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Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

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Gospel, John 19:31-37

 31 It was the Day of Preparation, and to avoid the bodies’ remaining on the cross during the Sabbath — since that Sabbath was a day of special solemnity — the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken away.

32 Consequently the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with him and then of the other.

33 When they came to Jesus, they saw he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs

34 one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water.

35 This is the evidence of one who saw it — true evidence, and he knows that what he says is true — and he gives it so that you may believe as well.

36 Because all this happened to fulfil the words of scripture: Not one bone of his will be broken;

37 and again, in another place scripture says: They will look to the one whom they have pierced.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

478      Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony, and his Passion and gave himself up for each one of us: “The Son of God… loved me and gave himself for me.”116 He has loved us all with a human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation,117 “is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that… love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings” without exception.118 (487, 368, 2669, 766)

694   Water. The symbolism of water signifies the Holy Spirit’s action in Baptism, since after the invocation of the Holy Spirit it becomes the efficacious sacramental sign of new birth: just as the gestation of our first birth took place in water, so the water of Baptism truly signifies that our birth into the divine life is given to us in the Holy Spirit. As “by one Spirit we were all baptized,” so we are also “made to drink of one Spirit.”27 Thus the Spirit is also personally the living water welling up from Christ crucified28 as its source and welling up in us to eternal life.29 (1218, 2652)

766   The Church is born primarily of Christ’s total self–giving for our salvation, anticipated in the institution of the Eucharist and fulfilled on the cross. “The origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus.”171 “For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the ‘wondrous sacrament of the whole Church.’”172 As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam’s side, so the Church was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging dead on the cross.173 (813, 860, 1340, 617, 478)

1225    In his Passover Christ opened to all men the fountain of Baptism. He had already spoken of his Passion, which he was about to suffer in Jerusalem, as a “Baptism” with which he had to be baptized.22 The blood and water that flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Jesus are types of Baptism and the Eucharist, the sacraments of new life.23 From then on, it is possible “to be born of water and the Spirit”24 in order to enter the Kingdom of God. (766)

2669    The prayer of the Church venerates and honors the Heart of Jesus just as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins. Christian prayer loves to follow the way of the cross in the Savior’s steps. The stations from the Praetorium to Golgotha and the tomb trace the way of Jesus, who by his holy Cross has redeemed the world. (478, 1674)

608      After agreeing to baptize him along with the sinners, John the Baptist looked at Jesus and pointed him out as the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”422 By doing so, he reveals that Jesus is at the same time the suffering Servant who silently allows himself to be led to the slaughter and who bears the sin of the multitudes, and also the Paschal Lamb, the symbol of Israel’s redemption at the first Passover.423 Christ’s whole life expresses his mission: “to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”424 (523, 517)

1432    The human heart is heavy and hardened. God must give man a new heart.25 Conversion is first of all a work of the grace of God who makes our hearts return to him: “Restore us to thyself, O LORD, that we may be restored!”26 God gives us the strength to begin anew. It is in discovering the greatness of God’s love that our heart is shaken by the horror and weight of sin and begins to fear offending God by sin and being separated from him. The human heart is converted by looking upon him whom our sins have pierced:27 (1989)

The Twenty- Four Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ

From the Writings of Luisa Piccarreta,  The Little Daughter of the Divine Will

Twenty-third Hour:  From 3 to 4 PM Jesus, Dead, is Pierced by the Thrust of a Lance. The Deposition from the Cross.

My dead Jesus, all nature has sent out a cry of sorrow at Your last Breath, and has cried over Your sorrowful death, recognizing You as its Creator.  The Angels, thousands upon thousands, hover around the Cross, and cry over Your death.  They adore You as our True God, and accompany You to Limbo, where You go to beatify many souls who have been ardently longing for You for centuries upon centuries.  My dead Jesus, I cannot pull myself away from Your Cross, nor can I be satiated of kissing and kissing again Your Most Holy Wounds, which eloquently speak to me of how much You have Loved me.  In seeing the horrendous tearings, the depth of Your Wounds, to the point of uncovering Your bones—ah, I feel I am dying!  I would like to cry so much over these Wounds as to wash them with my tears.  I would like to love You so much as to heal You completely with my love, and restore the natural Beauty of Your unrecognizable Humanity.  I would like to open my veins to fill Your empty veins with my blood and call You back to Life.

O my Jesus, what can love not do?  Love is life, and with my love I want to give You life; and if mine is not enough, give me Your Love.  And with Your Love, I will be able to do anything—yes, I will be able to give life to Your Most Holy Humanity.  O my Jesus, even after Your death You want to show me that You Love me, prove Your Love for me, and give me a refuge, a shelter, in Your Sacred Heart.  Therefore, pushed by a Supreme Force, to be assured of Your death, a soldier rips Your Heart open with a lance, opening a profound Wound.  And You, my Love, shed the last drops of Blood and water contained in Your Enflamed Heart.

