Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The Sacred Heart And The Eucharist

The Sacred Heart and the Holy Eucharist


by John A. Hardon, S.J.

The importance of associating the Holy Eucharist with devotion to the Sacred Heart can scarcely be overemphasized. Our instinctive Catholic sense tells us that no devotion is worth cultivation unless it is grounded on the solid dogmas of revelation and its roots go back to the tradition of the Apostolic Church. The question before us, therefore, is whether and to what extent the cultus of the Sacred Heart, which in its modern form is only three hundred years old, actually rests on that sublime mystery of love which the Son of God instituted at the Last Supper when He gave us the Sacrament of the Altar. The answer to this question will determine in great measure our attitude toward the Sacred Heart, whether we shall consider it just another devotion, based on some private revelations given to a saintly nun in the seventeenth century, or whether we should associate it with an essential doctrine of the Catholic Faith, outside of which there is no salvation.

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