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To: Nihil Obstat

"You betcha! Look at one of our beautiful Sacred Heart statues. "

Can you expand...


147 posted on 11/22/2005 1:14:59 PM PST by PetroniusMaximus
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To: PetroniusMaximus

Certainly. The statues are from a vision of Jesus to a nun that happened many years ago. In the vision, the hands and feet of Jesus were peirced, as well as his side. Most Catholic churches will have a statue of Jesus as he appeared.

From a homily Archbishop Burke gave:

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a member of the Sisters of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was deeply imbued with the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. St. Francis of Assisi influenced her very much in her devotion. At the Visitation Convent in Paray-le-Monial, Christ appeared and revealed His Sacred Heart. The apparitions took place between Dec. 27, 1673, and the Octave of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in 1675. They are all connected with prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. There were four apparitions, the last of which is the greatest. The apparitions reported by St. Margaret Mary are a matter of private revelation. No one is held to believe in them. They have enjoyed the highest approbation of the Church.

The apparitions to St. Margaret Mary were not given to her for her personal consolation but for a mission which our Lord confided to her, namely the spread of the devotion to His Sacred Heart. From the first apparition, our Lord made it clear to St. Margaret Mary that His Heart is burning with love of mankind and that He desired her to be the Apostle of His Divine Love, His Sacred Heart.

It was during the first apparition that our Lord asked for St. Margaret Mary's heart which she mystically gave to Him. In other words, she placed her heart completely in His Sacred Heart. The union of her heart with the Sacred Heart is the model of the placing of our hearts in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so that they may be purified of all wrong desire and be aflame with divine love. At the conclusion of the first apparition, our Lord declared to St. Margaret Mary:

"I give you now the title of the beloved disciple of My Sacred Heart" (Louis Verheylezoon, SJ, Devotion to the Sacred Heart [Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1955], p. xxiv).

It was through the fourth or great apparition, during the Octave of Corpus Christi in 1675, that our Lord spoke the powerful words which express the deep significance of the devotion to His Sacred Heart:

"Behold this Heart which has so loved men that It spared nothing, even going so far as to exhaust and consume Itself, to prove to them Its love. And in return I receive from the greater part of men nothing but ingratitude, by the contempt, irreverence, sacrileges and coldness with which they treat Me in this Sacrament of Love. But what is still more painful to Me is that even souls consecrated to Me are acting in this way" (Devotion to the Sacred Heart, p. xxvii).

Our Lord then asks that reparation be made and love be inflamed through the consecration of hearts to His Sacred Heart. Specifically He asked for the observance of the First Friday Mass and Communion of Reparation, the Holy Hour on the Thursday night before First Friday (recalling the Agony in the Garden), and the solemn feast in honor of the Sacred Heart. It was during the great apparition that Christ revealed the image of His Sacred Heart that is depicted in statues, paintings and icons: His Pierced Heart on fire with love, crowned with the Cross and enfolded with the Crown of Thorns.

Christ holds His Heart to show us how much He loves us. The image which He revealed to St. Margaret Mary is understood through the words which He spoke and which I have just quoted.


154 posted on 11/22/2005 1:23:32 PM PST by Nihil Obstat
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