“Behold the Heart that has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify to Its love…”
~ Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
Sacred Heart
(A poem by Adelaine)
You hold gallons of humanity
Of broken lives and miseries
In depths that drown the wells of sin
Immersing all in clemency.
Your Heart is not a reservoir
Retained for few and hidden far
From tainted beggars’ pleading reach
But torrents only choice can bar.
I seek no place to drink but here
Where Mercy’s window swallows fear
As Heaven’s curtain draws aside
While Love is pierced by heartless spear.
With every droplet of the Blood
That lands forsaken on Calvary’s mud
Let me paint praises to this Heart
That rains in pain a healing flood.
Your dewfall cleanses, making new
This soul whose stains put pain on You
Imploring now, by Mercy’s stroke
A heart that Love has torn in two.
No longer sealed upon its own
Enclosed instead on Mercy’s throne
Where living waters take and give
His heart hides mine within its home.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus began with devotion to the five Wounds: the holes in His hands, His feet and His pierced heart. In the seventeenth century, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the “Apostle of the Sacred Heart” received visions of Jesus in which He spoke of His unrequited love for humanity and revealed the symbol of His Sacred Heart, asking her to make His goodness known to all. Jesus asked that the Feast of the Sacred Heart be celebrated each year on the Friday after Corpus Christi, in reparation for the ingratitude of men for the sacrifice He had made for them:
“I feel this more than all that I suffered during My Passion. If only they would make Me some return for My Love, I should think but little of all I have done for them and would wish, were it possible, to suffer still more. But the sole return they make for all My eagerness to do them good is to reject Me and treat Me with coldness. Do you at least console Me by supplying for their ingratitude, as far as you are able.”
When we think of humanity as a whole, only a few of God’s children know the excess of His Merciful Love for us, the true character of His Heart. What a privilege it is to be among that chosen few! We see the hole in His Heart, out of which flowed blood and water as a fountain of mercy for us. We see the Cross planted in His Heart – the ignominious tree on which He hung to redeem His sons and daughters. We see the crown of thorns with which we crowned God – the derision He chose to suffer to save us from eternal fire. We see the flames of divine love clamouring to be spent. Beholding this Heart of Mercy, may the Holy Spirit lead us to return love for Love, consoling the One who is an abyss of consolation for all who draw near to Him.