1. The Sacred Heart of Jesus: A Story. 2
2. Marseille. 2
3. Plague Disappears from Western Europe. 5
4. Theological Crisis in France. 5
5. A Jesuit Priest and a Visitandine Nun. 6
6. Saint Claude de la Colombière. 8
7. England. 8
8. John Croiset 9
9. The Jesuits and the Sacred Heart 9
10. The Sacred Heart Devotions in 21st Century. 11
11. The Laity and Holy Hour 14
12. Sacred Heart Solemnities. 15
13. First Friday Devotions. 16
14. Consecration of one’s home to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 17
15. Parting Notes. 18
Every year, 11 million people climb three hundred steps to the summit of Montmartre in Paris, France, and become stunned by the splendid Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Words do no justice to what one finds there. Drawn for no apparent spiritual reason, first time visitors emerge astonished.
Aside from the Basilica’s lure as a tourist attraction, few Parisians know why it exists. In 1885, French bishops placed a monstrance on the chapel’s high alter. Prayer and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament have continued uninterrupted since. The entrance bears the words “Sanctuary of the Eucharistic Adoration and divine mercy.”
Christians from around the world journey to France to pray at the Basilica. They spend hours in in the chapels meditating, reading, viewing the art including the immense mosaic covering the dome’s interior. The faithful come to meditate and join the all-night prayers.
Visitors also tour the gardens and fountain. They attended Mass, take confession, and linger under the Byzantine archways. The outside dome stays open and presents visitors with a panoramic view of the city.
History almost forgot the religious importance the Basilica holds with Sacred Heart followers in Paris. The French also consider the church a political and cultural monument. Yet, it continues to draw people seeking holiness from distant lands. *
While majestic, a thousand landmarks and communities consider the Basilica a generous example made by the Sacred Heart of Jesus followers. Today, few Catholics remember the importance those consecrations made. They exist as artifacts of Christendom’s most popular spiritual devotion.
Marseille
Travel southeast from Paris about 500 miles and you will find the city of Marseilles. The Greeks built it as a trade hub in 600 BC. It remains a trading hub and stands as the largest French city on the Mediterranean coast. Marseille has the largest port for commerce, freight, and cruise ships in western Europe.
Marseille became the 18thcentury’s battlefield of Milvian Bridge. Instead of two Roman armies facing off, one with Christian symbols painted on their shields; the French clergy went into spiritual battle holding the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They would fight an enemy that had invaded and ravaged Europe for three hundred years.
On June 20, 1720, illness took its first reported casualty in Marseilles when Marie Dauplan complained about headache, fever and weakness. Her family sent for help, but doctors refused to attend to Marie. She lived on Belle-Table Street, a narrow, dark alley in the old city. Within a few hours and before her family could summon a priest, Marie Dauplan died.
The district’s chief health inspector had little time to investigate Marie’s death. He became anxious about a ship, the Grand-Saint-Antoine, in the harbor with ten dead sailors on-board. About the same time, he heard about Marie Dauplan, he received information that plague may have hit the boat. Frantic and worried, the inspector demanded a doctor examine Marie’s body. That afternoon, two Marseille Intendants braved the old city streets and brought the body to the morgue. The doctors saw no plague. Or so they thought.
Eight days later, Michel Cresp died abruptly. On July 1, 1720, two women from the Rue de l’Echelle died, one showed symptoms like Marie Dauplan but also coughing blood. The second woman exhibited large open blisters on her neck that even the commoners knew meant the black death.
During August, Marseille’s District Director tried to isolate the plague. He began giving orders to quarantine the city and nearby ports. Before finishing, death took him a few days before plague began sweeping the old city.
When the plague reached its height, the Marseille Provost, his four remaining officers and Le Chevalier Rose, the Captain of the District, distributed food, arranged shelter for the sick and burials. The clergy also worked. Monasteries devoted themselves to service throughout the city.
Pope Clement XI sent wheat to France. On the way, Moorish corsairs seized the cargoes. When the Moors learned the fleet’s destination, they showed mercy and let the ships continue.
Louis XV, Orleans Regent’s Duke, sent 22,000 silver marks to the city. He also sent corn, and doctors, then troops to shut in the residents.
