Novena to the Sacred Heart, Day 2

A Pure Heart

Jesus, in your purity of heart,

You show us that our love

must be untainted by anything unworthy.

Yours was an authenticity with which none could compare.

Your love is true without self-interest or other intentions.

You see each person as they truly are

and not for what You could gain from them.

Your love wasn't conditional on what you could gain;

Your love was simple and untainted, clean and umblemished.

Help us to put aside self-interest, secondary motives,

and motives that are not noble.

May we be mindful to watch and pray.

When we experience the purifying fire of your love,

may we not shrink back,

but rather examine ourselves

to help unearth the impurities

that hinder our ability to love.

Help us with the fire of your love.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus,

pure and clean of heart,

make my heart like unto Yours.

Some scripture texts for further prayer and meditation:

Matthew 5:8
Luke 7:36-50

Novena to the Sacred Heart, Day 1

A Compassionate Heart

Jesus,

in your commpassion You showed us what it means

to share in the sufferings of others.

You did not idlely stand by

but worked to alleviate their sufferings.

You were not indifferent to the situations of others,

but empathized with and shared in their pain and sorrow.

You put their needs above Your own.

Take away our selfishness, preoccupation,

and hardness toward others' difficulties

and give us a heart as compassionate as Your own.

Sacred Heart of Jesus,

full of compassion for others,

make my heart like unto Yours.

Some scripture texts for further prayer and meditation:

Matthew 14:12

Mark 8:2-3

1 Corinthians 12:26



A Heart Like His

Last year for my birthday I received an excellent book:  A Heart Like His, Meditations on the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Father Thomas D. Williams.  Father Williams takes his reader through thirty expressions of the Sacred Heart as found in scripture, particularly the Gospels.   From these I have selected nine to create a series of reflections on the Sacred Heart in the form of a novena, and I am indebted to Father Williams as the source of the quotes and scriptural references as well.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart often linked only to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, but it goes back further to the mystics like St. Mechtild (d. 1298) and St. Gertrude the Great (d. 1302).  St. Jean Eudes (1602-1680) honored it with an Office and established a feast for it.

In a letter to the Most Rev. Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach on May 15, 2006, Pope Benedict XV writes:  devotion to the Sacred Heart “has an irreplaceable importance for our faith and for our life in love.”  He goes on further:  it is by deepening our relationship with the Heart of Jesus that “we will be able to understand better what it means to know God’s love in Jesus Christ, to experience him, keeping our gaze fixed on him to the point that we live entirely in the experience of his love, so that we can witness it to others.”

John Paul II tells us that when we speak of the heart, we refer to "our whole being, all that is within each one of us." The heart represents "all that forms us from within, in the depths of our being. All that makes up our entire humanity, our whole person in its spiritual and physical dimension."

With that said, tomorrow we will begin our Novena.

I cherish a lively hope...

I am opposed by the uncertainty of my future,

but I cherish the lively hope of seeing my dreams fulfilled,

because the Lord cannot place thoughts and desires

in a person's soul and not really intend to fulfill them,

to gratify these longings which Our Lord alone has caused.

~St. Padre Pio

Prayer to the Holy Trinity

Glory be to the Father,
Who by His almighty power and love created me,
making me in the image and likeness of God.

Glory be to the Son,
Who by His Precious Blood delivered me from hell,
and opened for me the gates of heaven.

Glory be to the Holy Spirit,
Who has sanctified me in the sacrament of Baptism,
and continues to sanctify me
by the graces I receive daily from His bounty.

Glory be to the Three adorable Persons of the Holy Trinity,
now and forever.

Amen.

I sought...

I sought my soul,

my soul I could not see;

I sought my God;

but God eluded me;

I sought my neighbor

-- and I found all three.

~ William Barclay

The value of persistent prayer...

The value of persistent prayer

is not that God will hear us,

but that we will finally hear God.

~William McGill