Ah, how many things does this Wound, opened by Love, tell me!  And if Your mouth is mute, Your Heart speaks to me, and I hear It say, “My child, after I gave everything, I wanted this lance to open a shelter for all souls inside this Heart of Mine.  Opened, It will cry out to all, continuously:  Come into Me if you want to be saved.  In this Heart you will find Sanctity and you will make yourselves saints; you will find relief in afflictions, Strength in weakness, Peace in doubts, company in abandonments.  O souls who love Me, if you really want to love Me, come to dwell in this Heart forever.  Here you will find True Love in order to Love Me, and ardent Flames for you to be Burned and Consumed completely in Love.  Everything is centered in this Heart:  here are the Sacraments contained, here My Church, here the Life of My Church and the Life of all souls.  In It I also feel the profanations made against My Church, the plots of the enemies, the arrows they send, and My oppressed children—there is no offense that My Heart does not feel.  Therefore, My child, may your life be in this Heart—defend Me, repair Me, bring Me everyone into It.”

My Love, if a lance has wounded Your Heart for me, I pray that You too, with Your own Hands, wound my heart, my affections, my desires—all of myself.  Let there be nothing in me that is not wounded by Your Love.  I unite everything to the harrowing pains of our Dear Mama, who, for the pain of seeing Your Heart being ripped open, falls into a swoon of sorrow and Love; and like a dove, She flies in It to take the first place—to be the First Repairer, the Queen of Your very Heart, the Mediatrix between You and the creatures.  I too, with my Mama, want to fly into Your Heart, to hear how She makes reparation to You, and to repeat Her reparations for all the offenses You receive.  O my Jesus, in this Wounded Heart of Yours, I will find my Life again; therefore, anything I may be about to do, I will always draw from It.  I will no longer give life to my thoughts; but if these want life, I will take Yours.  My will will no longer have life; but if it wants life, I will take Your Most Holy Will.  My love will no longer have life; if it wants life, I will take Your Love.  O my Jesus, all of Your Life is mine—this is Your Will, this is my will.

 

 Volume 20 – December 8, 1926

From The Book of Heaven

How these writings come from the Heart of Our Lord.  The works of Our Lord are veils which hide the noble Queen of the Divine Will.

After this, I felt tired and I could not make up my mind to write what my adored Jesus had told me.  And Jesus, surprising me, to give me will and strength in order to do it, told me:  “My daughter, don’t you know that these writings come from the depth of my Heart, and I make the tenderness of my Heart flow in them, to move those who will read them, and the firmness of my divine speech, to strengthen them in the truths of my Will?  In all the sayings, truths, examples which I make you write on paper, I make flow the dignity of my celestial Wisdom, in such a way that those who read them, or will read them, if they are in grace, will feel in them my tenderness, the firmness of my speech and the light of my Wisdom, and as though in between magnets, they will be drawn into the knowledge of my Will.  Those who are not in grace, then, will not be able to deny that it is light; and light always does good, it never does harm; it illuminates, it warms, it allows one to discover the most hidden things and moves one to love them.  Who can say he does not receive good from the sun?  No one.  More than sun, I am releasing these writings from within my Heart, that they may do good to all.  This is why I have so much interest that you write – for the great good I want to do to the human family; so much so, that I look at them as my own writings, because it is always I the One who dictates, and you are the little secretary of the long story of my Will.”

Then, I was following, in the Divine Will, everything that Jesus had done while being on earth in His Humanity, and I asked in each one of His acts that His Fiat may be known, and that It may come triumphantly to reign in the midst of creatures.  And my highest and only Good, moving in my interior, told me:  “My daughter, just as all Creation is a veil which hides my Will, in the same way, my Humanity and all of my works, tears and pains are many veils which hide my Supreme Fiat.  It reigned in my acts, triumphant and dominating, and It laid the foundations in order to come to reign in the human acts of the creatures.  But do you know who tears these veils to let It come out to dominate in her own heart?  One who recognizes It in each one of my acts and invites It to come out.  She tears the veil of my works, she enters into them, she recognizes the noble Queen, and she prays It – she presses It to no longer remain hidden; and opening her heart to It, she invites It to enter.  She tears the veil of my tears, of my Blood, of my pains, the veil of the Sacraments, the veil of my Humanity, and giving her submission to It, she implores It to no longer remain veiled, but to make Itself known as Queen – which It is – in order to take Its dominion and form the children of Its Kingdom.  From here the necessity that you go around in Our Will and in all of Our works – to find the noble Queen of Our Will hidden in them, to pray It to unveil Itself, to come out of Its apartments, so that all may know It and let It reign.”

 

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