Saints of the Sacred Heart

Your heart is restless. It wants more than this world can give. It longs for a love that will not fail, a peace that will not pass away, a home that cannot be taken from you. You know this—perhaps you have always known it—even when you try to silence the longing with lesser things.

In the seventeenth century, Jesus revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque the answer to that longing. He showed her his Sacred Heart: aflame with love, wounded by ingratitude, yearning for souls who would console him through their devotion. What she saw was not simply a vision but an invitation. Christ was opening his heart to her—and through her, to us—saying in effect: This is what you have been seeking. This is where you belong.

The Sacred Heart has become a home for many saints over the ages. In this episode, I want to share with you, briefly, three saints who fostered a devotion to the Sacred Heart. I add this to a previous episode where I shared a longer reflection on St. Margaret Mary Alacoque herself. 

These reflections are taken from my new book, The Rule of the Sacred Heart: Finding Rest in a Restless World. I crafted this book as a 33-day devotional, leading us, step by step, toward intimacy with Christ in his Sacred Heart and responding to his mercy in our lives. Over the 33 days, we meditate on biblical scenes, probe the revelations of the Sacred Heart to Christ’s saints, and give our minds and hearts little by little to the Sacred Heart each day, all while taking on small but intentional devotions.

What I share with you today are short introductions to three saints that accompany the devotions in the third week of the devotional journey. I hope you enjoy.

Follow-up Resources:

• The Rule of the Sacred Heart: Finding Rest in a Restless World by Leonard DeLorenzo (OSV)
• “St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Devotion to the Sacred Heart,” podcast episode via Church Life Today
• “Drawing close to feel the beating of the Sacred Heart,” by Leonard J. DeLorenzo, article via Our Sunday Visitor

Church Life Today is a partnership between the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame and OSV Podcasts from Our Sunday Visitor. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.

