Contemplative Haven

In my post of May 15, 2009 “Seek Only The Divine Will“, I shared one of the DFOT videos (Segment 15, Message dated October 8/04, Vol. 10). About three-quarters of the way through, Anne says:

…and if you’re very quiet you can start to hear this beating of the Sacred Heart, this rhythmic beating constantly in your day, and then when you become used to the silence in your soul and this presence of the Lord, this beating of the Lord’s Heart, that’s all you hear, and nothing else really makes sense. And if you pull away from this rhythmic beating you get lonesome, you get anxious, you get frightened, and you’ll see those symptoms and immediately you’ll run back to Christ, and then you’ll get back into the rhythm of the beating of the Sacred Heart. Once you learn to move through your days accompanied by that rhythmic beating of the Lord’s Sacred Heart, you really find yourself freezing when you lose it.

I was listening to this again not long ago, and as I was reflecting on it, I felt compelled to go and get “The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus“, by Father John Croiset, S.J., off my bookshelf.  After reading several pages from different chapters, I fell upon these lines [emphasis is mine]:

What St. Gertrude has written on this subject has been frequently quoted; a few words will suffice to recall it. Her historian relates that the beloved Disciple, St. John, appeared to her on one occasion, and that she asked her heavenly visitor how it was that he, whose head had reposed on the breast of the Saviour at the Last Supper, kept complete silence about the throbbing of the adorable Heart of his Master; and she expressed regret to him that he had said nothing about it for our instruction. The saint replied to her: “My mission was to write for the Church, still in its infancy, something about the uncreated Word of God the Father, something which of itself alone would give exercise to every human intellect to the end of time, something that no one would ever succeed in fully understanding. As for the language of these blessed beats of the Heart of Jesus, it is reserved for the last ages when the world, grown old and become cold in the love of God, will need to be warmed again by the revelation of these mysteries.

[The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father John Croiset, S.J., pages 83-84]

In 2005, during the Year of the Eucharist, the Lord blessed me with an experience which I first wrote about here, and in more detail here.  As appalling as it may seem to some of you, even as a life-long Catholic and one who had always attended Catholic schools, I had never before heard the term “Eucharistic Heart” of Jesus.  In terms of faith and intellect since childhood, I knew that the Eucharist was the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, and had become even more aware of this through the Divine Mercy devotion.  Yet during 2005, when I might have been delving more fully into this as an outcome of celebrating the Year of the Eucharist, instead I found myself yearning after the Sacred Heart.  In His love and mercy, the Lord blessed me with a visual experience of His Sacred Heart and the white orb around it turning into a chalice and host, and allowed this knowledge to enter into my heart.  I was overcome to say the least, and although my heart fully accepted the truth of the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist as being one, my mind still wanted to know more…  (There is always so much to learn – for example, I didn’t even know there was a feastday of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus until just today when I read about it here on Father Mark’s blog, Vultus Christi).  I wanted to know more about it from a theological point of view; I wanted to know what the Church taught about it; I wanted objective confirmation that what I saw was what the Church actually taught.

I didn’t quite know where to begin at the time, but God works in mysterious and delightful ways.  Not long afterwards, I was at a rummage sale in our church hall.  As always, I headed immediately to the used-book table, where my eyes fell on a volume entitled, “The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood“, by Mother Louise Margaret Claret de la Touche (1868-1915).  I was drawn like a magnet to it and purchased it, even though I had never heard of the author and I am not a priest… [Note:  This is a truly remarkable book for everyone, not just priests.]

I will be quoting a lengthy excerpt here, but I think you will understand why.  My joy was indescribable, to know that the Lord would not only lead me to someone so quickly who wrote beautifully on the subject (very shortly afterwards I was also led to read Father John Hardon), but that He would do so in order to confirm the experience He had blessed me with:

The Sacred Heart is Jesus Christ whole and complete, God and Man, the Word Incarnate.  It is not only His Heart of flesh beating in His Breast, that meek and humble Heart, which we adore as the symbol or the organ of His incomparable love, It is His whole Being, divine and human; His Divinity, His Soul, His Body, each of the sacred Members; all His thoughts, His acts, His divine words….

