p. 32The Sacred Heart and Mercy for the Poor

Pity and compassion for all the sufferings of humanity—how these noble emotions burned and still flame forever in the Sacred Heart of Jesus! During His lifetime, our blessed Lord lived with the poor, preached to the poor, cheered their sorrows by His tenderness, healed their diseases, and brought them relief, encouraging all those who wished to be His followers to be kind and compassionate to the poor.

When the disciples of John the Baptist, who was in prison, came from him to Jesus to ask, “Art Thou He that art to come, or look we for another?” the gospel tells us, “And Jesus making answer said to them: Go and relate to John what you have heard and seen. The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the gospel preached to them” (St. Matthew, xi. 4-5). In His description of the last judgment in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew, our Lord takes occasion of this most solemn and tremendous episode in human history, this culmination of the whole life of man on earth, to preach a startling sermon on mercies to the poor.

For when He foretells the words which He, as judge, will say to the blessed, we hear Him bidding them enter the kingdom of His Father because of the acts of corporal mercy done to others. He enumerates the giving of food to the hungry, of drink to the thirsty, of clothes to the naked, the ministering to the sick, the welcoming of strangers, the visiting of those in prison. And with similar significance, when He rebukes the wicked for their misdeeds, He enumerates their refusals to perform these same corporal works of mercy, declaring in each instance that whatever they have done or left undone to the least of His brethren, they have given or refused to the Son of Man Himself.

Thus, the Sacred Heart of Jesus has manifested unmistakably how tender is His compassion for the poor, how great His desire that we should all minister to their necessities. Our Lord takes as done to Himself whatever we do to the least and poorest of His afflicted brethren. He desires us to show our love for Him and our gratitude to His Sacred Heart by our kindness, helpfulness, and tenderness toward the poor.

The Catholic family, therefore, which is consecrated to the Sacred Heart and has enthroned that adorable Heart in its home should practice special compassion and tenderness toward the poor. The members of the family should search their hearts to discover whether they have, and exercise real, active compassion and charity to those who are in need or in affliction.

It is quite possible that even an otherwise good family may be a selfish family, keeping peace in the household, supplying generously all the members of the family with everything they need, but careless and forgetful of the duty of helpfulness and kindness toward the poor. A family may suffer from the vice of selfishness just as may an individual, and to the one as to the other the results are very damaging. “Charity,” says the old proverb, “begins at home.” The very comfort, plenty, and peace with which God may have blessed our own home ought to make us doubly compassionate of those other homes, where neither plenty nor peace can dwell because of grinding poverty.

Our Lord has blessed poverty and consecrated it by His own example. He has praised the poor in spirit, who are detached from the goods of this world, but He never has approved nor intended that grinding destitution which weighs intolerably both on the body and the spirit. He wishes us so to relieve the needs of others, that all may have sufficient material goods to enable them to lead decent Catholic lives. If we are true to the example of His Sacred Heart, we shall so pity the necessities of others that all the members of the family will do something for the poor.

It is this compassion of the heart, this inward sympathy and pity for others, that we ought to pray for and seek in the Sacred Heart of Jesus where it exists as in its fountainhead to a sublime and most perfect degree. If our heart is compassionate and pitiful as was the Heart of Jesus, our actions will be like His and we shall go about doing good to the poor as He did, in our own way, and according to our own opportunities, leading a Christlike life of mercy, comforting those about us, relieving distresses, and helping the poor.

What is the attitude of your family toward pity for the poor? Does each member give an example to the others of inward pity and outward helpfulness for those who are distressed and in want, outside the family circle? Does the talk of the family sometimes turn on the necessities of the poor? Are a part of the family plans, the family resources taken up with the work of real effective charity? Does a Christlike compassion for the afflicted make a part of the atmosphere of the home, enter into the home thoughts, conversations, and activities? If so, then such a home is worthy of its consecration to the Sacred Heart. It is a home where Jesus loves to dwell, a home where Christlike lives are fostered.

Nor is this pity and helpfulness, so dear to the Sacred Heart, to be given only to those who are destitute of material goods. Jesus, our model, pitied all who were in distress—the sorrowful, the sinner, the lonely stranger, the ill of body, and the perturbed of mind. So should our compassion and mercy go out from the safe haven of our home to all who are in affliction and distress. Especially ought we to commiserate and help our needy neighbors whose nearness to our dwelling makes them especially the objects of our friendly pity, given to us by God’s Providence and affording precious opportunities of service to the Sacred Heart.