Journalists wrote that the plague took 300, then 1000 people a day destroying entire families and parishes. The quarantines did not work, and the Marseille social order broke down. The rule of law vanished.
Superintendents left their infirmaries, stewards abandoned hospitals; judges, public officers, notaries, and many Marseille artisans died. The Provost and his four municipal officers continued working until only 1,100 francs remained in their treasury. The city became a disorganized province without work, food and restraint. The people became prey to a disease that once wiped-out half of the population of Europe.
Some Marseille Parliament members survived by leaving. On May 31, they released a decree to prevent survivors from crossing a boundary around the city with the threat of certain death. Given the lack of law enforcement, people escaped and carried plague to Arles, Aix, Toulon, and sixty-three smaller towns and villages.
Authorities released prisoners and convicts from the galleys to collect corpses and carry the sick to infirmaries. The criminals saw unlimited opportunities to plunder. If one carried a sick person to an infirmary, he would catch the plague. So, no one carried the sick. The streets continued to fill with dying people as relatives pushed family members out of their homes.
Half the population lay dead. Father Giraud wrote that God declared war on his people. The Priest misspoke. God had not made war, evil had.
The Bishop of Marseille, Henri de Belsunce, chose to stay and do battle with the devil. He fought the devastation spiritually and physically. In a letter to the Bishop of Toulon, he wrote, “What horrors have I not seen or heard? I walk in streets flanked on both sides by half-rotten, dog-chewed bodies, with so much plague-ridden debris and filth underfoot that it was impossible to know where to tread. I clamber among the corpses to seek out and offer confession and consolation to the dying.”
Each day, the Bishop went into the streets with three confessors and searched for those still alive. He sent his household staff to aid the sick. The Bishop used the clergy to distribute money and food (alms) to the poor. Each day, the Bishop lost at least one of his confessors; when forty died, Belsunce feared that he might die without receiving last rites.
With Marseille’s churches shuttered, the Bishop in a demonstration of bravery and trust in God, held improvised services in the open air. He celebrated Mass bare headed, bare footed and with a torch in hand. His courage, dedication and persistence gave people hope.
On the advice of Venerable Sister Anne-Madeleine Rémusat, the Bishop consecrated Marseille to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He organized a general procession around the Mass graves outside the city walls. He blessed each of the sites and led devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In what historians call the appeasement, sufferers began to recover while the daily mortality fell from about 1000 to about 20 people. The decline continued during the early part of 1721. Daily mortality finally fell to an average of two people.
Shops reopened, work resumed on the port and anglers began bringing in their catches. By February, the aldermen returned and so did civil authority.
On June 20, 1721, Bishop Belsunce organized a large procession on the feast of the Sacred Heart. Many worried about a return of the plague including Commander Charles-Claude Langeron but it did not return. In his address to the Assembly of the Clergy in 1725, Belsunce stated that more than 250 priests and religious perished during the plague.
French and English poets called Belsunce the soul of the rescuers. The King offered him, a position equivalent to a Duke, but the Bishop decline and remained in Marseille. The heroism and charity displayed by the Bishop during the plague of 1720 and 1721 made his name a household word.
The last outbreak of plague in Western Europe occurred in Marseille. In 1722, a brief outbreak recurred. Afterward, it did not return.
Recently, two separate teams from 1) The Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany and 2) The Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology in Munich examined DNA from 200 bodies excavated from mass graves in Marseille. They concluded the pathogen, Y. Peste, caused the plague in 1721 and became extinct in Europe after Marseille.
During the mid-1600’s, the Church faced a series of theological crises aside from the protestant reformation. One Church faction claiming affinity to Saint Augustine’s teachings questioned the spiritual reality of apparitions of famous mystics like St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Louis de Montfort, Joan of Arc and so forth.
Unwittingly, the Sacred Heart of Jesus movement conflicted with an Augustin-Calvinist doctrine (disguised as Catholic) that emptied Churches in France, Belgium, and Italy. Simply put, the doctrine had Catholics believe that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross helped no one. God had already decided the souls destined for heaven. He never gave us free choice, a tenet of Calvin’s Protestantism.
