Ten Ways to Honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus this Month

“Behold this heart which has so loved men” (Jesus Christ to Saint Margaret Mary Alocoque).

"You shall draw water with joy out of the Savior's fountain" (Isaiah 12:3). 

“Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of its very nature, is a worship of the love with which God, through Jesus, loved us, and at the same time, an exercise of our own love by which we are related to God and to other men” (Pope Pius XII).

"It is altogether impossible to enumerate the heavenly gifts which devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has poured out on the souls of the faithful, purifying them, offering them heavenly strength, rousing them to the attainment of all the virtues" (Pope Pius XII).

At the very center of Christianity is love. Love is the whole message, the whole law. Not love in the sense of quickly passing infatuation or sexual attraction, two superficial notions that are rampant in our secular culture, but rather sacrificial self-giving. In its essence, love is nothing more than laying down your life for the good of another.

The deeper we grow in the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, the more we realize that the gospel is centered not so much in our love for God, but in God’s love for us. Holy Church has dedicated the month of June to a devotion that is designed to remind us of the depth of God’s passionate love for his creatures: devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In the burning and wounded Sacred Heart, we see that God’s heart is consumed with love for us—so much so that he was willing to suffer and die for us in the most gruesome manner. The Sacred Heart teaches us that true love is always costly, but that it always gives life. The ultimate object of this devotion is the love of Jesus, the symbol of which is His Heart. In other words, "beneath the symbolic image of the Heart, we contemplate and venerate our divine Redeemer's immense charity and generous love: (Pius VI).

Jesus' sacrificial love for us to the end, merited for us that same charity by which we are enabled to love Him in return. This is really good news!

There is much more that can be said about devotion to the Sacred Heart, but today I will focus on ten ways we can honor it and return love for love:

1. Consecration – In mediating on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we realize the depth of God’s sacrificial love for us. Jesus gave himself to us completely (He held NOTHING back) on the Cross to prove his love for us, and he continues to do so every day in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. When we receive the Eucharist, we receive the very heart of Christ. The Eucharist is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Yes, Jesus gives us his heart again and again, and the only reasonable thing to do is to give our hearts to him in return. One beautiful way to do this is by consecrating ourselves to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Click here to learn more and for a prayer of consecration.

2. Enthronement – An important aspect of devotion to the Sacred Heart is recognizing and submitting to the authority of Jesus Christ in every aspect of our lives. Jesus is truly a king—the king of the Church, of our families, and of society in general. The tradition of enthroning the Sacred Heart is an excellent way to express this kingship of Christ.

In this ceremony, a blessed image of the Sacred Heart is placed prominently in our homes, reminding us that Jesus is our king, and that we should love and serve him with our whole hearts. Here are the prayers for an enthronement ceremony.

3. Reparation – The name of Jesus is regularly blasphemed and abused in media, literature, and every day conversation. Each time this happens, the heart of Christ is wounded again by the rejection of his creatures. One way we can show love to the Sacred Heart is by making acts of reparation for the abuse that Jesus receives. A prayer of reparation can be found here. 

Because the Eucharist is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we can also receive Holy Communion in the state of grace and spend time in Eucharistic Adoration as often as possible in reparation for the outrages, indifferences and sacriliges by which He is offended. We can also pray the following prayer that the Angel of Peace taught the shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal, every time we receive Holy Communion:

The Angel’s Prayer
O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg the conversion of poor sinners. Amen.

This is another prayer given to them by the Angel of Peace. There was a Eucharistic host and chalice suspended in the air, and the angel led them in kneeling before it and praying this prayer.

4. First Fridays – When our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary and revealed the devotion to the Sacred Heart, he requested the practice of attending Mass, going to confession, and receiving him in the Eucharist on the first Friday of 9 consecutive months. This devotion is important because we remember the passion and death of our Lord on Friday. It is essentially a novena that reminds us of the love of Jesus for us, and instills in us a desire to imitate his sacrificial love.

Of course, we are all busy, and it can be difficult to remember the first Friday devotion. If that’s the case for you, sign up here for handy email reminders.

5. Frequent Prayer – Prayer is the breath of the spiritual life and the primary way we grow in love for God and neighbor. Calling frequently on the Sacred Heart is an excellent way to pray, since doing so is an appeal to the love and mercy of Jesus. Prayer to the sacred heart can be as lengthy as a novena or litany, or as simple as a spontaneous, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.”

