p. 8The Sacred Heart, Comforter of the Catholic Home

The coming of pain and of sorrow—who can avert or even delay it? In God’s good providence grief comes, now in this form, now in that other, to the sheltered and guarded sanctuary of the home. Now it is misfortune, now bereavement, sometimes the departure of a loved one from the home circle, now material loss, now sickness, now dishonor. There are, alas, so many doors at which suffering can come in. The close intimacy and the mutual love which are the very air of a Catholic home, can assuage in some way the bitter agony of the heart, but they do not protect us from sorrow; nay, sometimes the very closeness of that intimate sympathy increases the sum-total of our pain by making us sharers in the griefs of all those about us.

We have evident need, then, of a consoler. We cannot bear our griefs alone, nor will the comradeship of those about us always suffice to take the edge from sorrow. There are times when the whole family circle, tried almost beyond endurance by the weight of some sudden calamity or the weariness of some long-endured misfortune, looks beyond its own number for consolation. Our Blessed Lord, in such moments most of all, offers to the Catholic home the most sure, most deep, and most heavenly consolation.

It was the desire to console as well as the desire to redeem mankind that moved the infinite compassion of the eternal Son of God to wish to become man to save us. He took pity on the multitude of our sorrows. He resolved to take upon Himself our human nature with its pains, its weakness, and its weariness, and to become like us, as St. Paul says, in all things—sin alone excepted. The greatness of this condescension and the infinity of this compassion we shall never realize, for to realize it would require the realization of the infinity of God. Yet in heaven we shall see more clearly what it means for the omnipotent to be clad in weakness, for the All-Holy to suffer, for the All-Blessed God to take upon Himself a nature like ours and to become blood brother to the lost and fallen race of Adam, so as to lift us up and console us whom only a God-man could save.

That even the most ignorant might know the depth of His love and the might of His compassion, our Lord suffered Himself to be raised on a cross and to die on that most cruel and shameful gibbet, so as to give to all ages the image of the Crucified in which the greatest sufferings of man can read the most supreme consolation. Before that sacred symbol of God dying for our sake, our complaints are rebuked and our vastest griefs dwindle to nothings. It cost our Lord the most incomprehensible agony to leave to us that legacy of the crucifix, but His sorrows have sweetened forever the cup of all those who believe in Him and love Him.

Yet to us, of these later days, our Saviour has vouchsafed a further blessing. Opening that sacred wound of His side, which He still bears for an eternal witness of His love and suffering and wears even in the glory of Heaven, He has showed us His Sacred Heart, reminding us of that furnace of love, of that ocean of pity and compassion which waits, with its deeps beyond deeps of strength and consolation, to be the resource of our weak hearts and shallow courage in every trial. One look upon the image of that burning Heart, one thought of His words to St. Margaret Mary, will bring us courage in the sharpest trial and make us kiss the hand that smites us, in memory of the tenderness and love of the Sacred Heart, without Whose leave no suffering can approach us.

Thus, the presence in the Catholic home of a picture or image of the Sacred Heart is a constant source of consolation. The Israelites looked on the brazen serpent which Moses set up among them, and by the sight they were healed of the stings of the living serpents that plagued them. So the sight of the image of our Lord, wounded for us, bruised for our healing, will remind us of His boundless love for us, of the consolation that our patience and resignation in suffering can afford Him, and so the sight will heal our hearts, stung by the trials and the misfortunes that invade our home. Thus, the mere presence in the house of images of the Sacred Heart is in itself a fountain of consolation.

But the deep understanding and practice of the devotion itself is a greater comfort in adversity and a shield against the bitterness of sorrow. Reparation to the Heart of our Lord for the negligence and injuries of mankind is admirably made by the patient endurance and the offering up for His love, both the little trials of every day and the greater trials which come from time to time. The saints, full of a holy courage and intimate friends of the Sacred Heart, sought after and desired suffering and adversity so as to be like their suffering Lord—His close companions and the sharers of His lot on earth. We, who lack the heroism of the saints to desire and to seek for suffering, may at least find courage to bear patiently for Christ’s sake what Providence sends us. We shall feel that one of the sweetest comforts on earth is to remember in the midst of suffering that our every pang, patiently and lovingly borne for His sake, is a consolation to the Heart of Christ.

We cannot escape from sorrow. We cannot shield our beloved homes from sometimes feeling the pressure of human trials. But we can insure, for ourselves and for those who are dear to us, the greatest, surest, mightiest consolation in any ill that God allows to befall us. We shall do so, if we take care to cultivate in our home a true, intelligent, and deep devotion to the Sacred Heart.