Jesuits fought the movement that they called Jansenism after its founder. In 1653, Pope Innocent X condemned the five cardinal doctrines of Jansenism as heresies. The movement had momentum and persisted. The leaders headquartered at the Port-Royal-des-Champs Abbey and dug-in.
The Jansenist priests had a tragic effect on normally faithful Catholics. Proponents refused to celebrate the liturgy and omitted Catholics’ Easter duty. They refused communion to the dying. Refusing to offer Mass saw many Catholics failed to receive first communion until the age of thirty.
St. Vincent de Paul described the situation in Paris in a letter saying, “We no longer see persons frequenting the Sacraments, not even at Easter, the way they formerly did.” Speaking of annual Communions, he reports that “Saint Sulpice has 3,000 less; the parish priest of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet, after having visited his families in the parish after Easter, in person and by proxy, told us recently that he discovered 1,500 of his parishioners had not been to Holy Communion; and the same is true of others.” Many people used to receive communion at least once a month. “But now scarcely anyone can be seen going to Holy Communion on the first Sunday of the month and on feast days . . . unless a few at the Jesuit churches.”
When she told of her apparitions, St. Margaret Mary met with opposition and ridicule. Jansenist doctrine continued influencing Church elders. Several men arrived at the Visitandine convent and questioned the authenticity of Margaret Mary’s visions.
The elders viewed Margaret Mary as a threat to the popular doctrines of the day even though she had no familiarity with those ideas. The priests said that a nun such as her could not have communed with Jesus. They forbid her mention her visions or to place a picture of the Sacred Heart in any conspicuous place. They allowed her to honor it in private but not in a public place.
Margaret Mary ’s sisters ridiculed, isolated and denounced her. We call that bullying today. Before taking her solemn vows, Margaret Mary worried the religious order’s Mother Superior would expel her. Margaret Mary took solemn vows, but the local superior badgered the new sister making her work incessantly on the most menial and degrading tasks.
During February 1675, Father Claude de la Colombière’s superiors demoted him from the Court of Louis XIV for an unwitting comment made about the Minister of Finance. The minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, took offense to the comment and he didn’t like Jesuits.
François de la Chaise, the King’s confessor, sent Colombière to the community of Paray. Father Claude took over the rectory, which consisted of four priests. He made missions to nearby villages and took confessions from the Visitandine sisters including the surprising Margaret Mary Alacoque.
After her second confession, Margaret Mary told Father Colombièreabout the devotions given to her in private apparitions by Jesus. She also gave him a message. Colombière recognized the authenticity of Margaret Mary’s encounters. Her episodes resonated with his experience of Apostolic Catholicism.
Colombière also noted that the apparitions occurred in front of the Tabernacle in the Visitandine chapel.
The devotions came to Margaret Mary while she kneeled in a state of grace after confession. Jesus asked for a feast of the Eucharist, an hour of adoration in front of the Sacrament and attendance at Mass on every first Friday of the month.
Colombière saw no conflict with pure Church teaching including those from the time of the apostles. He intervened on behalf of the young nun with Mother Mary Frances de Saumaise. He authenticated Margaret Mary’s apparitions and with what Jesus told her.
Jesus’ love of humankind spared nothing, given his Sacrifice and Passion. In modern France, the once faithful had abandoned the Eucharist. He instituted the Eucharist for us and now, He received ingratitude, by the irreverence, sacrilege, coldness and contempt for His Sacrament of Love.
Saint Claude de la Colombière
Saint Claude de la Colombière, also a mystic, knew Jesus wanted him to spread the devotions to the Lord’s Sacred Heart. Claude’s spiritual notes confirmed his pledge to this cause without reservation. In those notes historians found that, even before he became Margaret Mary’s confessor, Claude’s fidelity to the directives of St. Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises had brought him to contemplate the Heart of Christ as symbol of his love.
Colombière began to practice the devotions taught to him through Margaret Mary. He consecrated himself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He joined Margaret Mary and the Visitandine sisters in their mission and preached the devotions of the Sacred Heart.
Religious communities across the vicinity of Paray-le-Monial, France joined the sisters and Colombière. The message of love resonated throughout the south of France. In turn, communities spread word to communities who in the turn spread word and so forth. A movement of the Sacred Heart became rooted within the monasteries of the Catholic church in France.
