Our Morning Offering – 7 June – “The Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus” – First Friday of the Sacred Heart
Act of Love to the Sacred Heart of Jesus By Servant of God Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val (1865-1930)
Reveal Thy Sacred Heart to me, O Jesus and show me Its attractions. Unite me to It forever. Grant that all my aspirations and all the beats of my heart, which cease, not even while I sleep, may be a testimonial to Thee, of my love for Thee and may it say to Thee – “Yes, Lord, I am all Thine” the pledge of my allegiance to Thee, rests forever in my heart and will never cease to be there. May Thou accept, the slight amount of good that I do and be graciously pleased, to repair all my wrong-doing – so that I may be able, to bless Thee, in time and in eternity. Amen
St Gottschalk and Companions (Died 1066) Lay Missionary Martyr St Justus of Condat St Landulf of Yariglia St Lycarion of Egypt
Venerable Matt Talbot (1856 – 1925) (born Matthew Talbot) – Layman, Ascetic, Mystic – known as the “Saint in Overalls” and “the Workers’ Saint” disciple of Eucharistic Adoration and the Blessed Virgin – Patron of Struggling and Recovering Addicts and Alcoholics and many addiction treatment programs, retreats and centres throughout the world bear his name. On 6 November 1931, Edward Joseph Byrne, Archbishop of Dublin, opened a sworn inquiry into the alleged claims of holiness of the former dock worker. He was declared Venerable in 1975. The Matt Talbot Story: https://anastpaul.com/2017/06/07/saint-of-the-day-7-june-venerable-matt-talbot-ofs/
St Meriadoc I of Vannes St Meriadoc II of Vannes St Odo of Massay St Potamiaena of Alexandria the Younger St Quirinus of Cluny Martyr. No other information has survived.
St Robert of Newminster O.Cist. (c 1100–1159) English Priest, Abbot, Apostle of the poor, Miracle-worker. He was one of the Monks who founded Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, another at Newminster, Northumbria and 3 other Monasteries Robert ruled and directed the Monks at Newminster for 21 years. St Robert’s Life: https://anastpaul.com/2021/06/07/saint-of-the-day-7-june-saint-robert-newminster-o-cist-c-1100-1159/
St Sergius of Cluny St Vulflagius of Abbeville
Martyrs of Africa – 7 Saints: A group of seven Christians who were Martyred together. No details about them have survived except the names – Donata, Evasius, Guirillus, Januaria, Privata, Spisinna, Victurus. The precise location in Africa and date are unknown.
Martyred in Córdoba, Spain: Habentius of Córdoba Jeremiah of Córdoba Peter of Córdoba Sabinian of Córdoba Wallabonsus of Córdoba Wistremundus of Córdoba
Thought for the Day – 6 June – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
Little Extracts from The Adorable Heart of Jesus
On the Nature of the Devotion (Part Two)
Having made these observations, it will be easy to give a clear and precise idea of the nature of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. We may define it in this manner.: “It is an exercise of religion which has, for its object, the Adorable Heart of our Lord, inflamed with Love for men and outraged by the ingratitude of these same men and, for its motive, the honouring of this Divine Heart , by rendering It all the homage which love and gratitude can inspire and, more particularly, to offer reparation for the insults It receives in the Sacrament of love.”
Let us explain this definition and try to put it in the clearest light possible. … The Devotion of which we speak here, concerns His Heart. Certainly, this Divine Heart is not, in Itself, an object less worthy of the Devotion of the faithful, than the others we have named and, no objection can be brought to bear against the Devotion to the Heart which would not apply equally and with even more force , to the Devotion to the Wounds, the Cross, the Name of Jesus, as anybody will admit who is capable of judging in these matters.
But, that we may leave no occasion of error to simple, uninstructed persons and that , we may forestall any doubts which may arise, we will add another observation to those we have already made.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus in this Devotion must not be considered apart from those things, both spiritual and Divine, with which it is indissolubly connected. We must, on the contrary, consider it as intimately united to the Soul and to the Person of our Lord, full of life, of feeling and of knowledge.
From this follows a consequence worthy of remark which is, that all the honours which are paid to this Adorable Heart, do not terminate precisely and solely in the material Heart ; they terminate equally and indivisibly, in the Soul and the Person united to this Heart – as the honours rendered to a living man are not actually confined to the body or the soul but comprise, the two together, forming thus a whole which is honoured without any division.
From this we deduce two other consequences – one is that we may reasonably and in a very accurate sense say, of the Heart of our Lord that It Loves, Suffers, is Afflicted, Outraged etc. And the other is, that we may address to this Divine Heart, prayers, acts, affections, praises, in a word, all that can be addressed to the Person – since, in fact, it is the Person united to this Heart Who really receives them. This has been overlooked by those who have seemed to disapprove of this Devotion towards the Heart of Jesus and, who thus appeared to have regarded this Divine Heart as only an inanimate and insensible portion of the Body of Jesus Christ, setting aside the Intelligent and spiritual adjuncts which are united to It, as we have already observed.
