By: Sister Laetitia Therese, OCD
The month of June is traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Devotion to Our Lord’s Heart became widely expanded through the promotion of the private revelations of Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary in the latter seventeenth century. However, the original devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus could be traced back to St. John, the Beloved disciple, who reclined on Jesus’ breast during the Last Supper. Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. wrote that the word recline comes from the Latin “reclinare” which means literally “to lean back, to rest in (cf. p. 91 My Beloved is Mine and I am His).” St. John rested upon Our Lord’s Heart at a most poignant time. Jesus had just offered Himself to His disciples as their First Holy Communion and He was preparing to lay down His life on Calvary – all out of love for His Father and all out of love for each of us. What secrets of Our Lord’s Heart were revealed to him at this time! They gave St. John the courage and grace to stand at the foot of the cross with our Blessed Mother on the following day when Our Lord would surrender His life.
Let us take our place with St. John to rest upon Our Lord’s Heart each day this month. Some ways we can do this are by taking time for personal prayer, adoration, participating in the sacramental life of the Church, praying with Scripture, praying with sacred art, and immersing ourselves in good spiritual reading. It is said that by the end of St. John’s life the only thing that he would repeat is “God is love.” So overwhelmed was he by the realization of God’s love, it was all that consumed him. As we encounter Our Lord so profoundly our lives will be set on fire, like St. John, and we will not be able to contain within ourselves the joyful and hopeful news that our world is waiting desperately to hear.