As Margaret Mary’s confessors noted, her great apparitions occurred while in the front of the Holy Sacrament, twice during Holy Hour and once during Mass. The Sacred Heart philosophy did not bring into question Church doctrine. In fact, they verified the writings St. Gertrude the German Benedictine mystic.
The superior who sent Father Colombière to Paray recalled him. François de la Chaise sent Claude to London and ordered him to act as spiritual guide to Maria Beatriz d’ Este, Duchess of York.
Caught up in the anti-Catholic hysteria, the English confined Colombière and his fellow Jesuits to the King’s Bench Prison. Colombière suffered from exposure as did 20 Jesuits who died. Claude wrote:
“The name of the Jesuit is hated above all else, even by priests both secular and regular, and by the Catholic laity as well, because it is said that the Jesuits have caused this raging storm, which is likely to overthrow the whole Catholic religion”.
As a member of the French Royal Court the King of France, Louis XIV had Claude released. He left the Bench Prison in 1679 and returned to France. He died two years later in Paray.
Pope Pius XI beautified Colombière and Pope John Paul II canonized him. The Jesuits preserved his personal effects in the Jesuit Church near Visitation monastery at Paray-le-Monial.
The Jesuits sent a professor from Lyons, John Croiset, to work with Margaret Mary. She wrote ten letters to him during the last 18 months of her life, which he used as the basis of his book about the devotions to the Sacred Heart. Croiset published the book in 1691.
Croiset entitled the book, The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
John Croiset also embraced the Sacred Heart. Some historians think Fr. Croiset found Margaret Mary’s autobiography in the back of a Claude Colombière’s manuscript. (Another historian, Wendy M. Right, suggests that Margaret Mary wrote the manuscript at the express request of Jesuit Fr. F. J. Rolin). Croiset published the autobiography and news of the devotions spread on a broad scale among monasteries across Europe focused in France, Belgium, and Italy.
St. Margaret Mary wrote five letters that commissioned the Society of Jesus to propagate devotion to His Sacred Heart. She addressed the first two and fourth to her former superior, Mother de Saumaise; the third and fifth to Father Croiset, S.J. When St. Margaret Mary wrote “Fathers of the Society of Jesus,” she means the entire Society.
“Then turning to Father la Colombière, this Mother of Divine Goodness said: ‘As for you, faithful servant of my divine Son, you have a great share in this precious treasure. For if it is given to the daughters of the Visitation to know and distribute it to others, it is reserved to the Fathers of your Society to show and make known its utility and value, so that all may profit from it by receiving it with the respect and gratitude due so great a benefit. In proportion as they give Him this pleasure, this divine Heart, source of blessings and graces, will shower them so abundantly on the works of their ministry that they will produce fruits far beyond their labors and hopes, even for the salvation and perfection of each of them in particular.”
“Our good Father Colombièrehas obtained that the holy Society of Jesus be blessed … with all the graces and special privileges of this devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus … He promises that He will bless abundantly, even profusely, their labors for souls and the works of charity in which they are engaged.”
3 Although this treasure of love is a good everyone can claim and to which everyone has a right, it has hitherto been little known…. It is reserved to the Reverend Fathers of the Society of Jesus to make known the value and advantages of this precious treasure, of which the more one takes the more there is to take. All they have to do, then, is to enrich themselves abundantly with every grace and blessing from it. For it is by this efficacious means which He is entrusting to them that they will be able to carry out perfectly according to His desire the sacred ministry of charity committed to them. This divine Heart will so spread the sweet unction of His charity on their words that they will penetrate like a two-edged sword the most hardened hearts and make them susceptible to the love of this divine Heart. The most sin-ladened souls will be brought by this means to salutary repentance…. He expects much of your holy Society in this regard and has great designs upon it. That is why He made use of the good Father la Colombièreto begin the devotion to this adorable Heart.”
“This Sacred Heart will shower upon it [the Society of Jesus] grace and blessings in abundance…. To the daughters of the Visitation He has given the commission of revealing His Heart and making it known by establishing the devotion to this all-lovable Heart. He wants the Reverend Jesuit Fathers to make known its utility and worth. This is reserved for them.”