One Minute Reflection – 6 June – “The Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus” –St Norbert O. Praem. (c 1080-1134) Bishop, Confessor, Founder of the Premonstratensians –The Octave Day of Corpus Christi – 1 Corinthians 23-29, John 6:56-59 – Scripture search here: https://www.drbo.org/
“He who eats this Bread shall live forever.” – John 6:59
REFLECTION – “Since it was the Will of God’s Only-Begotten Son that men should share in His Divinity, He assumed our nature in order that, by becoming Man. He might make men gods . Moreover, when He took our flesh. He dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered His Body to God the Father, on the Altar of the Cross, as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed His Blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed, from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us forever, He left His Body as food and His Blood as drink, for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine.
O precious and wonderful banquet which brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law, it was the flesh of calves and goats, which was offered but here, Christ Himself, the True God, is set before us as our food! What could be more wonderful than this? No other Sacrament has greater healing power; through it, sins are purged away, virtues are increased and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all, may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no-one can fully express the sweetness of this Sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which, we renew the memory, of that surpassing love for us, which Christ revealed in His Passion.
It was to impress the vastness of this Love, more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful, that our Lord instituted this Sacrament at the Last Supper. As He was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after celebrating the Passover with His disciples, He left it as a perpetual memorial of His Passion. It was the fulfilment of ancient figures and the greatest of all His Miracles, while, for those who were to experience the sorrow of His departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.” – St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Dominican Priest and Theologian, Doctor of the Church (An excerpt from On the Feast of the Body of Christ).
PRAYER – To God, Who made blessed Norbert, Thy Confessor and Bishop, a brilliant preacher of Thy Word and through him, enriched Thy Church with a new religious family, grant, we beseech Thee, that by his prayerful intercession and Thy help, we may be able to do what he has taught us by his words and deeds. Through Jesus Christ, Thy Son our Lord, Who lives and reigns with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen (Collect).
O HEART of love, I place all my trust in Thee; for though I fear all things from my weakness, I hope all things from Thy mercies. – Ejaculation of Saint Margaret Mary – Indulgence 300 Days, Everytime – Raccolta 180St Pius X, 3 June 1908.
Our Morning Offering – 5 June – “The Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”
O Heart of Jesus! By St Gertrude the Great (1256-1302)
Sanctity of the Heart of Jesus, consecrate my heart; Providence of the Heart of Jesus, watch over my heart; Unchangeableness of the Heart of Jesus, strengthen my heart; Purity of the Heart of Jesus, purify my heart; Obedience of the Heart of Jesus, subjugate my heart; Amiability of the Heart of Jesus, make Thyself known to my heart; Divine attractions of the Heart of Jesus, captivate my heart; Riches of the Heart of Jesus, do ye suffice for my heart; Floods of grace and blessing which flow from the Heart of Jesus, inundate my heart. O Heart of Jesus! be Thou my joy, my peace, my repose in this world and in the next. O Heart of Jesus! adored in Heaven, Invoked on earth, feared in hell, Reign over all hearts, Reign throughout all ages, Reign forever in celestial glory. Amen
Our Morning Offering – 4 June – “The Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus” – Within the Corpus Christi Octave
Daily Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Prayers to the Sacred Heart 1936 – 15th Edition, Dublin
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, filled with infinite love, broken by our ingratitude and pierced by our sins, yet loving us still, accept the Consecration we make to Thee, of all that we are and all that we have. Take every faculty of our souls and bodies, only day by day draw us, nearer and nearer to Thy Sacred Heart, and there, as we shall hear the lesson, teach us Thy Holy Way. Amen
Our Morning Offering – 3 June – “The Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”
O DIVINE Heart of JESUS Pope Leo XIII Indulgence 100 Days, Once a day Raccolta 167 13 March 1901.
