds of his side. Tradition said as she listened to Christ’s heartbeat she spoke to St. John and asked if he had heard the heartbeat at the Last Supper and if so, why had he not spoken about it? St. John answered the revelation was saved for later ages when the world would need the rekindling of its own cold heart.

The devotion slowly spread and received a boost in the 17th century when Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French Visitation nun, in several private revelations during the course of 18 months. He revealed to St. Margaret Mary the form of the devotion, chiefly receiving Communion on the first Friday of the month (known as “first Fridays”), eucharistic adoration during a holy hour on Thursdays and the celebration of the feast of the Sacred Heart on the Friday after the Corpus Christi Octave.

St. Margaret Mary initially received resistance to her efforts to follow the directions of Jesus in the visions, even within her own community. She was unable to convince theologians of the validity of her visions. 

The devotion was fostered by the Jesuits and Franciscans, but it was not until the 1928 encyclical “Miserentissimus Redemptor” by Pope Pius XI that the church validated the credibility of St. Margaret Mary’s visions of Jesus Christ in having “promised her that all those who rendered this honor to his heart would be endowed with an abundance of heavenly graces.” 

In 1856, Pope Pius IX established the feast of the Sacred Heart as obligatory for the whole church, to be celebrated on the Friday after Corpus Christi. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII consecrated the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in his encyclical “Annum Sacrum.”