“Let us seek to make our life the life of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, well convinced that we must fill our hearts with the spirit of faith and charity if we want to do good to our souls, to alleviate the grave needs that surround us, and to relieve the many corporal and spiritual miseries of our neighbors”
Link (here) to read more from Fr. James Kubicki, S.J.
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Reviving the Sacred Heart
Friday, June 15, 2012
James Martin, S.J.
@ In All Things
If you read enough novels that feature Catholic characters, you’re bound to run across a Catholic family described as having an “oleograph of the Sacred Heart” hanging somewhere in their house (usually the kitchen, the dining room or the bedroom). It’s the lazy novelist’s shorthand for a certain kind of kitschy, OVERHEATED DEVOTIONAL STANCE that is supposed to “locate” for the reader the pious sensibilities of the (USUALLY INDIDENT OR UNEDUCATED) Catholic characters.
The Sacred Heart is one of the few devotions that have probably suffered from its artistic representations. Many of the images with which older Catholics are familiar are both kitschy and off-putting: a doe-eyed Jesus pointing to his heart, which is always pictured outside his body. THERE IS THE YUCK FACTOR (THE BLEEDING HEART SURROUNDED BY A CROWN OF THORNS IS OFTEN PICTURED IN GRUESOME DETAIL) and THE DISBELIEF FACTOR (there's no way that a carpenter from Nazareth looked so effeminate). It’s a tragedy that art has distanced many Catholics from a powerful way of looking at Jesus...
By the way, Fr. Claude wasn’t thought of too highly by his brothers either. Jesuit communities used to have house “historian”( I think that this should be plural) who would record the events of the community life. The final few days before Claude’s death were recorded as follows by the house historian: “NOTHING WORTHY OF NOTE.”)
Alrighty then, Padre.
THE MISERIES OF OUR NEIGHBORS, INDEED.
Center of Our Hearts
O God, what will You do to conquer the fearful hardness of our hearts? Lord, You must give us new hearts, tender hearts, sensitive hearts, to replace hearts that are made of marble and of bronze.
You must give us Your own Heart, Jesus. Come, lovable Heart of Jesus. Place Your Heart deep in the center of our hearts and enkindle in each heart a flame of love as strong, as great, as the sum of all the reasons that I have for loving You, my God.
O holy Heart of Jesus, dwell hidden in my heart, so that I may live only in You and only for You, so that, in the end, I may live with You eternally in heaven. Amen.
Bl. Claude la Colombiere
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