O DIVINE Heart of JESUS, grant, we beseech Thee, eternal rest to the souls in purgatory, the final grace to those who shall die today, true repentance to sinners, the light of the faith to pagans and Thy Blessing to me and mine. To Thee, O most compassionate Heart of JESUS! I commend all these souls and I offer to Thee, on their behalf, all Thy merits, together with the merits of Thy most Holy Mother and of all the Saints, Angels and all the Sacrifices of the Holy Mass, Communions, prayers and good works, which shall be accomplished today, throughout the Christian world. Amen
Thought for the Day – 2 June – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900)
Little Extracts from The Adorable Heart of Jesus
On the Nature of the Devotion
If we desire to enter into the designs of Jesus Christ, we must not seek this idea of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart, outside the revelation itself, from which it derived its origin and, since it has pleased this amiable Saviour to give an explanation Himself on this subject, it is from His own words that we must gather the real idea which we seek. It will not be difficult, since Jesus Christ has spoken very clearly. … But , we must here also allude to a circumstance which is essential to the nature of our Devotion and, that is, that the Love with which the Divine Heart of Jesus is inflamed, must be considered as a Love despised and wounded by the ingratitude of men. This circumstance is expressed in these words which our Lord adds : “ And in return, I receive, for the most part, only ingratitude, contempt, irreverence, sacrileges, in the indifference which they manifest towards Me in the Sacrament of Love.”
The Heart of Jesus must, therefore, here be considered under two aspects – on the one hand, as burning with Love for men and, on the other, as cruelly wounded by the ingratitude of these same men. These two motives united, must excite in us two feelings, both of which are equally essential to Devotion to the Sacred Heart, that is love which corresponds to Its Love and grief , which would leads us to make reparation for the insults it endures through the hard-heartedness of men!
Finally, the practices prescribed by Jesus Christ in fulfilment of this double duty, are laid down in these last words : “I ask of thee that the first Friday after the Octave of the Blessed Sacrament, should be dedicated as a special festival to do honour to My Heart, by devout acts of reparation and satisfaction, by communicating, on that day, to expiate the indignities it received whilst exposed on the Altar.” Jesus Christ contents Himself with explaining here the principal exercise of the devotion which He desires to establish but, it is not the only practice which must be employed, to do honour to the Divine Heart. There are many others which will be mentioned further on.
1 June – Devotion for June – THE MONTH OF THE MOST SACRED HEART of JESUS
In 1899, Pope Leo XIII Consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Since then, his successors have exhorted the faithful to turn to the Sacred Heart and make Acts of personal Consecration. They have also begged the faithful to offer prayers and penances to the Sacred Heart in reparation for the many sins of the world.
In his Encyclical on the Sacred Heart entitled Haurietis Aquas (“You Will Draw Waters”) Pope Pius XII notes that the genesis of the devotion to the Sacred Heart lies in the Covenant of Love from the Old Testament. He writes that “in the New Testament, the love which breathes from the Gospel, from the letters of the Apostles and the pages of the Apocalypse, all portray the Love of the Heart of Jesus.” He is linking this devotion to the Old Testament which was brought to life in Christ in the New Testament.
In the early 17th Century, Devotion to the Sacred Heart was given considerable attention in the preaching and writings of St John Eudes, known as “The Apostle of the Two Holy Hearts.”
St Francis (1567-1622) in his “Treatise on the Love of God,” lays out the foundation of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart. St Francis would greatly influence St Jane Frances de Chantal who was the Foundress of the Sisters of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the very Order which St Margaret Mary Alacoque VHM. (1647-1690), the Visionary of the Sacred Heart, would later join.
Our Lord appeared to St Margaret Mary, perhaps close to forty times. The first apparition occurred in the Visitation Chapel at Paray-le-Monial on 27 December 1673. The last apparition occurred less than two years later in June 1675. She saw His heart engulfed in flames and surrounded by thorns and heard His gentle voice:
“Behold this Heart which has so loved men that It spares nothing…to prove to them It’s love. And, in return, I receive from the greater part of men, nothing but ingratitude, by the contempt, irreverence, sacrileges and coldness with which they treat Me in this Sacrament of Love.
I thirst, I burn with a consuming desire for men’s love and I find none to quench this thirst, according to My wish, by making any return of love.”
From her cloister, St Margaret Mary promoted the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, First Friday Devotion, The Twelve Promises and the Holy Hour of Reparation.
The Sacred Heart Enthronement desires to follow in the footsteps of Saints who came before and hold true to the basic request of Jesus to St.Margaret Mary, “I will bless the home in which the Image of My Sacred Heart shall be exposed and honoured.”
Sweet Heart of my JESUS, Make me love Thee ever more and more! –300 Days Indulgence Once a day, Plenary Once a month – Blessed Pope Pius IX – 26 November 1876
Our Morning Offering – 1 June – “The Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus” – Within the Octave oif Corpus Christi
O Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament By The League of the Sacred Heart 1929 (Ireland)
O Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, overflowing with gentleness, tenderness and charity, I bury in the abyss of Thy Mercy, all my iniquities and all my negligence. I offer Thee my labours and my sufferings, my sorrows and my miseries, I recommend to Thee my life and my death. Solace my doubts Sweet Jesus, calm my fears and grant, that day-by-day, I may become more united to Thy Sacred Heart, learning Thy love and Thy holiness. Amen
AnaStpaul 
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