The Devotion to the Sacred Heart

By Father John Croiset, SJ.

 

Written by the spiritual director of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Devotion to the Sacred Heart can be said to be the best book on that devotion. It has been called the "key" to understanding this devotion.

 

Jesus Himself commissioned this book and, when it was completed, Jesus told Saint Margaret Mary that Christ had inspired the words and ideas and that the book could not be more pleasing to Christ in any way.

 

The book states that "All the dispositions necessary for this devotion may be reduced to four: a great horror of sin, a lively faith, a great desire to love Jesus Christ, and, for those who wish to taste the real sweetness of this devotion and draw all the fruit from it, interior recollection." (p. 97). Each of these is then discussed in detail.

 

So, too, the book details the obstacles to devotion to the Sacred Heart--namely tepidity, self-love, secret pride, and some unmortified passion. Reading about each of these will reveal to the reader the state of his or her soul, which is often hidden from our consciousness.

 

The treatise does not leave us in despair, however. It carefully discusses how to remove each of the obstacles so that one can acquire "perfect devotion" to the Sacred Heart of Christ, that Perfect Heart that loves us perfectly.

 

The book also contains the life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, the prayers which she composed in honor of the Sacred Heart, and a complete list of the Promises of the Sacred  Heart. Meditations on the Sacred Heart, for each Friday of the year, round out this book. The reader will come away from this text with a deeper appreciation of the love of Christ as evidenced by and through His Sacred Heart. Who knows where the Lord may take the soul who begins on this spiritual journey with the Sacred Heart as its guide?