Day 1:
Meditation
The whole history of Christian spirituality bears witness to this: the life of man believing in God, tending towards the future by hope, called to the communion of love, this life is that of the heart, that of the “interior” man. It is illuminated by the admirable truth of the Heart of Jesus who offers himself to the world.
« I will pour out pure water upon you, and you will be cleansed” (Ezekiel 36).
Yes, God purifies the human heart. The heart, created to be the home of love, has become the central focus of God’s rejection, of man’s sin who turns away from God to cling to all kinds of “idols.” It is then that the heart is “unclean.” But when the same inner place of man opens to God, he finds the “purity” of the image and likeness imprinted in him by the Creator from the beginning. The heart is also the central focus of the conversion that God desires from man and for man, to enter into his intimacy, into his love.
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
SOURCE: SANCTUARY of the SACRED HEART in Paray
Day 2
Who can separate us from the love of Christ?
Meditation
Saint Margaret Mary experienced this admirable mystery, the overwhelming mystery of divine Love. She was entirely seized by this divine mystery as expressed in the admirable prayer of the psalm: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, Bless his most holy name, my whole being!” “My whole being” is to say “all my heart”! Bless the Lord! … He forgives. He “heals.” Full of love: merciful love. He. Truly him, the Christ. Here, in this place of Paray-le-Monial, as the Apostle Paul once did, the humble servant of God seemed to cry out to the whole world: “Who can separate us from the love of Christ?”
In our time, the same question sounds, addressed to each of us. With Paul of Tarsus, with Margaret Mary, we proclaim the same certainty: “nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ.” I’m sure of that… Nothing can ever…! We have the certainty of His Love!
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
Day 3
Heart of Jesus, King of all hearts
Meditation
Jesus Christ is King of hearts. We know that during his messianic activity, the people, seeing the signs he was performing, wanted to “proclaim him king.” We also know that to the question: “Are you king? In the presence of Pilate’s tribunal, Jesus of Nazareth replied, “My kingdom is not of this world. That is why I was born and why I came into the world: to bear witness to the truth. Whoever is of the Truth hears my voice.” [Jesus] never wanted to be a temporal ruler. He desired only that kingdom which is not of this world and which, at the same time, is rooted in this world through the truth in human hearts: in the inner man. For this kingdom, the kingdom of God’s adopted sons and daughters, He gave His life on the cross. And he reconfirmed this kingdom by his resurrection giving the Holy Spirit to the apostles and men in the Church. In this way Jesus Christ is the king and center of all hearts.
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
Day 4
Heart of Jesus, fiery furnace of charity
Meditation
The furnace is burning. The Heart of Jesus, the Human Heart of Jesus, burns with the love with which it overflows. And this love is Love for the Eternal Father and love for men; for his adopted sons and daughters. The Heart of Jesus is an inextinguishable furnace. In this it resembles that “burning bush” in the book of Exodus, in which God revealed Himself to Moses. The bush that was on fire… “did not burn.” The love that burns in the Heart of Jesus is above all the Holy Spirit, in whom the God-Son unites eternally to the Father. The Heart of Jesus, the human Heart of God-man, is embraced by the lively flame of Trinitarian Love, which never goes out. May the Heart of Jesus, the fiery furnace of charity, never cease to burn on the horizon of the life of each and every one of us. [May Jesus] reveal to us the Love that never goes out or deteriorates, the Love that is eternal. That he may illuminate the darkness of the earthly night and warm hearts.
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
Day 5
Heart of Jesus, patient and of infinite mercy
Meditation
Is it not thus the Heart of the One who “passed by doing good and healing all those who had fallen into the power of the devil” ? Is this not the Heart of Jesus, who Himself had “where to rest his head, while foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests” ? Is this not the Heart of Jesus, who defended the adulterous woman from stoning and then said to her, “Go, henceforth sin no more”? Is it not thus the Heart of the One who was called “friend of publicans and sinners” ? The Heart is patient, because it is open to all the sufferings of man. The Patient Heart, because it Itself is willing to accept suffering beyond all human measure! What is mercy, in fact, if not that definitive measure of love that lowers itself to the very heart of evil in order to overcome it with good?
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
Day 6
Heart of Jesus, pierced by the spear
Meditation
In the pierced Heart we contemplate Jesus’ filial obedience to his Father, whose mission he carried out until his realization, and his fraternal love for men, whom he “loved to the end”, that is, to the extreme sacrifice of himself. The pierced Heart of Jesus is the sign of this love in vertical and horizontal direction, like the two arms of the Cross. The pierced Heart is also the symbol of new life, given to men by the Spirit and the sacraments. No sooner had the soldier given the spear blow than “he came out of blood and water from Jesus’ wound.” As from the rock struck by Moses in the wilderness was born a spring of water, so on the side of Christ, wounded by the spear, was born a torrent of water to quench the thirst of the new people of God. This torrent is the gift of the Spirit, which nourishes in us the divine life.
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
From the pierced Heart of Jesus, the church is born
Meditation
Finally, from the pierced Heart of Jesus, the Church is born. As on the side of Adam asleep, Eve his wife was created, so – according to a patristic tradition that goes back to the first centuries – on the open side of the Saviour, asleep on the Cross in the sleep of death, was created the Church, his bride; it is formed precisely from water and blood – Baptism and Eucharist – which are born from the pierced Heart. The Evangelist notices that next to the cross was the Mother of Jesus. She saw the open Heart from which blood and water flowed – blood drawn from her blood – and she understood that the blood of her Son was shed for our salvation. Then she fully understood the meaning of the words that her Son had addressed to her shortly before: “Woman, behold your son”: the Church that was born of the pierced Heart was entrusted to her mother’s heart.
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
Day 8
Heart of Jesus, joy of all saints
Meditation
The Litany concludes by addressing the Heart of Jesus as “the joy of all the saints.” It is already a vision of paradise; It is a brief word that opens infinite horizons of eternal bliss.
On this earth the disciple of Jesus lives in expectation of joining his Master, in the desire to contemplate his face, in the poignant aspiration to live always with him. On the other hand, in heaven, once the expectation has passed, the disciple has already entered into the joy of his Lord: he contemplates the face of the Master, who is transfigured only for a single moment, but who shines for eternity with the brilliance of the eternal Light; he lives with Jesus and in the same life as Jesus.
The life of Heaven is none other than the perfect, unfailing, intense enjoyment of the love of God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit -; it is none other than the total revelation of Christ’s intimate being, and the complete communication with the life and love that are born from his Heart.
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”
Day 9
Heart of Jesus, source of the lives of the saints
Meditation
In Heaven the blessed see all their desires satisfied, every prophecy fulfilled, every aspiration for happiness fulfilled, every desire fulfilled. The Heart of Christ is the source of the life of love of the saints: in Christ and through Christ the blessed of Heaven are loved by the Father, who unites them to Him by the bond of the Holy Spirit, divine Love. In Christ and through Christ (the blessed) love the Father and men, their brethren, with the love of the Spirit. The Heart of Christ is the living space of the blessed: the place where they dwell in love, from which they derive eternal and limitless joy. The infinite thirst for love, a mysterious thirst that God has placed in the human heart, is fulfilled in the divine Heart of Christ. The intense desire that was expressed on earth by the sigh: “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22) is now transformed in Heaven face to face, in quiet possession, in fusion of life: of Christ in the blessed, of the blessed in Christ!
Prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart.
“Lord Jesus, you who have come to light a fire on earth, today I abandon myself to the will of the Father and to the breath of the Spirit, purify my heart, set it ablaze with love and charity, make the desire for holiness grow in me, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I consecrate myself entirely to your heart to love and serve you.”