” If it is true that this most attractive devotion is to take its origin in the Visitation, it will be spread through the efforts of the Reverend Jesuit Fathers… . There is nothing more attractive or gentle and at the same time stronger or more efficacious than the unction of the ardent charity of this lovable Heart… It will melt by His love the coldest hearts. This applies especially to the holy Society of Jesus, to which He offers His graces to give its members effective means for worthily and perfectly fulfilling the duties of their ministry of charity, for the glory of God, in the conversion of souls. The members of the Society ought frequently to exhort souls to avail themselves of the great treasures contained in this devotion to the Sacred Heart.”
The Jesuits accepted the commission with vigor and devotion. They continued spreading and teaching the devotions to clerics and laity for 300 years. As the order with missionary work as their core value, they instilled the devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus throughout the world.
In his book, The Jesuits, Malachi Martin comments on a dilemma that faced Pedro Arrupe SJ, the Spanish Basque Jesuit priest, who served as the twenty-eighth Superior General of the Society of Jesus.
Martin writes:
“Without here delving into the causes that did away with that importance of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the centerpiece of the Jesuit character we can get a very poignant idea of how profoundly that classical character of the Jesuit had changed at the beginning of the seventies by reading the words of Father General Pedro Arrupe in 1972.
As that year was the centenary of Father General Beckx’s consecration of the whole Society to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Arrupe planned a centenary celebration. But when he broached the subject by word of mouth and in letters with the other Superiors and leading Jesuits in Rome and elsewhere, he found, as surely he must already have realized at least dimly, that Jesuits on the whole and in their majority had simply lost interest in devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Few saw any connection between this devotion and the Ignatian character of the Jesuits. In sum, Arrupe could not find a commonly shared persuasion any longer among his Jesuits that the Society had a divine commission from Christ through Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Holy See to propagate this devotion.”
The Jesuits stopped propagating the teachings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. More likely than not, when the Jesuits ceased no one took their place. Vatican II emphasized more participation of the laity in the functions of the Liturgy and their parishes. Perhaps the framers of Vatican II expected the laity to take up a mission if dropped by a Religious Order, but no one came forward and within a few years, the Sacred Heart lost momentum.
An across-the-board misunderstanding exists among current generations of Catholics about the Sacred Heart devotions. Some people believe the Church formally dropped the devotions. Some might know about the 12 Promises of Christ but don’t know their connection to the Scared Heart of Jesus.
We’ll discuss those toward the end of this section.
In many parishes around the world, priests continue to use “end of Mass” prayers, which Catholics knew as Leonine. You may see and hear a priest invoke “Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us” repeating it three times. You may have no other exposure to the Sacred Heart than that. When I ask other parishioners if they know what it means, I get a universal “no or not really.”
One day, I asked my Priest if the Sacred Heart had a special meaning. He had no answer for me. He may have known but if he did, he didn’t share it. I went to the Internet and searched on the phrase “Sacred Heart of Jesus” and eventually discovered disparate information.
If you look for these once widespread practices, you too might only find a trickle of information. Fortunately, my searched started with Wikipedia and as an editor, I knew how to follow links from the citations. The key words for my research came from there.
Interviewers in many articles asked questions of older priests like, “Why has this devotion been lost over the past 30 to 50 years?”
A common answer suggested in one priest’s words, “no room existed for popular devotions in the post-conciliar period.” I did not buy that.
Many religious orders devote themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus including the Brothers of St. Francis of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; the Sisters of Carmel; the Brothers of the Sacred Heart; the Legion of the Sacred Heart; the Dominican Missionary Sisters, Visitation Nuns, the Benedictine Sisters of the Sacré-cœur de Montmartre and many others, all of whom continue to propagate the devotions in a ascetic way.
The documents making up the Second Vatican Council contradict the claim that no room exists for popular devotions. In one of the four constitutions, Sacrosanctum Concilium (Sacred Council), Pope Paul VI wrote:
“Popular devotions of the Christian people are to be highly commended, provided they accord with the laws and norms of the Church, above all when they are ordered by the Apostolic See (the Pope).”
