A reflection for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Mother Maria-Michael Newe, OSB.
The Collect for the Feast of the Sacred Heart reads:
O God, who in the Heart of Your Son wounded by our sins, bestow on us in mercy the boundless treasure of Your Love. Grant, we pray, that in paying Him the homage of our devotion, we may also offer worthy reparation.
You do not hear that word very often – reparation. Yet it is a necessary word. We do have to make reparation for sin. The best reparation we can possibly do, in life, is simply to be truly sorry for our sins, to decide I am not going to do that anymore, then to do some small means of penance. It doesn’t have to be grand. The real secret to reparation is love. To do a small thing with great love is huge. To do a great thing without love means absolutely nothing.
The most we can possibly do is to do all things with love. To prefer nothing to the love of Christ (RB 4:21). To respond with love. If our thoughts are of love, then our actions will be of love. It is no small thing to be devoted to the Sacred Heart of Christ. We as brides of Christ have an even greater duty to love Him more. To be willing to do more, to suffer more, to be willing to give the very best of ourselves with love, and not to count the cost. That’s heroic.
Christ deserves our love. We should do all that we can to console the Heart of Christ. He mourns today for His Church and yet He rejoices in His Church. There is a victory already begun and it begins with each one of us. It begins with love, it ends with love, and it goes into eternity with love. Love one another; that He may be one in us and we in Him. To talk about it is really nothing; to live it is everything. Live it… and we shall do it together.