Promises of the First Fridays

 From Catholic Exchange:

The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus consists primarily of attending Holy Mass for nine consecutive first Fridays for nine consecutive months. This devotion must be carried out with great love for Jesus and in reparation for those souls who reject Him. Friday is a day chosen by Christ Himself and those committed to this holy devotion must partake of the Blessed Sacrament. All those choosing to partake in the devotion are reminded that Christ does not release us from our holy obligations and that we must practice our devotions with an increased vigilance.  Christ’s sacred promises grant abundant graces to His faithful to overcome the temptations hindering the efforts to persevere to the final end in a state of grace.

This list of twelve promises does not comprise all of the promises Christ made to Saint Mary Margaret concerning the devotion to His Sacred Heart. These are the twelve promises most likely to draw faithful souls to this most worthy devotion. But still, they are only a few of the many graces promised to those willing to offer up their broken hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for nine consecutive first Fridays. (Read more.)

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Corpus Christi

Fr. Mark speaks of Our Eucharistic Savior, both Victim and the Priest:

As the paschal Victim, Christ allows himself to be handed over to death; as Priest he hands himself over to the Father in the Spirit. Here again is an icon of the “Eucharistic face of Christ.” “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. . . . This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:25).

Standing before this Pauline icon of the “Eucharistic Face of Christ,” the Church bursts into song:

Sing forth, O Sion, sweetly sing
The praises of thy shepherd king,
In hymns and canticles divine.
. . . Then be the anthem clear and strong,
Thy fullest note, thy sweetest song,
The very music of the breast.

Today the sobriety characteristic of the Roman Rite becomes a Eucharistic inebriation. The Lauda Sion exploits all the possibilities of the seventh mode, the mode of ecstatic jubilation. Like a bird in flight, the praise of the Church soars and descends as if on the wings of the wind, to say, nearly breathless, in the end,

Behold, the bread of angels, sent
The bread for God’s true children meant,
For pilgrims in their banishment.

Sacred Heart Novena

Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

I. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you." Behold I knock, I seek and ask for the grace of...... (here name your request)
Our Father....Hail Mary....Glory Be to the Father....Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

II. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you." Behold, in your name, I ask the Father for the grace of.......(here name your request) Our Father...Hail Mary....Glory Be To the Father....Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

III. O my Jesus, you have said: "Truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away." Encouraged by your infallible words I now ask for the grace of.....(here name your request) Our Father....Hail Mary....Glory Be to the Father...Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender Mother and ours.

Say the Hail, Holy Queen and add: St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, pray for us.

-- St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Madame Elisabeth's Prayer

Here is a prayer of Madame Elisabeth, the sister of Louis XVI, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

Adorable heart of Jesus, sanctuary of the love that led God to make himself man, to sacrifice his life for our salvation, and to make of his body the food of our souls: in gratitude for that infinite charity I give you my heart, and with it all that I possess in this world, all that I am, all that I shall do, all that I shall suffer. But, my God, may this heart, I implore you, be no longer unworthy of you; make it like unto yourself; surround it with your thorns and close its entrance to all ill-regulated affections; set there your cross, make it feel its worth, make it willing to love it. Kindle it with your divine flame. May it burn for your glory; may it be all yours, when you have done what you will with it. You are its consolation in its troubles, the remedy of its ills, its strength and refuge in temptation, its hope during life, its haven in death. I ask you, O heart so loving, the same favour for my companions. So be it.

O divine heart of Jesus! I love you, I adore you, I invoke you, with my companions, for all the days of my life, but especially for the hour of my death.

O vere adorator et unice amator Dei, miserere nobis. Amen.

Madame Elisabeth was guillotined on May 10, 1794 and her Cause for Beatification has been introduced. More HERE.

Month of the Sacred Heart

The month of June is traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Here is an excerpt from Love, Peace and Joy by the Reverend André Prévot:

The source of devotion to the Sacred Heart is love-- that is to say, the Heart of Jesus would give us this devotion as a last effort of His love, and the most perfect gift that He can bestow. It is love which desires to give itself without reserve, even to the end of time, to the ends of the earth, to the utmost limits of its affection; love which seeks to warm the world, where charity is now so cold; love which has come to bring fire on earth, and desires at the end of time to consume it entirely in its flames; love which aims more at loving than being loved, for that is the law of love.... In former days, victims had to be consumed by fire that they might rise to Heaven as an odor of sweetness; in like manner the Church must also be consumed by the fire of love, that as a pure victim immolated with Jesus she may rise to Heaven when her sacrifice is accomplished.

Trinity Sunday

 

The Sunday after Pentecost is the feast of the Holy Trinity on which the Church gives for our meditation the most sublime mystery of our Faith. In the words of the Carmelite Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen: "In the presence of the unspeakable mystery of the Trinity, the highest praise is silence, the silence of the soul that adores, knowing that it is incapable of praising or glorifying the divine Majesty worthily." (from Divine Intimacy, p.587) The Trinity is one God in three Persons, as the Athanasian Creed states: "The Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is one: the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal....In like manner, the Father is Almighty, the Son is Almighty and the Holy Spirit is Almighty, and yet there are not three Almighties, but One Almighty." The threeness of God was revealed by Our Lord Jesus Christ during His public ministry, specifically at His baptism (Matthew 3:16-17), at His Transfiguration (Matthew 17:5) and before His Ascension (Matthew 28:19). Yet the mystery of the Trinity is alluded to in the Old Testament, even in the first chapter of Genesis, when God speaks in the plural: "Let us make man to Our image and likeness" (Gen. 1:28), and later when the prophet Isaias beholds the seraphim chanting their trisagion of praise: "Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God of Hosts!" (Isaias 6:3)

At Fatima, the angel taught the children the following invocation: "O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, my God, my God, I adore you in the Blessed Sacrament." We can encounter the Trinity in the Blessed Eucharist, in the depths of our souls, and through devotion to the Heart of Mary who is daughter of God the Father, Mother of God the Son, and spouse of God the Holy Spirit.

Feast of St. Joan

"O how beautiful is the chaste generation with glory: for the memory thereof is immortal...." Wisdom 4:1

In 1431 May 30 fell upon a Wednesday, the Vigil of Corpus Christi. It was around noon when Jehanne Darc, or Jehanne la Pucelle, "the Maid," as she called herself, was led into the public square of Rouen by enemy soldiers to where the stake awaited her. Nineteen years old, her head shaven, surrounded by placards branding her a witch, idolatress, and abjured heretic, she invoked the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, and St Michael the Archangel. She had been calumniated and condemned by those whose holy office it was to guide and protect her soul; she had been exposed to lewdness and impurity by those whose sacred duty it was to shelter her innocence and virginity. She was abandoned by the king whose crown her victories had won. She was in great interior darkness; the voices of her saints were silent.

Although she conversed with angels and saints, Joan the Maid was known to be practical and blunt. Very feminine, she missed her embroidery and her mother, yet she emerges on the pages of late medieval history like someone from the Acts of the Apostles. Surrounded by miracles, she was herself a Miracle; she led an army to victory at the age of 17, an illiterate peasant girl, who knew nothing of war or politics. She saved France as a nation, for it had all but ceased to exist when she came on the scene.

Such was her Faith that she confounded her judges, while exhausted, frightened and pushed to the breaking point of her mental and physical strength. Denied the Sacraments by her persecutors, she gazed upon the upheld crucifix, calling out, "Jesus! Jesus!" as the flames consumed her. When Joan's ashes were scattered in the river, her heart was found, untouched by the flames, and still bleeding.

"If I walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me, O Lord Jesus." Communion Antiphon for the Feast of St Joan

St. Joan, pray for us!