Post #6052

IN FESTO SACRATISSIMI CORDIS JESU (Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus) Protestantism in the XVI century and Jansenism in the XVIII century have attempted to deface one of the essential dogmas of Christianity: the love of God toward all men. The Holy Spirit, who is spirit of love, and that leads the Church to oppose herself to the intrusive heresy, so that the Bribe of Christ, far from seeing her love for Jesus diminish, she felt Him grow more, she inspired the feast of the Sacred Heart. The office of this day shows “the triumphant progress made by the devotion of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Very often indeed, during the course of past ages, Fathers, Doctors, and Saints have celebrated our Redeemer's love: and they have said, that the wound opened in the side of Christ was the hidden fountain of all graces. Moreover, from the Middle Ages onward, when the faithful began to show a more tender piety towards the most sacred Humanity of the Saviour, contemplative souls became accustomed to penetrate through that wound almost to the very Heart itself, wounded for the love of men.” (First Nocturnal). - St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) talks in this sense: “For to this end was thy side pierced, that an entry might be open unto us. To this end was thy Heart wounded, that in it we might be able to dwell secure from alarms from without.” (Third Nocturnal). The two Benedictine virgins St. Gertrude (1256-1302) and St. Mechtilde (1241-1299) in the XIII century had a vision very clear of the greatness of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. St. John the Evangelist appearing at the first announced her that “the preaching of the delight of these heartbeats was kept for the present time, so that the world, now growing old and sluggish in the love of God, may grow warm again from hearing of such things.” (Herald of Divine Love, IV book, chapter 4). This Heart, say the two Saints, is an altar on which Jesus Christ offers Himself to the Father, perfect victim and completely pleasant. Is a golden thurible from which rise toward the Father so many puffs of incense smoke as much as the men whom Christ suffered. IN this Heart the praises and the thanksgivings that we give to God and all the good works that we do, are dignified and become pleasant to God. - The cult of the Christian people toward the Most Holy Heart of Jesus, aimed at worshiping the fleshly Heart of the Redeemer and His immense love for humanity, had its foundations also in the teachings of St. Albert the Great (1200-1280), of the blessed Henry Suso (1295-1366), of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), of St. Peter Canisius (1521-1597), of St. Francis of Sales (1567-1622). To give this cult public and official, Providence aroused at first St. John Eudes (1601-1680), who composed since 1679, for the Congregation called of the Eudists, an Office and a Mass in honour of the Divine Heart, of which feast was for the first time celebrate, with the approval of many Bishops of France, the 20th of October 1672. Then choose one of the spiritual daughters of St. Francis of Sales, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, to whom the Lord appeared between 1673 and 1675; He showed her His Heart, in Paray-le-Monial, on June 16, 1675, the day of Corpus Domini, and He requested to be instituted a special feast of His Most Holy Heart to be celebrated every year the Friday that followed the Octave of Corpus Domini. Lastly, God used to propagate such devotion, of the blessed Claude de La Colombière (1641-1682), religious of the Society of Jesus, “who put all his zeal for the propagation of devotion to the Sacred Heart” (D. Guéranger, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In 1765, Clement XIII approved the feast and the office of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the 23th of August 1856 Pius IX extended it to the whole Church. Leo XIII the 25th of May 1899 consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus the Church and mankind. In 1929 Pius XI, devout lover and propagator of the Sacred Heart, provided the feast of a new Mass and a new Office, and elevated it to double rite of I class with a privileged Octave.