p. 5The Sacred Heart, Guard of the Purity of the Home

A Distressing license of manners and morals is abroad in the world. This, to be sure, is not a new situation, for it springs from the old corruption and is rooted in the sad weakness of human nature. But in happier times, when manners were simpler and public opinion more severe, it would have been impossible for this laxity to flourish. It insensibly corrupts the impressionable minds of children before they have become aware of the difference between right and wrong. This laxity shows itself in fashions of speech and of dress, in amusements, pictures, the press, the moving pictures. Unless there is special vigilance on the part of the parents and of elder brothers and sisters, it invades even the Catholic home, for all these things have an extraordinary currency and a universal appeal from which it is difficult to escape.

Strong agencies, highly organized, are behind the press and work without ceasing to spread in all quarters the cheap and alluring papers and magazines which carry this infection. The commercialized amusements, which modern inventiveness has conjured, are found in all neighborhoods, and few homes are outside of the circle of their appeal. Careless parents, and those who are not sensible to the danger or to their duty, leave their children quite exposed to these bad influences, trusting that they will somehow grow up immune to the evils about them. But very sad experience shows every day that this foolish hope is very ill-founded. The child is immensely influenced by what it sees and hears. Keep it under influences that are holy and pure, and it will remain pure until that age of self-control is attained, when the will can safely be trusted to withstand temptation. Expose it to evil influences at the tender and impressionable age, and its white soul will become sullied and its young mind stained.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart, which is, so to say, a compendium of what is holy and pure, will be an extraordinary aid to parents to safeguard the purity of their homes. The very presence of a picture of the Sacred Heart, set up in a prominent place in the home, is a constant reminder and incentive to special care in regard to purity and edification. Like the picture of the Blessed Mother of God, the image of the Sacred Heart silently rebukes and restrains too great freedom of speech and of action, and where the representation of our Blessed Lord, pointing to His adorable Heart, is exposed and venerated, a decent and becoming purity comes to dwell.

Indeed, if the meaning of this devotion is understood, it will easily be seen how utterly opposed it is to any sinful license of speech, dress, amusements, or reading. It is the object of the devotion to the Sacred Heart to make amends to our Lord for the coldness and ingratitude of men and for the many sins with which they have wounded His most adorable Heart. A keen sense of the malice of sin and a deep regret for every offense which inflicts so deep a wound on the tender and merciful Heart of our Saviour is of the essence of this devotion. It is a devotion of reparation, of atonement, and of compensation to the Sacred Heart for the pains which sin has caused to God, made man for our redemption.

By an instinct of their Catholic hearts, the faithful realize how specially offensive to the most pure Heart of our Lord is everything which wounds the virtue of purity. They will, therefore, keep far away from the presence of His image the objects, papers, pictures, amusements, and ways of speech which offend against that angelic virtue. The practice of true devotion and reparation to the Heart of Christ includes a careful vigilance, lest we ourselves, or anyone belonging to us, offend that loving Lord to Whom we are bent on making atonement. Looking on the likeness of that Heart, so deeply wounded by the sins of men, so completely at enmity to whatever is vile, sinful, and impure, every member of a Catholic home devoted to the Sacred Heart is irresistibly reminded to love and cultivate the holy virtue of purity and to avoid as a plague whatever is impure.

When the meaning of that holy image, and the nature of the devotion to the Sacred Heart are explained to the children of the family, it should be impressed upon them how consoling to our Lord is the perfect practice of holy purity and how offensive to Him is anything contrary to that angelic virtue. So the devotion will be for them also a constant reminder and source of strength and safety against the evil influences which, in our careless age, do not spare even tender years, nor respect the charming innocence of the child.

Indeed, this influence of the devotion in strengthening the members of the family to resist all influences to evil is even more precious and necessary in our day, than the keeping out of the home itself whatever is dangerous or suggestive. For the life of the present time flows like an invading stream and floods with its various influences every living soul. One would have to be a hermit, indeed, not to be brought into conflict with evil which is so insidious and pervading. While it is necessary to bar the doors of the Catholic home to books, magazines, amusements, ways of action, dress, and talk that are a peril to the innocence of the child, it is, if anything, more necessary to fortify the mind and the heart of the child against the evil which will, in spite of all precautions to the contrary, assail its eyes and ears. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, for the reasons we have assigned, will serve for this protection and this strengthening. Not only do the streams of God’s grace flow with the freest power through the channel of this devotion, but the very thought, that what is impure is so deeply offensive to the Sacred Heart and gives it so deep a wound, will make the child the more careful to resist evil at all costs and never to give way to it.

For the sake of our dear Catholic households, then, we must take care that the devotion to the Sacred Heart is fully understood and adequately practiced by all the members of these households. In this admirable devotion, reserved by our Lord for these later times, is to be found the special medicine for our special ills. In no one of our many present-day problems is the practice of devotion to the Sacred Heart more necessary and of more singular efficacy than it is in safeguarding the much-threatened purity of the Catholic home.