p. 29The Sacred Heart, Remedy of Our Indifference

Our Blessed Saviour, the great physician of souls, has given us in these latter days the devotion to His Sacred Heart as a mighty remedy for a mighty evil. A cold indifference to spiritual and supernatural things is the characteristic of our day, and it infects even good Catholics at times with its virus. It is the fashion to affect to be broad-minded about religion, to look on all decent religions as good, to consider religious practice as a purely personal matter, like the color of one’s clothes or the shape of one’s hat. The passionate interest in religious questions and controversies, which was a characteristic of simpler times, has given place to a tolerance and indifference which really indicate complete carelessness about religion. “One religion is as good as another” is on the lips of many; but in their hearts is the corollary of that saying, “and no religion is good for very much.”

This cold carelessness about religious truth and practice is a deep insult to Almighty God and must bring upon the world His wrath and punishment. Because religion is our service to God and because we were created precisely to serve Him, it follows that religion is the most important thing in the world and the one subject with which every reasonable being is intimately concerned. Just as a false religion is, therefore, an enormous evil, because it is either the serving of a false god or of the true God in a manner displeasing to Him, so the true religion is a supreme blessing, because it is the way of accomplishing the single purpose for which we all were made.

Yet, it is hard to convince men of today by mere processes of reasoning, of the importance of religious belief and practice, and of the wickedness of religious indifference. “Life makes many demands upon us,” they will say, “the world is a very interesting place to live in. One’s energies are pretty well exhausted in the mere effort to live. As to the future life, it doesn’t interest us now. We are too busy trying to get our share of this earth to give much thought to heaven.” The earth, close, alluring, various, reaches out many hands to hold their hearts. Spiritual things, religious truths, the claims of God and of their own soul, seem vague, unsubstantial, even unreal, when compared with the insistent, tangible, immediate cares, interests, and pleasures of this world.

Thus all religions, save the true Faith of Christ, are losing their hold on their followers. And, alas, many Catholics, also, infected with the prevalent sickness of indifference, forget God and leave the practice of their holy Faith. Others, still, feel their piety grow cold. The sight of the crucifix, the thought of a God-man dying for their sins, ceases to move them. They can pass by the churches where, in the narrow prison of His tabernacle, that God waits for their gratitude and love, and never turn aside to visit Him for a moment, to thank, adore, believe in, and love Him. It is not enough for them that the eternal Love has come upon earth to seek their hearts, has lived, suffered, died in agony on a shameful cross for their sake, and lives the hidden life of the Blessed Sacrament to be their food and healing. They still can forget and go on in their ways of indifference and sin.

Against this cruel indifference, our Lord used a remedy of Divine wisdom and efficacy which proves to us to what lengths His compassion will go to win our indifferent hearts. In the dim chapel of the Visitation, at Paray-le-Monial, to the chosen apostle of His Sacred Heart, St. Margaret Mary, He revealed the longing of His Heart for our love and the pain which our indifference inflicts upon Him. “Behold this Heart,” He says to her and through her to us all, “which has so loved men as to spend itself and empty itself for their love, and which is so little loved in return.”

All down the listening years this whispered revelation of the pain of the Sacred Heart at our indifference, of the longing of the Sacred Heart for our love, shall echo in the hearts of men, rousing them from their awful torpor of indifference and ingratitude. If the thought that a God has become man for them and died on the cross for their salvation is not enough to move them to remember and repent, at least the words of the Sacred Heart, complaining of their indifference and pleading for their love, will arouse them to love and sorrow.

Religious indifference must surely be conquered by the right knowledge of devotion to the Sacred Heart. The sight of the crucifix itself should be enough to melt a heart of stone and to banish forever from the souls of those who believe, that icy ingratitude toward God. For ages the patient figure of Christ has hung upon His cross, His hands extended wide in invitation and welcome, and for ages countless repentant sinners, ashamed at last of their indifference and ingratitude, have rushed into that merciful embrace.

But now, to that age-long gesture of invitation and welcome our Blessed Saviour has added yet another. He has opened the wound in His side and has pointed to the flaming furnace of His Heart, at once the instrument and symbol of an endless and unrequited love for us. The moving wistfulness of that appeal, summing up as it does all the unfathomable tenderness and mercies of the Sacred Heart in our regard, is irresistible. To be indifferent to religion as such, to be cold and neglectful of our own true faith, is impossible to a right mind and generous heart that has realized the appeal of the Sacred Heart of Christ. “Behold this Heart,” He says to every one, “symbol and instrument of the love that made Me die for you, and which you have so neglected and wounded in return.” With what a rush of interest, earnestness, contrition, and gratitude, our own heart will answer, breaking the cold chains of indifference with which perhaps the world and the flesh have fettered it too long: “My Lord and my God! Take from me in return the offering of my entire and devoted heart!”