Do these devotions seem OK with the Apostolic See? Yes. Some excerpts from Popes Francis, Benedict and Saint John Paul II that follow, confirm their approval:
Pope Francis:
What is it, that is so distinctive about this people? And this morning, praying about it, I was struck by the consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I think I should offer this to you as a message from Jesus: all this richness that you have, the spiritual richness of piety and great depth, has come about because of the courage you have shown in very difficult moments when the nation was consecrated to the Heart of Christ, that human and divine Heart which loves us so dearly.
Wednesday, 8 July 2015 National Marian Shrine of “El Quinche”, Quito, Ecuador
Friday will be the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I invite you to pray to the Heart of Jesus during the month of June, and to support your priests with closeness and affection, so that they are the image of this Heart full of merciful love.
Wednesday, 6 June 2018, St. Peter’s Square
Pope Benedict XVI:
The heart of God burns with compassion! On today’s solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus the Church presents us this mystery for our contemplation: the mystery of the heart of a God who feels compassion and who bestows all his love upon humanity. A mysterious love, which in the texts of the New Testament is revealed to us as God’s boundless and passionate love for humankind.
Saint Peter’s Basilica Friday, 19 June 2009
Pope Saint John Paul II:
Devotion to the Heart of Christ, “the universal seat of communion with God the Father; … seat of the Holy Spirit aims at strengthening our bond with the Holy Trinity”.
Warsaw, 11 June 1999, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Observers like the late Father Massimo Taggi use implied criticism with terms like “devotionism” and “popular religiosity” to characterize daily prayer life. When he used those terms, he held the position of the national director of the Apostleship of Prayer in Italy.
In the 16 documents that make up the Constitutions, Decrees and Declarations of the Second Vatican Council I could not find the term “devotionism” or “religiosity”. The Popes seem quite OK with the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a popular devotion.
The Laity and Holy Hour
The Second Vatican Council transformed the Liturgy demanding participation by the laity. After the close of the Council in 1965, Pope Paul VI composed the Novus Ordo Mass. He expected people in the pews to take part in Mass as Alter Servers, Lectors, Eucharistic ministers and Deacons. Married men joined the permanent ministry as Deacons. Novus Ordo participants stand to say prayers as a congregation.
With Vatican II emphasizing lay involvement in the mission of the Church, modernists bought it. Modern parishes allow laity, for example, to coordinate Perpetual Adoration in cooperation with the a parish priest.
The first devotion mentioned above, “Attending Nine Consecutive Masses on the First Friday of each month”, consists of three parts which include adoration or Holy Hour, confession and communion. Holy hour came about as a stand-alone devotion of the teachings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Saint Margaret Mary prayed in the Visitandine Convent’s Chapel in front of the Tabernacle. Jesus asked her to spend an hour on Thursday night with him.
The “Instruction on Eucharistic Worship”, issued by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on the Feast of Corpus Christi, 25 May 1967, reads in part, “The exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, for which either a monstrance or a ciborium may be used, stimulates the faithful to an awareness of the marvelous presence of Christ and is an invitation to spiritual communion with Him. It is therefore an excellent encouragement to offer Him that worship in spirit and truth which is His due.”
Speaking to a gathering in Phoenix Park, during a three-day visit to Ireland, from September 29 to October 1, 1979, Pope John Paul II said:
“The visit to the Blessed Sacrament is a great treasure of the Catholic faith. It nourishes social love and gives us opportunities for adoration and thanksgiving, for reparation and supplication.
Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Exposition and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, Holy Hours, and Eucharistic processions are likewise precious element of your heritage–in full accord with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.”
Where Eucharistic adoration is done by an individual for an uninterrupted hour, this is known as a Holy Hour. The inspiration for the Holy Hour is Matthew 26:40 when in the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before his crucifixion, Jesus asks Peter: “So, could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?”
In 1673, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque stated that she had a vision of Jesus asking her to spend an hour every Thursday night to meditate on the sufferings in the Garden of Gethsemane. This practice later became widespread within the Church.
In 1829, Père Robert Debrosse established the Archconfraternity of the Holy Hour at Paray-le-Monial, Burgundy, France. In 1911 it received the right of aggregation for the entire world. A similar society called “The Holy Perpetual Hour of Gethsemane” formed in Toulouse in 1885 and became canonically erected in 1907. In 1909 it received indulgences from Pope Pius X.
