Traditionally, the month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that so human heart that loved, rejoiced, wept, and suffered as Christ lived His earthly life, and which finally was pierced by the soldier's spear as He died on the cross. Scripture tells us that water and blood poured forth from that wound, an image that has nourished countless Christian meditations through the centuries, and which reappears most recently in St. Faustina's representation of Divine Mercy.
First popularized by Thirteenth-Century Benedictine Abbess St. Gertrude
, the devotion was renewed in modern times the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French Visitandine nun, in the Seventeenth Century.
It is perhaps not surprising that this focus on the Heart of Christ has been proclaimed primarily through women. Although it's certainly a facile generalization that men follow their heads, while women follow their hearts, it's true that the gift of empathy seems to be abundantly showered on women. They have been called "the heart of the home," and the glue that binds families--and hence society--together. In Isaiah 40:15-16, God tells us that He loves us with an intense maternal love: "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me."
Reading this, any mother who has ever nursed a child knows exactly how strong is God's love for us. And although Jesus is God, He is also man, and He loves us, each of us, with the same fond, foolish love a mother feels for her baby. It is this deeply human love that devotion to the Sacred Heart represents. Such love is only one of the perfections of God. He is certainly
not "God the Mother." The Sacred Heart shows one aspect of God's nature; He has an infinity of qualities, something not always grasped by non-Christians and some Protestant Christians. The Bible itself gives Him many names, however. When I was in graduate school in Nashville, the Protestant Vatican, I used to keep a holy card on my assigned library carrel of "Jesus Christ, Teacher." You've seen it: JesuIs holding a book open for us to read. One day when I went to the library I found that someone had scratched out "Teacher" and penciled in "Savior." How I wished I could tell that anonymous editor that, yes! He is our Savior. And our Teacher, and our King, and our Redeemer Who paid the price of our sins.
So how does devotion to the Sacred Heart fit in today? Does anyone practice it as revealed to St. Margaret Mary? Among other things revealed to her were promises of incredible graces for those who promote this devotion, enthrone an image of the Sacred Heart in their homes, and assist at Mass on nine First Fridays to offer reparation for the insults given to the Lord by sin. Shortly after I became a Catholic in 1980, I did my best to carry out these requests. They didn't seem old-fashioned to me, but a means to express my love and gratitude for so great a Savior, and my sorrow at having ignored and offended Him for so many years. In the South, when something profoundly saddens someone, he says, "That just hurts my heart!" Maybe during this month of the Sacred Heart, we can reflect on what things are hurting the very human Heart of Jesus nowadays. Beheadings and rapes and destruction of churches? Lukewarm Catholics who flout His teachings? Wholesale mockery of Christians by the secular culture? The plight of refugees from wars and disasters? Probably. But what am
I doing to sadden Him? I know I am doing
something, because I am a sinner, and it is sin that grieves this Heart of perfect Love. For more than a century, Catholics have prayed the Litany of the Sacred Heart
to console the Heart of Jesus and in.crease our love for Him. I propose it as a daily prayer during June. Cor sacratissima, miserere nobis! Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
First popularized by Thirteenth-Century Benedictine Abbess St. Gertrude, the devotion was renewed in modern times the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a French Visitandine nun, in the Seventeenth Century. 
It is perhaps not surprising that this focus on the Heart of Christ has been proclaimed primarily through women. Although it's certainly a facile generalization that men follow their heads, while women follow their hearts, it's true that the gift of empathy seems to be abundantly showered on women. They have been called "the heart of the home," and the glue that binds families--and hence society--together. In Isaiah 40:15-16, God tells us that He loves us with an intense maternal love: "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me."
Reading this, any mother who has ever nursed a child knows exactly how strong is God's love for us. And although Jesus is God, He is also man, and He loves us, each of us, with the same fond, foolish love a mother feels for her baby. It is this deeply human love that devotion to the Sacred Heart represents. Such love is only one of the perfections of God. He is certainly not "God the Mother." The Sacred Heart shows one aspect of God's nature; He has an infinity of qualities, something not always grasped by non-Christians and some Protestant Christians. The Bible itself gives Him many names, however. When I was in graduate school in Nashville, the Protestant Vatican, I used to keep a holy card on my assigned library carrel of "Jesus Christ, Teacher." You've seen it: JesuIs holding a book open for us to read. One day when I went to the library I found that someone had scratched out "Teacher" and penciled in "Savior." How I wished I could tell that anonymous editor that, yes! He is our Savior. And our Teacher, and our King, and our Redeemer Who paid the price of our sins.
So how does devotion to the Sacred Heart fit in today? Does anyone practice it as revealed to St. Margaret Mary? Among other things revealed to her were promises of incredible graces for those who promote this devotion, enthrone an image of the Sacred Heart in their homes, and assist at Mass on nine First Fridays to offer reparation for the insults given to the Lord by sin. Shortly after I became a Catholic in 1980, I did my best to carry out these requests. They didn't seem old-fashioned to me, but a means to express my love and gratitude for so great a Savior, and my sorrow at having ignored and offended Him for so many years. In the South, when something profoundly saddens someone, he says, "That just hurts my heart!" Maybe during this month of the Sacred Heart, we can reflect on what things are hurting the very human Heart of Jesus nowadays. Beheadings and rapes and destruction of churches? Lukewarm Catholics who flout His teachings? Wholesale mockery of Christians by the secular culture? The plight of refugees from wars and disasters? Probably. But what am I doing to sadden Him? I know I am doing something, because I am a sinner, and it is sin that grieves this Heart of perfect Love. For more than a century, Catholics have prayed the Litany of the Sacred Heart to console the Heart of Jesus and in.crease our love for Him. I propose it as a daily prayer during June. Cor sacratissima, miserere nobis! Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
