Boundless Charity

‘Devotion to the Sacred Heart is sometimes suspected of being idolatrous, or dismissed as being sentimental or sugary - the fad of Roman Catholics or “extreme Anglicans”. It is not only a grave mistake to do this but it results in great spiritual loss. Because such devotion is scriptural, primitive and Catholic.

Devotions to the sacred humanity of Jesus have ever been encouraged and authorised in the Church (Devotion to the Holy Name, the Five Wounds, the Holy Face, etc.). Because it is essential to Catholic truth that we should remember the true manhood of Christ and because personal love of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Passion is the mainspring of true religion, especially among English people freed from the strait-jacket in which the influence of continental protestantism has kept their religious life and spirit. 

Such devotion rightly and naturally centres upon the crucified Saviour and finds its completion in adoration of the Sacred Heart. A hymn which is known and dear to thousands in this lands expresses this sentiment:

“Jesus, who gave himself for you
Upon the cross to die
Opens to you his Sacred Heart,
O to that heart draw nigh”.

Let us recall the words of Dr Pusey in his “Open Letter to the Bishop of London”: “Each wound has its own treasure-house of the depths of the Divine Mercy, its own antidote to sin. Chiefly were they ever drawn to the very Abyss of His unsearchable Love, His Pierced Side and His opened Heart there to draw of the fountains of salvation and to penetrate to the inmost recesses of His boundless Charity”’.

​Raymond Raynes CR, 1903-1958