Home Enthronement to the Sacred Heart
One
Yesterday, we reflected on the promises Jesus made to us through the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. Jesus promises us so much, if only we commit to a continual conversion and renewal of our love for God and willingness to seek Him and His kingdom first. Mike spoke about spending time with Jesus and making room for Him by getting rid of distractions, as well getting a beautiful painting of the Sacred Heart to hang in our houses. That sounds good, but how do I make myself love God more? How do I make myself love anything more? This is a very deep question, and it goes to the core of what it means to be human. There are other answers, but here is a very good one—Love will grow by encouraging habits and by the experience of beauty. I’ll say it again, Love will grow by encouraging habits and by experiencing of beauty, especially the beauty of God in prayer and receiving the Sacraments. This is what we call grace. Our hearts are made to be drawn by beauty, and when we see the beauty of something, we need no other reward for pursuing it. But we won’t always see that beauty clearly, or in every little thing, so we need to build habits that help us to reaffirm our commitment. To quote GK Chesterton, “Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”
Lord Open our eyes and bind us to your heart as we bind ourselves to yours.
Two
Love grows by willing the good of others, and by force of habit. This is a confusing statement for our world because love is so misunderstood. Love is not a feeling. Jesus is not asking us to give and get more hugs, to avoid all conflict, or even to feel warm fuzzies with Him. Feelings are fickle, they can come and go. What He wants is real love. My parents have been married for 57 years. They will be the first to tell you that they didn’t always feel warm and huggy for each other, but they made consistent effort, and built into their daily habits opportunities to love each other. Family meals, going to Church together, vacations to rest together, and perhaps most importantly, frequently saying “I love you”. If we wish to grow in Love, build into your schedule opportunities to love. This is one of the reasons daily prayer is so important, as well as frequent Eucharist and Confession. They are incredible opportunities to receive God’s love, and to show our love, especially when we don’t feel like praying, or listening to a boring homily, or standing in line to confess our sins. Saint Frances De sales said, “You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working, and just so you learn to love by loving.” If you wish to learn to love, build into your schedule opportunity to practice love, especially by practicing acts of self-denial precisely for the other.
Three
Love will grow by the experience of beauty. As we have spoken about in this podcast, our emotions are meant to be the fuel that helps us make good decisions. Now beauty is a complicated topic, which we will not go into great detail, but suffice it to say that even though beauty is not exclusively about our emotions, the experience of beauty fills us with good emotions. A great way to refuel and choose love more readily is to fill our hearts with the beauty of the person we want to love. Our culture is very confused about beauty. Hearts are made to be drawn to beautiful things, but our thirst for beauty becomes numb by exposure to the heavy traffic of images, media and noise. So, increase our time spent in silent reflection upon beautiful words and images. This will protect us from burnout in all our responsibilities and help to transform our pursuit of God from just one more thing, into a constant adventure—an adventure that is lived throughout your tasks of work, school, chores and all the to dos of the day. We should adorn our houses with beautiful and sacred images, we should read beautiful books, and thus grow our love by seeing the beautiful face of God more clearly.
Four
If you read the title of this podcast, you are probably pretty confused up to this point. We’ve reflected on three topics, and I have not said a single word about the enthronement to the Sacred Heart. In these reflections, we have recommended many habits and beautiful things to grow our love for God. But without seeing love as the goal, it can sound like a pious laundry list. The hope is that God will tug at our heart through one, more, or all the devotions mentioned.
So what is enthronement to the Sacred Heart? Enthronement to the Sacred heart is a consecration of our house to the Sacred Heart. The ninth promise of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque is: “I will bless every place in which an image of my Heart is exposed and honored.” Jesus wishes for our homes to be filled with beautiful reminders of Him, and for us to build a habit of consecrating and re-consecrating our homes, families and lives to him. The enthronement of the Sacred Heart is a good way to do that. I have seen many formulae by which we can consecrate our homes to the Sacred Heart, but the intention is always the same: bring our family together for a unified decision to allow the Sacred Heart of Jesus to come into our home and our lives. Live with His heart within you and be frequently reminded to come to Him under that image. Jesus’ Sacred Heart is the source and seedbed of mercy, forgiveness, patience with our faults, and the strength to grow in virtue and do better. This is exactly what we need to offer each other in our homes and with our Teams in this Movement. If you are struggling to find a worthy image, the Image Our Lord revealed to St. Faustina is also considered a worthy image of the Sacred Heart. Whatever image, let us revere and love Him. Oh, Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, change my heart and efforts like unto thine!
Five
Silence, Sacrifice, Meditation, Grace, and Truth have all been mentioned as the necessary ingredients for Enthroning our homes, along with the veneration of the Sacred Heart image, of course. Here I want to emphasize the last element mentioned: intention. Enthronement of our homes isn’t just a one and done ritual; it is to live according to the promises of Jesus. To summarize from Jesus’ words to St. Margaret Mary, it’s to live committed to holiness according to our state in life; to live in accords with the Peace of Christ in our homes; to enjoy Jesus’ security and comfort, to receive mercy, conversion, and fervency and final perseverance, meaning, we can trust that Jesus will help us avoid all temptations that would derail us from our final end. As we receive, so we need to give! Sacred Heart of Jesus, we place our trust in thee!