Contemplative Haven

Both The Visitation and The Immaculate Heart of Mary are being celebrated over at “Consecrated to Mary” today.

And if you’ve never had an experience with angelic voices, there’s no time like the present!

In the recent Sacred Heart Reflection No. 2, we saw that the Heart of Jesus is a place of solitude, a place wherein we may enter and share in His prayer to the Father.

But prayer to the Father is only a portion of the divine activities of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

One day, when St. Gertrude was too ill to attend Mass and regretted missing the pleasure of hearing the sermon, Our Lord asked her if she would like Him to teach her Himself.  “Then Our Lord made her rest on His Heart, so that her soul touched it; and as she remained there some time, she felt two most sweet and admirable movements therein.”

Jesus explained that the two movements of His Sacred Heart operate the salvation of humanity, and that each of the two movements operate in three different manners:

The first movement of His Sacred Heart operates the salvation of sinners, in the following three manners:

1. Jesus converses continually with His Eternal Father, appeasing the Father’s anger against sinners and inclining the Father to show them mercy;
2. Jesus speaks to His Saints, excusing sinners to them and urging them to intercede with God for them, with the zeal and fidelity of a brother;
3. Jesus speaks to sinners themselves, calling them mercifully to penance and awaiting their conversion with ineffable desire.

The second movement of His Sacred Heart operates the salvation of the just, in the following three manners:

1. Jesus invites His Father to rejoice with Him, that He has poured forth His Precious Blood so efficaciously for the just, in whose merits He finds delight;
2. Jesus invites all the heavenly host to praise His providences, give Him thanks for all the benefits He has given them, so that He may grant them more in the future;
3. Jesus speaks directly to the just, giving them many salutary caresses and warning them to profit faithfully by them, from day to day and hour to hour.

Jesus then told St. Gertrude:

“As the pulsations of the human heart are not interrupted by seeing, hearing, or any manual occupation, but always continue without relaxation, so the care of the government of Heaven and earth, and the whole universe, cannot diminish or interrupt for a moment these two movements of My Divine Heart, which will continue to the end of ages.”

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, help us love You more, to the end of ages.

[From:  The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great] pgs. 227-228

To Jesus’ Heart All Burning/O Lord, I Am Not Worthy on IMEEM, by the Daughters of St. Paul, on their CD “Adoration”.

To Jesus’ Heart All Burning
(From: Prayers and Hymns in Honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 1943)

To Jesus’ Heart all burning,
With fervent love for men,
My heart with fondest yearning
Shall raise the joyful strain.

Chorus

While ages course along,
Blest be with loudest song
The Sacred Heart of Jesus,
By every heart and tongue.

O Heart for me on fire,
With love no man can speak.
My yet untold desire
God gives me for Thy sake.

Too true I have forsaken
Thy flock by wilful sin;
Yet now let me be taken
Back to Thy fold again.

 Prayer of Trust in the Sacred Heart

In all my temptations, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In all my weaknesses, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In all my difficulties, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In all my trials, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In all my sorrows, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In all my work, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In every failure, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In every discouragement, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In life and in death, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In time and in eternity, I place my trust in You,
O Sacred Heart of Jesus.

[From: Catholic Book of Prayers]

From my inbox, re WINGS (EWTN’s Weekly Electronic Newsletter):

“Also, in our saint lineup this month, comes EWTN’s extraordinary series on St. Teresa of Avila. You can enjoy the entire eight-part mini-series by tuning in 10 p.m. to 12 [midnight] ET from Wednesday, May 28 through Saturday, May 31. Dates and times for international showings are available at EWTN.”

How splendid!

“St. Gertrude was the herald of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus – that sacred cult which has become so dear and which has proved a fountain of consolation and graces to millions of Christians.  Our Divine Savior repeatedly disclosed to her His Divine Heart, the furnace of love, as though for her sake He could not await the time decreed by His eternal wisdom for the revelations of His Heart.  Devotion to the Sacred Heart was the special characteristic of St. Gertrude’s piety.  The mystery of mercy and love contained in that Divine Heart had been revealed to her by the Son of God Himself four centuries before it became an object of special devotion to the Church at large.  St. Mechtilde, a contemporary of St. Gertrude, and also a Benedictine, shared with St. Gertrude this glorious privilege.  Thus the Heart of Jesus had long been an object of adoration and love to the sons and daughters of St. Benedict when, in the 17th century, it pleased God to procure for It, through St. Margaret Mary, that more solemn worship with which It is now surrounded.” 

