This weekend we celebrate the patronal feast of our parish – The Sacred Heart of Jesus. There is an earlier post on the history of the feast day in which St. Bonaventure in his writing, “With You is the Source of Life” (which is the reading for the Divine Office on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart) described the heart as the fountain from which God’s love poured into our lives.
But what about our heart? In Scripture, the heart symbolizes the center or “core” of our being, from which prayer and moral actions originate. The heart is mentioned frequently by Jesus explain spiritual truths. Continue reading
This week, we celebrate The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, our church’s namesake. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a devotional with long and historic provenance within Christianity, and in modern times has been established as a Solemnity for the universal Church. The Solemnity was first celebrated in France. The liturgy was approved by the local bishop at the behest of St. John Eudes, who celebrated the Mass on August 31, 1670. The celebration was quickly adopted in other places in France. In 1856, Pope Pius IX established the Feast of the Sacred Heart as obligatory for the whole Church.