Most Sacred Heart of Jesus - Ravisher of hearts

St John Eudes was known as the “Apostle of the Sacred Heart” due to his spreading the devotion. He composed many prayers, an Office and a Litany for the Sacred Heart before it was officially a Feast if the Church. In his litany he has a beautiful expression he uses “raptor cordium” - ravisher of hearts. 

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the best known Catholic symbols in the world. It symbolises the humanity of Our Lord enflamed with his Divinity for love of us. As God, only he can satisfy the desires of our heart. This is why I love the expression “ravisher of hearts” by St John Eudes. 

Another beautiful expression for the Sacred Heart used by many saints is the “furnace of charity”. A furnace generates heart, and so the Sacred Heart fills us with charity, His own Divine Love. May the Sacred Heart of Jesus always soften our hardened hearts, and enflame us with His love. As the collect for today says, may we always glory in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus - have mercy on us! 

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who glory in the Heart of your beloved Son and recall the wonders of his love for us, may be made worthy to receive an overflowing measure of grace from that fount of heavenly gifts.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.

Malachi’s prophecy of the Eucharist

In the reading for Morning Prayer in the Divine Office today we are given the prophecy from Malachi regarding pure worship. 

In the prophet Malachi 1:11 the Church Fathers (Didache, St Justin Martyr, St Irenaeus, St Augustine) interpreted this as a prophecy of the Eucharist. The Eucharist truly is the “pure offering” that is accepted by God and proclaimed among the nations. This is the worship in “Spirit & in truth” that Jesus told us he would give us in John 4:23-24

The words of this prophecy are also alluded to in Eucharistic Prayer III: 

You are indeed Holy, O Lord,
and all you have created rightly gives you praise,
for through your Son our Lord Jesus Christ,
by the power and working of the Holy Spirit,
you give life to all things and make them holy,
and you never cease to gather a people to yourself,
so that from the rising of the sun to its setting
a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name.

The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not just a memorial or a sacred meal, it is the True Pure Sacrifice given to us by Jesus himself to worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. It is the sacrifice that all peoples can offer to God and be reconciled to him in Christ Jesus. 

There is beautiful poetic typology in the Mass that references the sacrifices of the Old Testament and how they are fulfilled in the New Testament. All the sacrifices from the Bible find their fulfilment in the Eucharistic Sacrifice given to us by Jesus. This is beautifully explored by St Thomas Aquinas in his hymn “Lauda Sion” 

Lauda Sion

Sion, lift up thy voice and sing:
Praise thy Savior and thy King,
Praise with hymns thy shepherd true.

All thou canst, do thou endeavor:
Yet thy praise can equal never
Such as merits thy great King.

See today before us laid
The living and life-giving Bread,
Theme for praise and joy profound.

The same which at the sacred board
Was, by our incarnate Lord,
Giv’n to His Apostles round.

Let the praise be loud and high:
Sweet and tranquil be the joy
Felt today in every breast.

On this festival divine
Which records the origin
Of the glorious Eucharist.

On this table of the King,
Our new Paschal offering
Brings to end the olden rite.

Here, for empty shadows fled,
Is reality instead,
Here, instead of darkness, light.

His own act, at supper seated
Christ ordain’d to be repeated
In His memory divine;

Wherefore now, with adoration,
We, the host of our salvation,
Consecrate from bread and wine.

Hear, what holy Church maintaineth,
That the bread its substance changeth
Into Flesh, the wine to Blood.

Doth it pass thy comprehending?
Faith, the law of sight transcending
Leaps to things not understood.

Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things, to sense forbidden,
Signs, not things, are all we see.

Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine,
Yet is Christ in either sign,
All entire, confessed to be.

They, who of Him here partake,
Sever not, nor rend, nor break:
But, entire, their Lord receive.

Whether one or thousands eat:
All receive the self-same meat:
Nor the less for others leave.

Both the wicked and the good
Eat of this celestial Food:
But with ends how opposite!

Here ’tis life: and there ’tis death:
The same, yet issuing to each
In a difference infinite.

Nor a single doubt retain,
When they break the Host in twain,
But that in each part remains
What was in the whole before.

Since the simple sign alone
Suffers change in state or form:
The signified remaining one
And the same for evermore.

Behold the Bread of Angels,
For us pilgrims food, and token
Of the promise by Christ spoken,
Children’s meat, to dogs denied.

Shewn in Isaac’s dedication,
In the manna’s preparation:
In the Paschal immolation,
In old types pre-signified.