[Saint Gertrude the Great.  The Herald of Divine Love] pgs. 3-4 

After browsing through several of Merton’s journals and other writings, I was beginning to think I would never find anything concerning the Sacred Heart of Jesus, until I came upon this entry for the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 1947 in ”The Sign of Jonas”:

“I ought to know, by now, that God uses everything that happens as a means to lead me into solitude.  Every creature that enters my life, every instant of my days, will be designed to wound me with the realization of the world’s insufficiency, until I become so detached that I will be able to find God alone in everything.  Only then will all things bring me joy….Today I seemed to be very much assured that solitude is indeed His will for me and that it is truly God Who is calling me into the desert.” [pgs. 51-52] 

Upon first and even second reading I was disappointed; I said to myself, “Thomas, tell me about the Sacred Heart.  I want to know what you think about the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Why are you talking about yourself - it is the Feastday; why don’t you write about the Sacred Heart on the Feastday, instead of your own call to solitude?”  And then I realized he was writing about the Sacred Heart – about what It evoked for him and in him; about his experience of It. 

So I did a little more browsing – googling, to be exact, on the Sacred Heart and solitude.  There were some interesting things to be found; for example, The Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Theology of Benedict XVI, by Father Mark D. Kirby, O.Cist.  Father Kirby writes:

“At the core of devotion to the Sacred Heart is a passing-over into the prayer of Christ to the Father, a long apprenticeship to silence by which we begin to let the Heart of Christ speak in us and for us to the Father.” [emphasis mine]  Among other references, Father Kirby uses quotes from [then] Cardinal Ratzinger’s “Behold the Pierced One”, in which he helps us see the links between Jesus’ solitude, our own solitude, the Sacred Heart, prayer, and communication with the Father.

And so Thomas Merton truly is speaking of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as he describes his assurance of an even stronger calling to solitude, for it is not a call to solitude for the sake of solitude – it is a call to enter into the Sacred Heart, into the solitude of Jesus, and in Jesus’ solitude we share in prayer to the Father.    

From now until the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I would like to have a quiet, prayerful time here at the Haven.  I will be posting a few reflections on the Sacred Heart, which I hope will help in preparing our own hearts for that very special day.  Please consider it a little bit of retreat time; silence in the combox is just fine.

For anyone who is making the novena, Ann, of Poetry, Prayer and Praise posted a lovely, short novena prayer yesterday, and Aeternus has posted the full nine-days. If you are undecided, had not even thought about it, or have never made a novena, why not consider this a little nudge?  Go ahead.  Choose one.  Print it.  Pray it.  Spend some time in reflection, and visit the Blessed Sacrament if possible.

“Consider that the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ was no sooner formed in the womb of the Blessed Virgin than It was inflamed with an immense love for all men; but, as it is the property of love to wish to be always with those loved, a life of thirty-three years appeared to Him too short to satisfy the ardent desire which He had to be always with us…

Why does He return every day to this earth invisibly, if it is not because He cannot separate Himself from men and because His delights are to be with them?  Could we have ever imagined that Jesus Christ would love us to this excess?…

This desire must be very violent when it can continue to exist in Heaven, where all desires are satisfied.”

[The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, by Fr. John Croiset, S.J.] pgs. 258-259 

(it takes about 30 seconds to start)

And if you want to know why Owen (yes, he’s back, with a new blog!) will be riding his bicycle this coming August, just head on over here and find out all about the Ontario “Cycling for Children” fundraising bicycle tour.  Be sure to scroll down to see how dashing he looks in his Canadian t-shirt.

But Onionboy, 180 kilometres?  Better you than me! (Better anyone than me.  I don’t want to say I’m unbalanced, but…)

Good luck, eh?  I’ll be thinking of you training as I’m sitting on the back step swatting mosquitoes away from my ice-tea.

A headline caught my attention the other day:  “Canada’s worst neighbourhood”.  I won’t link to the article, but it got me to thinking that as dangerous and heartwrenching as the location mentioned may be, the fact of the matter is that the magazine got it wrong.  The most dangerous place in Canada to be living today is in the womb. 

As Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast stated in a recent message:  “Where is the most dangerous environment in Canada?  The answer is the womb!  Since the 1969 amendment to the Criminal Code concerning abortion, over three million Canadian children have been denied the right to life.” 

What do we do when faced with such staggering and brutal statistics?  Some are specifically called by God for active work in the Pro-Life cause; all of us, hopefully, are called to prayer.

In terms of sanctity of life, we are faced not only with the abortion epidemic, but with human embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, threats to the lives of the mentally or physically-challenged, abuse of the elderly, disregard of the homeless; the list goes on and on.  Everyday, as Catholics, we are called to protect and promote the sacredness of life.

One who has recently discerned the call to a more active involvement is Hush, of Mother of the Life Within.  Currently in formation as a Lay Missionary of the Gospel of Life, Hush’s blog will undoubtedly bring us many keen insights and beautiful reflections as the sanctity of life is explored, from conception to natural death.

We have all been adopted by the Father.  Mary is our Mother.  Everyone’s Mother.  There are no,

ORPHANS OF GOD
[A beautiful and powerful song.  This is not an abortion video.]