NOVENA TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

The Sacred Heart in the Old Testament

Devotion to the Sacred Heart can be traced back to the Bible. In the Old Testament, amidst the turmoil of war, the looming exile of Judah to Babylon, and the unfaithfulness of God’s people to the covenant, the prophet Jeremiah prophesied a "new covenant" [berit hadash]. This covenant would not be written in stone but in the heart (Jeremiah 31:31-34). The person whose covenant is written in their heart will no longer fail God and will always be faithful to Him. For Christians, that heart is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

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The Sacred Heart in the New Testament

In the New Testament, several passages allude to the heart of Jesus: the Beloved Disciple who rests near the heart of Jesus (John 13:23); Jesus’s pierced side, close to His heart, from which blood and water flowed (John 19:34); and Jesus’s invitation to those who are heavily burdened, stating “I am meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29).

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The Sacred Heart and the Church Fathers and Mystics

Early Christian writers, known as Church Fathers, such as Saints Augustine, Ambrose, Cyprian, and Jerome, saw the Church as born from the pierced heart of Jesus. In the Middle Ages, devotion to the Sacred Heart became widespread, promoted by Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican, Cistercian, and Carthusian Orders. Visionaries like Saints Mechtild of Hackeborn, Gertrude the Great, and Catherine of Siena spoke of their mystical experiences with Christ’s heart. For example, Saint Gertrude had a vision in which she rested her head on the wounded side of Jesus and heard the beating of the Divine Heart.

In the sixteenth century, Jesuit, Salesian, and Eudist fathers integrated devotion to the Sacred Heart into their spirituality. Saint Francis de Sales, for instance, envisioned human hearts and the heart of God conjoined by the crucified heart of Jesus, symbolizing a world of interconnected hearts.

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The Visions of Saint Margaret Mary

The form of the devotion practiced today is associated with the visions of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, a 17th-century nun from Paray-le-Monial, France. Her Jesuit confessor, Saint Claude de la Colombière, propagated her visions.

From 1673-1675, Margaret Mary received a series of “great revelations”: the Lord named her the “Apostle of His Sacred Heart”; a mystical exchange of her heart with the Sacred Heart occurred; she received the Twelve Promises; introduced the Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament on Thursday nights; promoted Communion on the first Friday of the month; and established a yearly feast of the Sacred Heart on the Friday following the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. The Act of Reparation, involving the recitation of devotional prayers for forgiveness to make amends for outrages committed against God’s love and the Eucharist, became widespread to counter Jansenism (a movement that taught predestination) and the anti-Catholic measures of the French Revolution.

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The Feast of the Sacred Heart

With the establishment of the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 1856 by Pope Pius IX, the devotion spread throughout the Catholic world. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the entire human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the Act of Consecration we use today is based on the prayer composed by Pope Leo.

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The Sacred Heart and the Society of the Divine Word

In this spiritual atmosphere, German priest Arnold Janssen founded the Society of the Divine Word (SVD) in 1875. Due to his sincere devotion to the Sacred Heart and his love for mission work, he started a magazine in Germany, “The Little Messenger of the Sacred Heart of Jesus," to raise awareness among Catholics about the need for missionaries. Consequently, the SVD German missionaries in the Philippines named their first parish in Quezon City, our parish-shrine today, in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

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To this day, Saint Arnold Janssen’s favorite prayer has become part of the daily devotion: “May the darkness of sin and the night of unbelief vanish before the light of the Word and the Spirit of Grace. And may the Heart of Jesus live in the hearts of all.”