Faith Filled Friday: Feast of the Sacred Heart

Today is the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, one of the most wonderful concepts within Catholicism.  It’s a rather complicated, and you can read the doctrinal explanation from New Advent’s Catholic Encyclopedia.  But I was rather surprised it’s not just a Roman Catholic notion, as you can read in the Wikipedia entry on the Sacred Heart.

 

There are three reasons that come to mind that makes the Sacred Heart of Jesus special to me. 

First, my blogger friend Ros, otherwise known as Shadowlands, who I gave a little memorial blog entry after I found out she passed away, once said something that has since stuck with me and which I do myself now.  She said that whenever she felt a particular deep hurt, a hurt that stings to the heart, she envisions herself physically with her hand taking that hurt out of her heart and placing it in Jesus’ sacred heart.  There it would get soothed and withered and disappear.  It really does help the hurt.

 

Second, one of St. Catherine of Siena’s mystical experiences, which I recounted in my second blog on her biography by Sigrid Undset, was having her heart replaced with Christ’s heart.  Here’s the key passage from the bio.  

 

A day or two later Catherine had been to Mass in the Capella della Volte and remained in church to pray along after all the others had left. Suddenly Christ appeared to her; in His hand he carried a human heart, deep red and sparkling with light. When Catherine saw how it shone she fell on her face. But again Our Lord opened her left side, and put the burning heart into her body. “My dear daughter, the other day I took away your heart. To-day I give you My heart, which will give you eternal life.”

 

That experience has special meaning to all of us.  We are all called to have our hearts replaced with Christ’s heart.  This journey in life is a process where our prideful, self-centered hearts are transfigured into Christ’s ever-loving sacred heart.

 

 

Third, whenever I think of God the Father’s love for his creation, and especially me, I envision beams of light going through Jesus’ heart out to the world and ultimately to me.  And I envision a reverse light emanating from the world and me back through Christ’s heart to God.  Christ’s heart then becomes for me the intermediary between where love flows both ways up and down.  Here’s a fragment of one of my prayers.

Precious God, I love you with all my heart, with all soul, with all my being, as I know you love me through the Sacred Heart of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.