The devotion to the Blessed Eucharist and the devotion to the Sacred Heart are two sister devotions.  They are so intimately united, they complete each other so perfectly, that the one calls for the other, as if necessarily….

If we have devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus we shall try to find It in order to adore It, to love It, to offer to It our reparations and our praises; and where shall we seek It, if not in the Blessed Eucharist where It is found living eternally?  If we love this adorable Heart, we shall desire to unite ourselves to It, for love seeks union; we shall wish to warm up our hearts again with the burning heat of this divine fire.

But to reach this Sacred Heart, to take hold of It, to put It in contact with our own, what shall we do?  Shall we scale heaven to carry away the Heart of Jesus triumphant in Its glory?  Doubtless, we shall not.  We shall go to the Blessed Eucharist, we shall go to the Tabernacle, we shall take the white Host, and when we have enclosed It in our breasts, we shall feel the divine Heart truly beating beside ours.

Devotion to the divine Heart infallibly leads souls to the Blessed Eucharist, and faith and devotion to the Blessed Eucharist necessarily lead souls to discover the mysteries of Infinite Love of which the divine Heart is the organ and symbol….

The Sacred Heart, the Blessed Eucharist, Love, are one and the same thing!

[The Sacred Heart and the Priesthood: Mother Louise Margaret Claret de la Touche, pgs. 183-185]

Your actions are good, but Paul’s chains were better, and all that was left of John in the end was his begging for love.  My demand becomes more and more urgent.  Nothing satisfies it, nothing is sufficient for it any more.  Nothing can close the vacuum that sucks you into itself, or soothe the tears which you see falling or cover over the disgrace on the Face spat upon and crowned with thorns.  And so you gather up your soul like a sudarium and raise it up towards me, and because I will be comforted by it, it will henceforth bear my imprint.  And, because my image clings to it, the soul also grasps my suffering now, and, by grasping it, joins me in bringing it to completion.  I do not spare the soul this sight.  There are not two possible sorts of love.

[Hans Urs von Balthasar, Heart of the World, pg. 187]

Note: Sudarium [Latin: sweat cloth]

Sudarium of Oviedo (claimed to be the cloth that was wrapped around the head of Jesus)

I am the vine, you are the branches. You have blossomed forth from me. Are you then surprised if a drop of my Heart’s blood trickles into your every thought and deed? Are you surprised if the thoughts of my Heart quietly infiltrate your worldly heart? If a whispering takes wing in you and day and night you perceive a low, beckoning call? To a love that wants to suffer, to a love that, together with mine, redeems? Are you surprised if the desire comes upon you to risk your life and all your strength and put them in jeopardy for your brothers? And to complete in your own body what is still lacking to my sufferings, what must still lack as long as I have not suffered my Passion in all my branches and members? For, to be sure, none of you is redeemed by anyone save myself; but I am the total Redeemer only united with each of you. Do you want to accomplish the great change with me and build up the Father’s Kingdom? Do you want to live my mind, the resolve of one who did not hold on to his form of God convulsively and clutchingly, but who broke it and emptied it out so that it began to flow as the courage to serve and as lowliness, became obedient even unto death on the Cross? Are you willing? For my work must be perfected in you and it will be brought to term only when my Heart beats in yours, only when all hearts, now submissive and docile, beat for the Father together in my Heart. Are you willing?

[Hans Urs von Balthasar, Heart of the World, pgs. 80-81]

You sense Time and yet have not sensed this Heart? You feel the stream of grace which rushes into you, warm and red, and yet have not felt how you are loved? 

 

 

