p. 13The Sacred Heart and the Heart of the Maiden

The spring of the year is at once a beautiful and a hazardous season. Its warm suns awake a profusion of charming blossoms on every tree, but its sudden frosts and dangerous winds can blight in a moment the hope of the fruitage. The hopes for the summer are often assured or ruined by the spring.

It is so of the springtime of life. Then, as at no other season, does the welfare of after days tremble in the balance. Generous hopes burst into vivid flowers under the sun of youth. But the character and the heart are as susceptible to untoward influences as are the blossoms of springtime. Those who have the care of souls and the culture of hearts must be as solicitous for youth as the careful gardener is for his springtime flowers.

The hearts and the souls of Catholic maidens, in that springtide of their life, where they unfold in intelligence, imagination, and affections, are most like the gardens of April and May with their wealth of white blossoms, their promise of the summer’s yield. The influences for good or for evil which fall on them then are potent for all life’s growing, as the suns and the frosts of spring determine the garden’s yield.

Very needful, then, is a pure and true devotion, intelligent and deep, to the Sacred Heart of Christ. If this devotion is in general an antidote to worldliness, the preserver of innocence, an assurance of piety and peace, it is especially so to the heart of the Catholic maiden in the days of her life’s white spring. An ardent love for the wounded Heart of Christ, a comprehension of the meaning of reparation, and the personal devotion to this tender and suffering Heart will shield as nothing else the life of the soul of the maiden from untoward influences and will preserve her heart clean and holy from the winds and frosts of the world.

There is need of such protection at the present time in the life of the nation. Unhappily, the sacred interests of maidenhood are disregarded, treasonably injured, and attacked on every side in modern society. There is a looseness of conduct and speech, which is injurious to all youth and especially to maidenhood. The amusements of the time have little respect for innocence. The ways of society are sometimes no less perilous. There is a need of strength of purpose, purity of heart, a true conscience, and firm ideals to preserve the Catholic girl in that innocence and faithfulness to her duties which will insure her a holy and mature womanhood.

The more reason to plant well and deep in her heart a devotion to the Sacred Heart. This devotion makes concrete and appealing that service to Christ, consecration to His interests, and loyalty to His ideals which preserve innocence and strengthen character. Where the love of Christ enters in, the love of frivolity and dangerous amusements, the passion for trivial and tainted reading, suspicious friendships, and low tastes must give place. The love of the Sacred Heart drives out the contaminations of the world.

But to have such an effect, this devotion must be reasonable, comprehended, and sincere—not a mere emotion nor a sentiment. Deep feeling enters into the love of the Sacred Heart, but the devotion itself must be rooted in the will and planted by intelligent reflection, based on right teaching, sunk deep by reasonable exercise. A devotion without roots will fade and wither quickly in the dust and heat of this life’s distractions. While in the protecting atmosphere of school, a Catholic girl may feel and practice a certain devotion; but if it is not reasonable, and deeply planted, it will soon vanish when she comes out into the broad and wind-swept avenues of life.

A real devotion to the Sacred Heart is likewise a most efficacious and powerful means of character training. Women need strong characters nowadays as well as men. In a sense they always did, but in former years the whole life of woman was indefinitely more protected and hedged about than now. Many a girl of gentle breeding was so protected in her home, so surrounded with conventions and safeguards, that she could hardly be said to be exposed at all to the world. All that is changed. Girls are sometimes almost more open to worldly influences than boys. They give the tone to youthful society. They have privileges and freedoms which would have astonished, not to say horrified, an elder age. What the result of all this will be on the general character of women, no one can quite predict. But it is clear that Catholic maidens need more than ever to be fortified in faith, dignity, and purity.

May the devotion to the Sacred Heart, therefore, enter in and take possession of their hearts when they are still in the first bloom of maidenly innocence. May this deep loyalty precede all other affections. May the wounded Heart of Christ, flaming with love, surrounded with sorrow, crowned with pain borne willingly for our love, so possess those hearts with the sanctity of His influence, that all the intruding evils of the time, seeing the Master there, may pause at the threshold and shrink away confounded from an innocence and holiness which they cannot resist and in which they have no part.