6. Imitation – Devotion to the Sacred Heart is designed to inspire imitation. We can say all the right prayers and even practice the first Friday devotion faithfully, but if we aren’t imitating the self-giving, sacrificial love of Jesus, we aren’t truly devoted to his heart. Of course, imitating the Sacred Heart starts with giving love to Christ and being ready to sacrifice for his sake. But it also involves loving those we encounter every day—including those we don’t particularly like.  It means loving and forgiving our enemies and those who persecute us. It means laying our life down for others.

7. Offer it Up! (another form of reparation) - As Catholics, we know that the suffering we experience in this life can be "offered to God as a living sacrifice" (Romans 12:2). We can choose to accept our suffering with trust in God's mercy and loving Providence and to offer our difficulties to Him with love. We are grateful that He has made room for our suffering in His suffering and because it now is united to His perfect sacrifice, He is using it to increase the flow of Grace in the world. Many Catholics understand this and try to live this way:

• Some of us have experienced the death of a loved one and are offering our broken hearts to God as a sacrifice so that He will be loved by all men in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
• We have experienced confusion from not fully understanding God's unsearchable, inscrutable ways and are offering it to Him so that others will find clarity and discernment for their lives as they spend time with Jesus in His Real Presence in the Eucharist.
• We are offering to God the rejection that we feel from others, and even that seems to come from God himself, so that His Eucharistic Love will be accepted by all men.
• We are offering our faults and failures to Him as we struggle to grow in holiness so that His love in the Most Blessed Sacrament will triumph in every heart.
• With Mary, we offer to Jesus any misunderstanding we may suffer in our own life, in order that all humanity may come to understand this tremendous love of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
• With Mary, we offer to Jesus all the loneliness in our own life, so that all who are separated from Him may return to the love of His Eucharistic Heart and so that He will never be left alone in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
• With Mary, we offer to Him any suffering in our own life caused by the feeling of not being appreciated, in order that all humanity may come to truly appreciate Jesus in this most Blessed Sacrament.
• We are striving to live the message of Fatima and to "make of everything a sacrifice to offer to God as an act of reparation for our sins and all of the sins by which He is offended, and in supplication for the conversion of ourselves and other sinners" (Angel of Peace, Fatima).

8. Become Living Lamps before the Blessed Sacrament - We can't be physically present before the tabernacle as often as we would like to be, but the offerings of our suffering remain before God like the candles that burn continually in the sanctuary even when we are not physically there. This is how we have become "Living Lamps."

We know the following to be true and so even when we cannot be there physically, we are there in spirit:

"During the night in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sweat blood. An angel came to comfort him. Gethsemane was prolonged into our tabernacles. Jesus waits for someone to comfort him here, too. Here on earth we can do nothing more beautiful than to console Jesus. What joys he will give us in reward.

The most sublime love for the Divine Master is to become a living lamp before the Blessed Sacrament. The greatest regret we will have in heaven will be to have loved the Eucharist so little and to have given it so little of our time. 

The living lamps before the Blessed Sacrament are the guardian angels of humanity. The candles in the Church symbolize living candles which are loving hearts" (taken from Ten Series of Meditations on the Mysteries of the Rosary).

"We can do all things [which He has called us to do] through Him who strengthens and empowers us. We are ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses us with inner strength and confident peace" (Philippians 4:13).

You can become a living lamp too and allow the Lord to elevate your suffering and difficulties to a supernatural level. Read this post to learn how: My Heart as a Living Lamp

9. Read and learn about the Sacred Heart of Jesus during this month.  The following is a great book: "Rosary Meditations From Mother Teresa of Calcutta: Loving Jesus With the Heart of Mary: Eucharistic Meditations on the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary". 

10. Missionary activity – Finally, loving the Sacred Heart of Jesus means bringing its love to others. It means sharing our faith with those who may have fallen away from it, or who might have never heard of the fact that Christ lovingly gives himself to us, body and soul, in the Eucharist. It means bearing witness to the fact the Jesus is our king whom we serve sacrificially. And it means bearing our crosses lovingly and patiently and offering it for the salvation of souls.

Conclusion
Devotion to the Sacred Heart has waned in recent years, but I encourage all of you to learn more about this beautiful devotion, and to grow in your love for the burning heart of Jesus. It is only when we learn to imitate the true, costly, and sacrificial love of the Sacred Heart that we will discover our vocation as Christians.

Some of this was taken from https://catholicgentleman.com/2014/06/7-ways-to-honor-the-sacred-heart-of-jesus/