A Faithful Heart

Today marks the seventh anniversary of my ordination to the diaconate in the Catholic Church, and I am very happy indeed that it coincides with the solemn feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (not least because Friday abstinence is today dispensed!) My joy is echoed in the words of the Introit for the Mass for the feast, as found in Divine Worship: The Missal: ‘Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for it becometh well the just to be thankful’. 

​‘The Sacred Heart is a faithful heart. Probably we have all been faithful to some people and unfaithful to others. We have “let them down”, as we say. The Heart of Jesus has never let any one down. Our hope for the world, for the Church, for the great body of Christian people outside the Church, for our own solitary soul, is in His faithfulness. The apostles had their differences, St Paul sometimes withstood St Peter to the face, but their union was in the Heart of Jesus. It is the same with us today. There are many divisions amongst Christian people, but when we are troubled about the divisions in the Church, we can remember that there is one Heart which is always faithful, and if we are tempted to despair of union amongst ourselves we may none the less have hope of union in Him’.
 
Father Andrew SDC, 1869-1946

O God, who hast suffered the Heart of thy Son to be wounded by our sins, and in that very Heart hast bestowed on us the abundant riches of thy love: grant, we beseech thee; that the devout homage of our hearts which we render unto him, may of thy mercy be deemed a recompense acceptable in thy sight; through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen. - Divine Worship: The Missal.