Jesu, shepherd of the sheep:
Thou thy flock in safety keep,
Living bread, thy life supply:
Strengthen us, or else we die,
Fill us with celestial grace.

Thou, who feedest us below:
Source of all we have or know:
Grant that with Thy Saints above,
Sitting at the feast of love,
We may see Thee face to face.
Amen. Alleluia.

Precious & wonderful banquet

Here in Australia, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi has been transferred to Sunday today. In the Office of Readings for today the Church gives us this beautiful meditation by St Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist. 

I encourage you to take some time today to meditate and pray on these words from St Thomas Aquinas to help renew your wonder and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament

— 

O precious and wonderful banquet!

Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that men should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make men gods. Moreover, when he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation. He offered his body to God the Father on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice for our reconciliation. He shed his blood for our ransom and purification, so that we might be redeemed from our wretched state of bondage and cleansed from all sin. But to ensure that the memory of so great a gift would abide with us for ever, he left his body as food and his blood as drink for the faithful to consume in the form of bread and wine. O precious and wonderful banquet that brings us salvation and contains all sweetness! Could anything be of more intrinsic value? Under the old law it was the flesh of calves and goats that was offered, but here Christ himself, the true God, is set before us as our food. What could be more wonderful than this? No other sacrament has greater healing power; through it sins are purged away, virtues are increased, and the soul is enriched with an abundance of every spiritual gift. It is offered in the Church for the living and the dead, so that what was instituted for the salvation of all may be for the benefit of all. Yet, in the end, no one can fully express the sweetness of this sacrament, in which spiritual delight is tasted at its very source, and in which we renew the memory of that surpassing love for us which Christ revealed in his passion.

It was to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon the hearts of the faithful that our Lord instituted this sacrament at the Last Supper. As he was on the point of leaving the world to go to the Father, after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he left it as a perpetual memorial of his passion. It was the fulfillment of ancient figures and the greatest of all his miracles, while for those who were to experience the sorrow of his departure, it was destined to be a unique and abiding consolation.

Prayer, the water of life

How true is this! 

We often take prayer for granted, thinking it’s something we will do “later” but then life gets in the way. We need to remember that prayer is not an option in the spiritual life, without prayer we have no life - just as without water we die of thirst.

This is the water Jesus mentions to the woman at the well in John‬ ‭4:14‬ ‭NRSV-CI‬‬ “but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

Without the precious life giving water of grace raining upon our souls, watering us and quenching our thirst, we will never be able to produce good fruits or grow in the spiritual life. 

Resting in Divine Filiation

“Rest in divine filiation. God is a Father – your Father! – full of warmth and infinite love. Call him Father frequently and tell him, when you are alone, that you love him, that you love him very much, and that you feel proud and strong because you are his son.” // The Forge, no. 331 

So often we can struggle to accept and trust in the Fatherhood of God due to developmental trauma growing up. This in turn affects our images of God as Father. But as St Josemaria here teaches we need to ”rest” in being a Child of God, in the safe knowledge we are loved and cared for. 

This is the intimacy that Jesus taught us through praying the “Our Father” and giving us the Holy Spirit who gives us the power to be the children of God through our baptism & union with Christ 

“But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

‭‭John‬ ‭1:12-13‬ ‭NRSV-CI‬‬

Prayer & Spiritual Direction

For us Christians, prayer is a non negotiable. Prayer is a necessity. If we think prayer is a waste of time, we have misunderstood what prayer is. Prayer is relationship with God, talking to him and spending time with him. 

Without the grace and strength we receive from prayer it is easy to fall into discouragement, to be overcomed by trials and evil. 

God is calling us every moment into relationship and intimacy with himself, so he can communicate with us, and share his blessedness with us. All we need to do is pray and open ourselves to him when he calls …

If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts (Psalm 95:8) 

Have you felt God calling you to spend more time in prayer? Unsure of how to respond? Open your heart and respond  “speak Lord, your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:10) 

Spiritual Direction can help you to deepen your prayer life, see where the Holy Spirit is speaking to you today.

The necessity of suffering in the spiritual life

Without downplaying how difficult suffering can be and without falling into sadomasochism, the beauty of our faith teaches us that suffering does have meaning and it can be part of the medicine to heal us as we progress in sanctification. 

We can have two choices in life - to become victims to suffering and get better over it, or we can humbly accept it knowing it is part of God’s Divine Providence to advance us on the path of holiness. This can be a tough doctrine to accept, that is why it requires humility and faith. Humility to accept that we don’t understand God’s ways, and faith to accept with trust that God is Good, He loves us and knows what is best for us. 