Transcript

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From the McGrath Institute for Church Life and OSV Podcast, this is Church Life Today. I'm Leonard DiLorenzo. Your heart is restless. It wants more than this world can give. It longs for a love that will not fail. A peace that will not pass away. A home that cannot be taken from you. You know this. Perhaps you have always known this. Even when you try to silence the longing with lesser things. In the seventeenth century, Jesus revealed to Saint Margaret Mary Alakok the answer to that longing. He showed her his sacred heart, aflame with love, wounded by ingratitude, yearning for souls who would console him through their devotion. What she saw was not simply a vision, but an invitation. Christ was opening his heart to her and through her to us, saying, in effect, this is what you have been seeking. This is where you belong. The Sacred Heart has become a home for many saints over the ages. In this episode, I want to share with you briefly three saints who fostered a devotion to the Sacred Heart. I add this to the previous episode where I shared a longer reflection on Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque herself. These reflections today are taken from my new book, The Rule of the Sacred Heart: Finding Rest in a Restless World. I crafted this book as a 33-day devotional leading us step by step toward intimacy with Christ in his sacred heart and responding to his mercy in our lives. Over the 33 days, we meditate on biblical scenes, probe the revelations of the sacred heart to Christ's saints, and give our minds and hearts little by little to the sacred heart each day, all while taking on small but intentional devotions. What I share with you today are short introductions to three saints that accompany the devotions in the third week of the journey. I hope you enjoy. Our first saint, Saint Louis de Montfort. Known above all as the great apostle of Marian devotion, Saint Louis de Montfort was also a fervent lover of the sacred heart and helped carry this devotion into new corners of the church. In the congregation he founded, the Missionaries of Mary, he encouraged love for the heart of Jesus through sacred images and even more deeply through his words of prayer and song. Saint Louis poured his love for the heart of Jesus into verse, hundreds of lines that flow with tenderness and adoration. His devotion to Mary was never apart from his devotion to Christ. In fact, Mary was the sure path that led him most deeply into the mystery of divine love. In one of his hymns he sings, Heart of my God, glorious heart, it is only you whom I adore. In adoring you I honor the heart of the Queen of Heaven. For Saint Louis, the heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary cannot be separated. So he writes again From the blood of Mary's heart all aflame, the heart of Jesus had been formed. And yet, again he declares, in praising this adorable heart, I praise in due proportion the heart of his admirable mother. So close is their union. Through these words of praise, Saint Louis reveals how his devotion to the sacred heart is born of his love of Mary. Jesus' precious heart first radiates within Mary. To love her, therefore, is to be drawn toward the fire of her son's merciful love. Mary's heart shares in her son's warmth, and it becomes a guide to his sacred heart. Mary's son is the Son of God, in whom divine tenderness embraces the flesh and blood of our humanity. Like Saint Margaret Mary, Saint Louis discovers that his call is for more than admiration, his call is for a response. Love, adoration, consecration, and reparation are for Louis the four movements of a heart united to Christ. In company with Mary's heart, the sacred heart of Jesus burns with compassion for sinners and beats urgently for our salvation. To dwell in Christ's heart is to share his zeal, his sorrow, his joy. By devotion to Mary, Saint Louis beckons us to the Blessed Mother, who, in turn, unites us to her son, heart to heart. We might join Louis daily in seeking the sacred heart of Jesus through something like a morning offering, a prayer such as this, which is offered in the devotional journey of this book for days eighteen through twenty. The morning offering goes like this. O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary I offer you my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day, in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of your sacred heart, for the salvation of souls, the reparation of sins, the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and all apostles of prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month. Amen. Our second saint of the Sacred Heart is Saint Faustina Kowalska. Saint John Paul II proclaimed the great Polish nun and mystic as quote, the great apostle of divine mercy in our time. Saint Faustina Kowalska was deeply devoted to the sacred heart of Jesus, through which and from which all mercy flows. She knew that the sacred heart is not merely an object of contemplation, but a living source of mercy that must flow through us to a world grown cold. When the Lord revealed himself to Saint Faustina, he showed her his pierced heart as the wellspring of divine mercy. The devotion to divine mercy that emerged from these revelations and her subsequent diary is strongly tied to the devotion to the sacred heart. The blazing love that Margaret Mary beheld in the furnace of Christ's heart, Faustina saw flowing forth as rivers of mercy. The contrary images of fire and water indicate the unfathomability of the mystery of Jesus' heart. This mystery exceeds even the boundaries of opposing elements. It is also a sign of the wonder of opposing elements meeting in this sacred heart, in which Jesus absorbs ingratitude and returns compassion. This is the heart from which blood and water gushed on Calvary, the fount of mercy for poor sinners, the very same sinners who spurn the Lord. For Saint Faustina, mercy was not an abstract attribute of God, but the very action of divine love moving toward human sin and suffering. She beheld Christ's heart and understood that mercy is love that acts. When love encounters suffering, it does not turn away. It bends down, it enters in, it heals. This is what she saw radiating from the sacred heart, not passive pity, but active, redemptive love that pursues us in our misery and raises us out of our sin. In her poetic prayer, Saint Faustina captured the movement from beholding this love to being transformed by it. As she writes, O eternal love, you command your saken image to be painted and reveal to us the inconceivable fount of mercy. You bless whoever approaches your rays, and a soul all black will turn into snow. O sweet Jesus, it is here you establish the throne of your mercy to bring joy and hope to sinful man. From your open heart, as from a pure fount, flows comfort to a repentant heart and soul. May praise and glory for this image never cease to stream from man's soul. May praise of God's mercy pour from every heart, now and at every hour, and forever and ever. Saint Faustina teaches us that to behold the