Sacred Heart

Yesterday was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I was too busy outside to mention it, but will try to make up for that lapse. Below is from our beloved Abbot Gueranger, on yesterday's reading:

'There us a mysterious connection between these three feasts; of the blessed Trinity, Corpus Christi, and the Sacred Heart. The aim of the Holy Ghost, in all three, is to initiate us more and more into that knowledge of God by faith, which is to fit us for the face-to-face vision in heaven. We have already seen how god, being made known to us, by the first, in Himself, manifests Himself to us; by the second, in His outward works; for the holy Eucharist is the memorial, here below, in which He has brought together, and with all possible perfection, all those His wondrous works. But by what law can we pass so rapidly, so almost abruptly, from one feast, which is all directly regarding God, to another, which celebrates the works done by Him to and for us? Then again: how came the divine thought, the eternal Wisdom, from the infinite repose of the eternally blessed Trinity, to the external activity of a love for us poor creatures, which has produced what we call the mysteries of our redemption? The Heart of the Man-God is the solution of these difficulties; it answers all such questions, and explains to us the whole divine plan.

St. John Chrysotom says that 'The initiated know the mystery of the Saviour's fountains; from those, that is, from the Blood and the Water, the Church was formed; from those same, came our Mysteries; so that, when thou approachest the dread chalice, thou must come up to it, as though thou were about to drink of that very Side of Christ.' St. Augustine says that 'the Evangelist (John) made use of a word which has a special import, when he said: 'the soldier opened Jesus's Side with a spear. He did not say struck the Side, or wounded the Side, or anything else like that; but he said he opened Jesus's Side. He opened it; for that Side was like the door of life; and when it was opened, the Sacraments (the Mysteries) of the Church came through it...This was predicted by that door which Noah was commanded to make in the side of the Ark, through which were to go those living creatures which were not to be destroyed by the deluge; and all these things were a figure of the Church.'

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.