St Titus Brandsma - Master of Mysticism

The more I learn about St Titus and his writings, the more I admire him and feel connected to him as my brother in Carmel. He was a professor who taught a course on Christian Mysticism and was known to be a great promotor of the thought of Sts Teresa of Avila & John of the Cross. Someone once joked with him how could he belong to the Ancient Observance of Carmel (Calced/unreformed) when he was so imbued with the spirit of the Discalced Carmelites (Teresian reform) - he replied cheekily with his play on words “outside of my cell I am calced (shoed) but inside my cell I am discalced (barefooted)”. This is his greatest strength - drawing from both branches of the Order to be fully Carmelite. 

In this quote you can see that he emphasises that the starting point of the mystical life is God, not us. This means it’s all a working of grace. This grace working in us is creative, the action of the Holy Spirit is always creative as He works in us to recreate us into the image of Christ. Through Christ we become one with the Holy Trinity and this is the beauty of Christian Mysticism, it is Trinitarian and only possible through grace. 

Pentecost - the gift of the living fire of Charity

As we prepare to celebrate the wonderful and curious Solemnity of Pentecost, the Church gives us this beautiful hymn to pray, the “Veni Creator”. This is the same famous hymn that is sung before Papal Elections and also at Ordinations, it is useful to meditate on the imagery provided in the hymn. 

Fire is one of the primordial symbols of God in the Old Testament (Exodus 3:2-3, Exodus 15:7, Exodus 24:7, Deuteronomy 4:24, Deuteronomy 9:3, 2 Samuel 22:9, Psalm 97:3, Isaiah 33:14, Isaiah 66:15, Nehemiah 9:12-15), it symbolises something powerful, dangerous, uncontrollable and intangible. This is the mysterious presence of the Holy Spirit - the living fire that set our hearts aflame with love, giving us the burning charity & faith that Jesus desired for us (Luke 12:49). 

The sevenfold grace is the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit prophesied in Isaiah 11:1-2. The “Finger of God” refers to the power of the Holy Spirit which manifested in Exodus 8:19, Exodus 31:18, Dan 5:5, 24 & Luke 11:19. This is the same power that Jesus promised he would give us to be his children and lead us into the truth John 16. 

This hymn is so rich in biblical imagery you could spend ages meditating on it doing Lectio Divina, deepening your understanding of the Person & work of the Holy Spirit, who we profess in the Creed to be the “Lord and giver of life”

As the Apostles gathered with Mary when the Holy Spirit descended on Pentecost (Acts 1:13-16) let us pray “Come Holy Spirit, come by the means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary your well beloved spouse” 🙏

——— 

Come Holy Ghost, Creator, come 

from your bright heav'nly home,

Come, take possession of our souls 

and make them all your own.

For you are called the Paraclete, 

best gift of God above,

The living spring, the living fire, 

sweet unction and true love.

And you are sev'nfold in your grace, 

finger of God's right hand,

Whose promise teaches little ones 

to speak and understand.

O guide our minds with your blest light, 

with love our hearts inflame,

And with your strength, which ne'er decays, 

confirm our mortal frame.

Far from us drive our deadly foe; 

true peace unto us bring;

And through all perils lead us safe 

beneath your sacred wing.

Through you may we the Father know, 

through you the eternal Son,

And you the Spirit of them both, 

thrice blessed Three in One.

Now to the Father and the Son,

Who rose from death, be glory given,

with Thou, O Holy Comforter,

henceforth by all in earth and heaven.

Amen.

Prayer is life

For many of us, prayer is a retreat - a solace from the struggles and harshness of everyday life. While there is nothing wrong with this, we are also called to go deeper. If our prayer remains at this level, it will remain superficial and we will struggle to ever enter into intimacy with God. But once prayer becomes our life - then everything changes! We understand and experience God with us always, in the joys and the sorrows. We can continually commune with the indwelling Trinity anywhere at anytime. This understanding of the Divine Indwelling is the beauty of the Carmelite Spiritual Tradition, it is what we call “Practicing the Presence of God”. 

God deserves more and desires to be with us more than just during a few vocal prayers in the morning when we wake up or before going to bed. There is nothing wrong with this and it’s a fantastic start. But prayer needs to become our life, as the Catechism #2697 says quoting St Gregory Naxianzus “We must remember God more often than we draw breath“