It was 155 years ago! ….. It was during Holy Week that our founder Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart Bernaud had the revelation of the Guard of Honor. If the first dial, made following a revelation, was blessed on March 13, 1863 by the Superior, it is the evening of Holy Thursday in front of the Repository that she wrote the full implementation of the Guard of Honor. On Good Friday, which constituted the prayer of the Offering of the Hour, she had the intimate conviction that thousands of people would form the Guard of Honor around the Heart of Jesus … Intuition which proved to be accurate since the work, 155 years later, is still present in many countries with several hundred thousand committed!
Our founder chose St Joseph to be one of the protectors of the work. She had an unswerving faith in this great Saint that the Church is celebrating this March 19th. Like her, do not hesitate to put us under his protection and to invoke him especially during our hour of presence!
And in this Lenten season that brings us to Holy Week, Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, Sr. Bernaud reminds the guards of honor the urgency to unite ourselves to this ultimate sacrifice in reparation for all the sins that offend so painfully his Sacred Heart:
To die to oneself
“To die to oneself”: these words can appear hard, excessive, nevertheless this death is in parallel a source of real life! Since the original fall, everything of our nature is stale! From our youngest age, our parents had to educate us so that our nature would not become too capricious, so that our flaws or character traits are not obstacles to our future life. If they had not done it, we would have been left to ourselves like weeds growing on fallow land! It seems quite natural that our eyes want to see everything, our ears hear everything, our language speak of everything, our minds saturate with new things , our heart with delicate sensations … Yes, our whole being wants to be satisfied, but the life of ” me me, kills the supernatural life of the soul! If one wants to agree with Jesus Christ, it is a whole world of vain satisfactions that we must repress, mortify!
By the incessant struggle against themselves, the saints show us the example! Nothing is sweeter than the fruits picked on a thorny tree: to practice fighting against ourselves, to learn to dominate ourselves , to give up some superfluous pleasures, to flee worldly affairs, to put a stop to our vain chatter, to silence our rash judgments … are so many sacrifices that make our souls pleasing to God! In this time of Lent and the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us try to imitate our favorite saints, fight against our bad moods, our impatience, our susceptibilities, our usual defects … we will thus testify to our true desire to glorify the Sacred Heart of Jesus by our testimonies of love and reparation! “May our offerings help us enjoy all our brothers and sisters and make us instruments of your plan of love: by you, with you and in you, for them, I sanctify myself so that they too, sanctified in Truth. (Jn 17,19) “(extract from the offering of the Guard of Honor)