You seek for a proof, and yet you yourself are that proof. You seek to entrap Him, the Unknown One, in the mesh of your knowledge, and yet you yourself are entrapped in the inescapable net of his might. You would like to grasp, but you yourself are already grasped. You would like to overpower and are yourself being overpowered. You pretend to be seeking, but you have long (and for all time) been found. Through a thousand garments you feel your way to a living body, and yet you insist you cannot feel the hand that nakedly touches your bare soul? You jerk about in the haste of your unquiet heart and call it religion, when in truth these are the convulsions of a fish struggling on shipboard. You would like to find God even though it be with a thousand sorrows: what humiliation that your efforts were but an empty fuss, since he has long held you in his hand. Put your finger to the living pulse of Being. Feel the throbbing that in one single act of creation at once claims you and leaves you free. Feel the throbbing that, in the tremendous outpouring of existence, at the same time determines the precise measure of distance: how you ought to love him as your most intimate friend and how you ought to fall down before him as the all-high Lord; how in one and the same act he clothes you out of love and strips you out of love; how, along with existence, he presses all treasures into your hand, and the most precious jewel of all: to love him in return, to be able to give him a gift in return; and how he nevertheless (not afterwards, in a second movement, in a further step) again takes away everything he has given so that you love not the gift but the giver and so that you know, even in giving, that you are but a wave in his stream.  

[Hans Urs von Balthasar, Heart of the World, pgs. 29-30]

[Painting: The Sacred Heart, by Odilon Redon, 1840-1916]

“Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary! that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, and sought thy intercession, was left unaided. Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother! To thee I come; before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word incarnate! despise not my petitions, but, in thy mercy, hear and answer me. Amen.”

For an explanation of why saints such as St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Anselm and others believed that our prayers to Mary are heard and answered more swiftly and assuredly than our prayers to Jesus may be, please see my post today at Consecrated to Mary.

Father Thomas Rosica, CSB has been the CEO of Salt and Light Television, Canada’s first national Catholic Television Network, since July 2003.   Among the many other accomplishments and appointments which you can read about in his bio at the link I’ve provided, Father was appointed a Consultor to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications in February, 2009, by Pope Benedict XVI. My husband had the privilege of hearing Father speak a couple of years ago at a local mens’ breakfast and was very happy that he had attended – Father Rosica was informative, humourous and very down-to-earth, sincere and humble, despite the many gifts he has received from the Lord and the great way in which the Lord is using him. I encourage you to watch more of Father’s (and other) videos on the Salt and Light TV YouTube Channel. 

In this video on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father Rosica speaks of the “cardiac arrest” which devotion to the Sacred Heart has suffered in today’s society, using the metaphors of heart disease and atrophy. He gives us a little of the history of the devotion, the promises made by Jesus for those who practise it, and inspires us to renew and deepen our devotion, both for ourselves and for the sake of our loveless society. Towards the end he speaks very powerfully of the selfless love we must show towards selfish people, and the reasons why God has placed such selfish people in our lives (which in turn causes me to reflect on the people who have been impacted by my own selfishness throughout the course of my life).

I wish you all a beautiful day today and ever onwards, with our hearts joined closely with our Mother Mary to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

When I was little I used to climb to the top of the bay tree beside our house to hide from everyone and be with my God.  His beautiful creation still provides peace and solitude, but I know now that He Himself is my hiding place, and most especially His Sacred Heart.

Our love should be a repentant love, a love that expiates infidelities past and present; a grateful love that renders thanks to our great Benefactor, the devoted Co-worker who labors without stint and without rest…

Such love will lead us to imitate the Most Adorable Trinity in the measure in which this is compatible with human weakness…

Temples wherein the thrice Holy One resides can never be too rich in beauty, too glorious in sanctity. It is remarkable that when our Lord wished to propose to us an ideal, a model of perfection, He pointed to God Himself: “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” At first sight this ideal does seem too high. But when we recall that we are the adopted children of God and that He lives in us in order to impress upon us His image and to collaborate in our salvation, then we realize that a high rank imposes obligations, noblesse oblige, and that it is no more than our plain duty to approach ever nearer the divine perfections. It is chiefly in view of the fulfilment of the precept of fraternal charity, the love of our fellows, that Jesus Christ demands of us to keep before our eyes this perfect model, the indivisible oneness of the Three Divine Persons: “That they all may be one, as thou, Father in me and I in thee; that they also be one in us.” What a tender prayer! St. Paul echoes it later on begging his dear disciples not to forget that since they are but one body and but one spirit, and since they have but one Father who lives in all just souls, they should preserve the unity of spirit in the bond of peace.

[Excerpt from: The Spiritual Life. A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical Theology, by the Very Reverend Adolphe Tanquerey, S.S., D.D., pgs. 53-54]