p. 23The Sacred Heart and the Joy of the Catholic Home

Joy is the normal state of the Christian soul. “Rejoice in the Lord,” says the great apostle, “and again I say to you rejoice.” The Old Testament declares to us that melancholy has slain its thousands and there is no good in it. To rejoice interiorly and to let one’s cheerfulness beam without, is the part of personal wisdom and of Christian charity. It is a great and calamitous mistake to think that piety is associated with gloom. The saints were centers of cheer and of joy, for they bore even their sorrows gladly and aided all about them to be cheerful both by their example and by their tender charity. To rejoice always is indeed possible only to the saints. In proportion as we approach their patience, their resignation to God’s will, their interior detachment, we shall come more and more to fulfill more perfectly the apostle’s exhortation always to rejoice in the Lord.

In the Catholic home especially, joy should be in the very air and a part of the atmosphere of the household. A gloomy home is not home at all. A pervading spirit of glumness in the house will either drive its occupants frantic or send them out of doors, seeking cheerfulness elsewhere. Joy in the house is a blessing and gloom is a curse.

The model of Catholic homes is the household of Nazareth, and who can doubt that this was a dwelling of gladness and joy? Christian painters have represented Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, and St. Joseph in many ways and in diverse circumstances of their lives. Sometimes the joyful and sometimes the sorrowful mysteries of Christ’s history have provided material for the brush. But with a Christian instinct, though they have often painted the members of the Holy Family in sorrow, they have never given to their countenances an expression of glumness or gloom. Their faces are often sorrowful, but resigned and patient sorrow does not cast out from the deeps of the heart an abiding joy. It is not sorrow which is joy’s enemy, but gloom, discontent, fretfulness, a want of love of God and the neighbor; and these things never entered the holy house of Nazareth.

To imitate this prevailing joy of the Holy Family, the members of the Catholic household have only to practice faithfully and fervently devotion to the Sacred Heart. The steadfast exercise of this devotion implants in the soul the virtues which are the roots of Christian joy. Humility, patience, resignation to the will of God, a willingness and even a desire to suffer something for the love of Christ, a yearning to imitate the Sacred Heart in sacrificing one’s self for others—all these things are the fruits of this sublime devotion. Who cannot see that such virtues will bring joy into the home?

But to secure such profound results, one’s devotion to the Sacred Heart must be in proportion, active and profound. It is not enough only to cherish a pious sentiment, to whisper some prayers, to feel a stirring of devotion whenever one looks upon the touching image of the bleeding and burning Heart of Our Divine Saviour, victim of His love for us. No, our devotion must go much farther; it must extend to all the emotions of our soul. When impatience or anger, jealousy or envy, rancor or bitterness, fretfulness, selfishness, resentment, revenge, stir in the soul, like dogs tugging at the chain, they must be whipped down and silenced with Christian courage in imitation of the meekness, charity, and tenderness of the Sacred Heart.

From such acts of self-sacrifice and self-control, in imitation of the Heart of Our Lord, will come a joy into the soul that earth can neither give nor take away. If each member of the family so imitates the meekness of the Heart of Christ, joy will pervade the very air of the home. There will be sorrows and suffering, for what earthly lot is complete without them? But even these, in imitation of the Sacred Heart and in union with the passion of Christ, will be received with joy.