sacred heart is to behold mercy itself. The rays that stream from Christ's heart, red for blood, pale for water, are the same flames of divine charity that Margaret Mary felt burning within her. But Faustina helps us see even more. These flames are mercy in action. They do not simply warm, they transform. They do not merely console, they heal. A soul all black turns to snow under the rays of this merciful heart. The image of divine mercy, Jesus with rays streaming from his sacred heart, bearing the inscription, Jesus, I trust in you, is another way of presenting the sacred heart to the world. It is the same heart, the same love, the same urgent desire to save souls from perdition. Both images call us to behold, to trust, and to become instruments of the mercy we receive. The Lord told Saint Faustina that mercy must flow through our hearts to others, particularly through works of mercy. As she recorded in her diary, Jesus instructed Faustina, quote, I demand from you deeds of mercy, which are to arise out of love for me. You are to show mercy to your neighbors always and everywhere. You must not shrink from this or try to excuse or absolve yourself from it. The heart that beats within us with a spark of divine charity must beat outward in mercy, or it has not truly learned the rhythm of Christ's own heart. Deeds of mercy are that rhythm. We become like the one we love by the practice of loving others as he loved us. A daily prayer that accompanies this reflection with Saint Faustina in days twenty one through twenty three of the devotional goes like this. O Jesus, you did not remain distant from our suffering, but entered into it completely. You fed the hungry, healed the sick, and consoled the sorrowful, as you gave your whole life for us. Form my heart after yours, that I may love as you love, not merely with words but with deeds. Give me eyes to see where mercy is needed, hands to offer it, and a heart courageous enough to enter into suffering with others. May every work of mercy I perform allow love to flow from your heart through mine, consoling you and bringing your warmth to a cold world. Amen. Our third and final saint of the Sacred Heart for today is Saint Padre Pio. In the twentieth century, a humble Capuchin friar in southern Italy became one of the Sacred Heart's most fervent apostles. Saint Padre Pio lived this mystery not only in prayer, but in his very flesh. For fifty years, from nineteen eighteen until his death in nineteen sixty eight, he bore the visible wounds of Christ's passion, the stigmata. His hands feet inside bled continuously, drawing countless souls to behold the suffering love of the Savior made visible. But before the world could see his wounds, Padre Pio had already been pierced invisibly in his heart. On august fifth, nineteen eighteen, while hearing confessions, he experienced transverberation, a mystical piercing of the heart by divine love. He described it like this. The invisible wound preceded the visible stigmata by six weeks. Like Margaret Mary before him, Padre Pio learned that to love the sacred heart means sharing not only in his ardent charity, but also in his redemptive suffering. Padre Pio understood what John, the beloved disciple, and Margaret Mary had discovered that love and suffering cannot be separated in the sacred heart of Jesus. The Lord who burns with love for sinners is the same Lord who endures the coldness of human ingratitude. To rest upon the breast of the Savior, as Padre Pio did daily in his celebration of Mass and in his hours before the Blessed Sacrament, is to feel both the warmth of divine charity and the wounds inflicted by our rejection of that love. Every day Padre Pio prayed the Davida to the sacred heart. This prayer became his instrument of intercession. Countless people asked Padre Pio for his prayers. He responded by taking their intentions into the furnace of the sacred heart through his novena. Day after day he knocked at the door of divine mercy, confident in the promises that would not pass away. Many who asked experienced miraculous healings and conversions through the power of the sacred heart, to which he brought every petition. Padre Pio's famous counsel, pray, hope, and don't worry, came not from easy optimism, but from a life soaked in suffering and prayer. He spent countless hours in the confessional, often from before dawn until late at night, hearing the sins and sorrows of thousands of souls. He celebrated Mass with such intensity that witnesses said watching him was to watch a man utterly consumed by love. Through it all, the wounds in his hands bled, the pain in his side persisted, and yet he continued to pray the novena to the sacred heart day after day for a world in need of mercy. In his devotion to the sacred heart, Padre Pio manifested what one spiritual writer described as quote mystical union in a faithful imitation, a loving reparation, and confident prayer. He was united to Christ's heart through the wounds they shared. He imitated Christ's heart through his tireless service to souls. He offered reparation to Christ's heart for the ingratitude that wounded it. And he prayed with confidence to Christ's heart, trusting in the promises Jesus had made. When we pray in the company of Padre Pio, we join in the same vulnerability and confidence. We join our petitions to his, our trust to his, our hope to his. We knock, we seek, we ask, as he did. And we trust, as he trusted, that the heart that could not refuse his prayers will not refuse ours. On the days surrounding this reflection on Padre Pio are offered to pray parts of the novena to the sacred heart, some of which sound like this on a daily basis. Oh my Jesus, you have said, truly I say to you, ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. Behold, I knock, I seek, I ask for grace. Sacred heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you. O my Jesus, you have said, truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Behold, in your name, I ask the Father for grace. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you. O my Jesus, you have said, truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Encouraged by your infallible words, I now ask for grace. Sacred heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you. O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the inflicted, have pity on us, miserable sinners, and grant us the grace which we ask of you through the sorrowful and immaculate heart of Mary, your tender mother and ours. Amen. Friends, thank you for joining me on this time or in this time spent with these three saints of the sacred heart, joined uh and following our reflections on Saint Margaret Mary Allocoque in a previous episode. Today we spent a little bit of time with St. Louis de Montfort, with Saint Faustina, and with St. Padre Pio. Again, all of these little reflections were taken from my new book, The Rule of the Sacred Heart, Finding Rest in a Restless World, a 33-day devotional available now from our Sunday visitor. Thanks as always to all of you for joining us on Church Life today.

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