Friday, June 3, 2016

Cor Jesu: Furnace of Charity


 
While visiting the Parish where my wife and I married in 2012, St. Isidore of Grand Rapids, I came across a book by Dr. Timothy O’Donnell entitled Heart of the Redeemer.  In it, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is thoroughly accounted for both historically and mystically.  References from early Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, and especially St. Margaret Mary Alacoque make a compelling argument for the authenticity of the Heart of Christ as a revealed source of grace. 

Here’s what St. John Paul II has to say verbatim: “The Heart of the Redeemer vivifies the whole Church and draws men who have opened their hearts to the ‘unfathomable riches’ of this one Heart” (p. 229 of O’Donnell as quoted from 6/24/79 Angelus of JPII).

I have had the privilege to participate in the Sacred HeartEnthronement offered at St. Patrick Parish in Columbus, as well as the SacredHeart Congress in Ohio.  There, a priest said to those listening, “I am going to bless the hell out of your homes!”  Truly, hell cannot abide the “furnace of charity” (fornax ardens caritatis) that is the Heart of Jesus.    

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