Be open to God’s love
and divine mercy

   This issue of the West River Catholic will be mailed on June 16. Three days later the church will celebrate the Solemnity of the Feast of the Sacred Heart. This is a most important feast for three reasons.

    First, while June is a month dedicated to the Sacred Heart, this feast is a special time to make reparation to the Sacred Heart for our sins against God’s love. In fact, an act of reparation for such sins, our own and others, on that day is an occasion for receiving a special indulgence. When we allow ourselves to admit our own failings and seek Our Lord’s intercession for a world that has turned its back on him, we see the importance of reparation on this feast.

    Second, this feast reminds us of Our Lord’s apparition to St. Margaret Mary in the 17th century. His message was one that invited all to turn to the Heart of Jesus, to experience his mercy and his love. Two centuries later, Our Lord appeared to St. Faustina with rays coming forth from his heart to remind us again that he is the source of all mercy. In short, the Divine Mercy Devotion and the Sacred Heart Devotion are complimentary to each other. Both devotions draw people to being open to Our Lord’s mercy and love.

    As Pope John Paul II said in an audience June 24, 2002, “To celebrate the Heart of Christ means to turn toward the profound center of the person of the savior, that center which the Bible identifies precisely as his heart, seat of the love that has redeemed the world ....

   “(While) the human heart represents an unfathomable mystery that only God knows, how much more sublime is the heart of Jesus, in which the life of the Word itself beats. ...

   “In order to save man, victim of his own disobedience, God wished to give him a ‘new heart,’ faithful to his will of love (see Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel 36:26; Psalms 50[51]:12). This heart is the Heart of Christ, the masterpiece of the Holy Spirit, which began to beat in the virginal womb of Mary and was pierced by the lance on the cross, thus becoming for all people the inexhaustible source of eternal life. That heart is now the pledge of hope for every man.”

    Lastly, in October 1992, when Pope John Paul II wrote his exhortation “I Will Give You Shepherds After My Own Heart,” he asked that the annual celebration of the feast of the Sacred Heart be observed as a day of prayer and sanctification for priests. In truth this has been somewhat observed around the world. This year Pope Benedict XVI has designated the year from the feast of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart (June 19, 2009) to the celebration of the same feast in 2010 as the “Year for Priests.”

    All are asked to pray for the sanctification of priests, to renew their spiritual fervor in serving God’s people. The year also celebrates the goodness of the priests who serve among us, but our prayers are asking God to make them strong in the face of opposition to God’s word and will in the societies in which they serve.

    Pope Benedict XVI chose this date in order to remember the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Marie Vianney, the Curé of Ars, patron priest of priests. Here was a priest who went into a village that was a pit of sin, but who by his prayers and sacrifices, his sermons, catechesis and by offering opportunities for receiving the Sacrament of Penance in Confession, was God’s instrument in turning a pit of evil into an oasis of grace.

    By the time some of you will read this column, the Feast of the Sacred Heart will be long past, but not the month of June, so we can still turn to him in prayers of reparation and sorrow, seeking the continued outpouring of his mercy.

    And perhaps during this Year for Priests we could offer a prayer such as this,
“Sacred Heart of Jesus, watch over the priests who minister to us, give them a burning zeal to preach your Word, a consuming love for Mass and Eucharist and a steeled spiritual constitution to withstand the enemy’s attacks. Amen.”