THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS June 9, 2024

The month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart which sums up all the phases of the life of Jesus recalled in the liturgy from Advent to the Feast of Corpus Christi.                     

     It gives us in abridgement all the mysteries, joyous, sorrowful and glorious, of the Saviour's life devoted to the love of God and men. This feast is indeed placed on a height from which may be contemplated the redeeming labours of the Saviour on earth and the glorious victories He will, by the working of the Holy Spirit, achieve in souls until the end of the world.  

     Coming after the feasts of Christ, this feast completes them, concentrating them in one object which is materially Jesus' Heart of flesh, and formally the unbounded charity symbolized by this Heart. This solemnity therefore does not relate to a particular mystery of the Saviour's life, but embraces them all; indeed, the devotion to the Sacred Heart celebrates all the favours we have received from divine charity during the year, and all the marvellous things that Jesus has done for us.

     It is the feast of the love of God for men, a love which has made Jesus come down on earth for all by His Incarnation, which has raised Him on the Cross for the Redemption of all and which brings Him down every day on our altars by transubstantiation, in order to make us benefit from the merits of His death on Calvary.                                  ~ FR. PAUL DOBSON