Many parishes have implemented perpetual adoration. Some parishes also provide formal adoration on Thursdays in commemoration of Holy Thursday and, or the apparition of Margaret Mary. Priests can inform their parish about the importance and encourage attendance on Thursdays for Holy Hour, especially on the first Thursday of the month.
The Catholic Church celebrates solemnities as the highest-ranking feast days in the liturgical calendar. In the early Church the term feast or holy day meant a celebration. They celebrated a Saint, a mystery of faith such as the Trinity, an event in the life of Jesus or an important date such the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Today, the Catholic Church uses the term, feast, to mean an observance. The Holy See set-up diverse levels for feast days with a solemnity as the highest. Of Eighteen solemnities celebrated during the Roman Catholic Liturgical Year, the Church named the Sacred Heart of Jesus as one.
St. John Eudes wrote the Liturgy and celebrated the first feast, local to Rennes, France on August 31, 1670. In 1856, Pope Pius IX set up the Feast as obligatory for the whole Church, but not to the level of a Solemnity.
In June 1889, Leo XIII raised the feast to the dignity of the first class. In 1928, Pope Pius XI raised the feast to the highest rank, Double of the First Class.
In 1929, the Pope approved replacement Mass prayers and readings. The Roman Missal published in 1970, gave three sets of prayers and readings, one for each year of the three-year liturgical cycle. The prayer to end the introductory rites of the Mass known as the Collect.
Priests may use this Mass, celebrated with white vestments, as a Votive Mass on other days also, especially on the first Friday of each month (unless falling on a day of higher rank).
Pope Saint John Paul II instituted the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the World Day of Prayer for the Sanctification of Priests.
You may see a card entitled the 12 promises of Christ. If you read it, then you will see mention of attending mass on the First Friday of each month nine consecutive times. Catholics attribute this devotion to one of Saint Margaret Mary’s Great Apparitions.
We honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the first Friday of each month with a Mass. Prior to taking communion, tradition holds that we make a good confession and spend an hour in holy adoration or reparation preferably in front of the Sacrament (Sanctified Host) exposed in a monstrance. If no one exposed the Sacrament, then we can take Holy Hour with the Sacrament in a closed tabernacle.
In the 21st century few Catholics will know the importance First Friday devotions held among parishioners. The except below from an article by the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martin depicts the world when the Sacred Heart of Jesus pervaded the Catholic world. The Cardinal writes:
“My personal Christian journey had in some way been involved with this devotion from childhood. It had been implanted in me by my mother with the practice of the First Friday of the month.
“On that day mother would get us up early to go to Mass in the parish church and take communion. There was the promise that those who had confessed and taken communion for nine first Fridays of the month in succession (skipping one was not allowed!) could be certain of obtaining the grace of deathbed perseverance.
“This promise was very important for my mother. I recall that for us kids there was also another reason for going to Mass so early. In fact, we had breakfast in a cafe.
“Once one had taken communion for nine first Fridays in succession, it was a good thing to repeat the series, to be sure of obtaining the desired grace. Out of that then came the habit also of devoting that day to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a habit that then from monthly became weekly: every Friday of the year was devoted in some way to the Heart of Christ.”
The first baby boomers (born in the late 1940’s), might have a vague memory of Catholic homes consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. A priest would conduct a formal enthronement ceremony, which involved placing an image or statute of Jesus Christ (with his Sacred Heart exposed) in a prominent place in the home.
Catholics found that enthronement strengthened family bonds and faith in the home.
Jesus assured Saint Margaret Mary, that great blessings and graces will abound. When and where we expose and give “special honor” to an image of His Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Members of the “Great Generation” grew-up in the pre-consular period and they he or she cannot imagine a world where a family failed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
If you find an old missal or Catholic prayer book, then you might find prayer-cards with the distinctive hallmark of Catholic spirituality, the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Few Catholic homes lacked a picture or statue.
Consecration of the home, commonly called Enthronement, occurs when a priest preforms a ceremony of prayers and blessings to establish the presence of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the home. The family members also consecrate themselves to the Sacred Heart. When the family prays together, they say one for the renewal of this consecration.
