13 May 2014

"God grants graces through the Immaculate Heart of Mary."
~ Blessed Jacinta Marto of Fatima

"My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the Way that will lead you to God."
~ Our Lady to Sister Maria Lucia of the Immaculate Heart

Most Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary,

be Thou our Refuge and the Way that will lead us to God.

Joy, Liberty & Peace of Heart

It is extraordinary what precautions it is necessary to take in the world, to avoid offending a friend. Men are so sensitive, that often a single expression of ill-humour is enough to make them forget twenty, thirty, forty years of service. A single word, spoken unseasonably, sometimes breaks the strongest friendship.

It is not so with Jesus Christ. It seems incredible, but nevertheless it is beyond dispute, that we cannot possibly have a friend more grateful than He is. We must not imagine that He is capable of breaking friendship with us for a slight ingratitude. He sees all our weaknesses, and bears with incredible goodness all the miseries of those He loves. He forgets them, and appears not to perceive them. His compassion goes so far as to give comfort to those souls who are too much afflicted at them. He does not desire that our fear of displeasing Him should go so far as to disturb us and torment our minds. He would have us avoid the smallest faults; but He does not even wish that we should be disquieted at great ones: He desires that joy, liberty and peace of heart should be the eternal portion of those that truly love Him.

~ Jean Croiset, Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Part I Chapter 3

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Rapturous, blissful, intoxicating love

The perfect union in heaven of our hearts with the heart of Jesus is a mystery which we believe here below, but cannot understand. The kingdom of Christ, which on earth embraces all who suffer and strive for His cause, will not cease in heaven; there, however, combat will give place to the victor’s crown, and the Church militant will become the Church triumphant. King of the kingdom of the blessed is Christ. His heart is the heart of the Church triumphant. His heart and the hearts of His followers will be but one heart. Of course, each of the blessed will have his own body and his own physical heart; he will also have his own soul endowed with intelligence and free will. But all beatific knowledge and all beatific love will have its source and origin in Christ, just as all grace which we pilgrims receive here below is vital energy from the vine which is Christ. Even in heaven the blessed are not merely individuals existing for themselves alone, but constitute there, even as here, the mystical body of Christ, with this difference, however, that in heaven the union of all with each other and with Christ is absolutely perfect. The sentiments of Christ are the sentiments of each individual, nor does the least obstacle mar such conformity. These sentiments are the purest, most ardent love of God, not a love of sacrifice nor of suffering for there is nothing to be sacrificed or suffered, but only rapturous, blissful, intoxicating love of God. All the flames of this love have their origin in the heart of Jesus, and in union with the love of the heart of Jesus they constitute the worship of heaven that endures without ceasing from day to day, from hour to hour. How long will this union of hearts with the heart of Jesus endure? Forever!

~ Christian Pesch, S.J., Our Best Friend [Unser bester Freund: Erwägungen für den Herz-Jesu-Monat] translated from the German by Bernard A. Hausmann, S.J. (Milwaukee, The Bruce Publishing Company, 1953), pp. 219-220.