An Ancient Meditation on the Sacred Heart

In continuing through a book of "ancient meditations" of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Medieval Carthusians, today this consideration seemed just right for the suffering of meanness in ourselves and in others.

Consider what must ahve been the emotions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus when doing good to those who would only be ungrateful to Him; when healing the sick, or setting free those that were possessed by devils. O sacred Heart, the ingratitude and hardness of these people gave Thee pain and sorrow, but by this means we learn from Thy works, that the goodness and charity of Thy Heart could not be restrained either by the ingratitude or the unkindness of men. O my heart, wouldst thou be guilty of hardness, rebellion or want of gratitude towards the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Which has worked for thee so many miracles of grace?

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, I adore all the impulses of Thy charity, so sorrowful, patient, compassionate, enduring and condescending, inviting and desiring the conversion of sinners with such inconceivable intensity that for them Thou hast become an exile of love and a slave of charity. O Heart so incomparably gentle, make mine susceptible to all the impulses of Thine.

Glory be to the Heart of Jesus, King of hearts; and may It reign for ever over all hearts. Amen.

We must not allow ourselves to become discouraged with our own meanness or the meanness of others. It is merely a suffering to be mean, a sickness of some sort, a vice that the devil is utilizing in us or in others. Sometimes it goes back and forth and rests with both or many.

The Bishop celebrated Mass this evening on the Vigil of the Feast of the Holy Mother of God. He said it is something to have Jesus in our Hearts--but we must place our very enemies in our hearts and love that of Jesus that is in them. And, of course, since God created all souls, there is that soul created by God that is in even the worst of sinners. So we can hold any soul in our hearts, and we should know that in faith we are ourselves genderless souls, in nothingness, nesting within the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

It helps, all this training in soul school, if we have fewer and fewer distractions. To eliminate the extras from our lives, and the noise, then we can be more mindful, more focused on what it is we must tend to within the interior life. We can then practice how to glorify God, how to exist and react and think and feel and pray as Jesus does, as does His Sacred Heart of Love.

Living without newspapers, television, radio, and not floating about the internet other than in what is going to edify our souls--is not the end of the world. It is the beginning of a new way of rich life. One finds that what is necessary to know about in the public world, is told us one way or another by God, through other people, prayers at daily Mass, or passing a news stand. Is a snow storm coming? Someone will mention it in passing or we will see the snow fall, and there it is! So? Is there an atrocity in the world or a child kidnapped? God will arrange to let us know through a friend, a stranger, a dream, a prayer. Even without these noises of life, there are plenty others such as appliances that break and maybe more appliances than what we need. Too much begets distractions, and it is like looking out the window and not heeding the teacher's instructions. The suffering of meanness sometimes comes from too much, too much.