When Saint Margaret Mary explained the reason for consecration, she wrote:
“All those who are devoted to this Sacred Heart will never perish and that, since He is the source of all blessings, He will shower them in abundance on every place where an image of this loving heart shall be exposed to be loved and honored.”
I can imagine why the Jesuits wore a patch of the Sacred Heart and why the distinctive hallmark of Catholic spirituality, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, appeared in home, churches, hospitals, prayer cards and so forth.
In the first three centuries of the common era, Christianity gave people their humanity. According to Rodney Stark’s “The Rise of Christianity” the Catholic Church grew because of the teachings of Jesus and when He made His disciples, fishers of men:
“Again and again, research shows that religious conversions happen” …through social networks, through a structure of direct and intimate interpersonal attachments.” Everyday friendships and the personal interactions of average believers are what makes the greatest difference. Nowadays and in the past. I won’t belabor you with all of the statistics and studies, but they’re in the book, if you want them.
“Christians cared for the sick, widows, and orphans and those suffering from plagues, fires, natural disasters, and devastation from riots or war. They were semi-regular occurrences in the cities which the early Christians called home. What distinguished Christians was their response to these all-too-frequent calamities. Instead of fleeing to the countryside to escape the most recent plague, they stayed to care for their own, and for others. Even without any knowledge of medical science, the simple act of giving food, water, and shelter to sick people vastly improved survival rates in times of widespread disease. It also sent a powerful message of solidarity to those pagans who happened to receive a helping hand. The results, over time, were shifting social networks and regular conversions to the Christian community of faith so dedicated to service.
“Christians took an unyielding stance against adultery, abortion, and infanticide. The ancient Roman world was not kind to women and children. Married men could sleep with other women (especially slaves and prostitutes), and the unwanted offspring of these unions were usually aborted or simply left to die from exposure after birth. Christians spoke out against all of these practices, exhorting the followers of Jesus to remain faithful in marriage (even the men!), and to care for the most vulnerable members of society: little babies. Some Christians would even rescue abandoned babies, raising them as their own. All of these beliefs and actions led to higher birth and adoption rates.
“Christians offered the world a theology of love. The actions described above, engaging one’s neighbor, caring for the sick, rescuing little babies reflected Christian theological principles. The most important one is the insistence that God loves the world He has created and that He desires those who love Him to also love their fellow man.
“In our post-Christian context, such an idea seems self-evident. It’s almost a cliché. Yet an all-encompassing ethic of love is a radical idea. We believe in it so widely nowadays, at least on a theoretical level, only because Christianity incorporated it so successfully into the very being of Western civilization over centuries.
“. . . Christianity served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world. Christianity revitalized life in Greco-Roman cities by providing new norms and new kinds of social relationships able to cope with many urgent problems. To cities filled with the homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachment. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fire, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services. For what they brought was not simply an urban movement, but a new culture capable of making life in Greco-Roman cities more tolerable.” (Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity, Princeton University Press, 1996, page 161.)
Satan has once again cultivated another rise of paganism. Today we call it “secularism.” One hundred years ago, Pope Pius X called it modernism.
Do you consider it proper in the face of the ethical problems facing humanity today, to ignore Jesus? If not, we have a roadmap. The devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus worked before.
To Margaret Mary He expressed His sadness over the lukewarmness of the vast majority of the practicing faithful and especially the Clergy who vowed to have no other love but His.
“Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt they have for me in this sacrament of love…. I come into the heart I have given you in order that through your fervor you may atone for the offenses which I have received from lukewarm and slothful hearts that dishonor me in the Blessed Sacrament.”
Respectfully submitted
Note:
*The Ephrem hotel serves as the guesthouse of the Sacred Heart Basilica of Montmartre, where faithful Christians adore Jesus Christ day and night where they display the Holy Sacrament.
Located next to the Basilica, the Guest House hosts individuals, families and groups who come to pray, make a pilgrimage, take part in the adoration of the Eucharist or liturgical celebrations.
The Guesthouse accommodates 52 bedrooms, 180 beds, dormitories, meeting and dining rooms
Chaplains and Benedictine Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre stay on duty for prayer service and spiritual counselling.
