Shortly after I began this series of bulletin articles on the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a parishioner asked if I was going to be moving in July since I was only planning for the series to run through June. At the time, I knew full well that I was indeed going to be moving, but I was not free to share that information at that point. To be clear, my upcoming move only slightly factored into my decision to do this series. My greater reason, as I mentioned at the beginning of the series, has been to offer some reflections on the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the bishops of our country prepare to consecrate our county to the Sacred Heart of Jesus next week on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.
In my first article, I mentioned that my favorite part of the Litany was the final invocation, which is slightly different from the others, but offers a fitting summary of the prayer: Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine! But when it comes to the standard thirty-three invocations of the Litany, the one I like the best is the following:
Heart of Jesus, King and Center of all hearts, have mercy on us
Part of the impetus for the bishop’s deciding to consecrate our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is due to this year being our country’s 250th anniversary of independence. Prior to that time, we were under the rule of the King of England. In the Declaration of Independence, there were several complaints enumerated against the King with the conclusion that such a leader was “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” Thus it was declared that we were absolved of our connections with the British Crown and therefore free to govern ourselves. As a result of our negative experience with the King of England, any mention of being ruled by any king has sounded somewhat offensive to our ears. But the kingship which Jesus desires to exercise over us is different altogether. In the prayers from the Solemnity of Christ the King, we hear that His kingship is one of “truth and life, holiness and grace, justice, love and peace.” (Preface) With those qualities, how can we not desire Him to be the King of our lives? And yet, there is still hesitancy in our hearts to let Him be King, even if His reign promises these desirable attributes. To let Christ reign requires surrender on our part, and that is never easy. When we surrender to His reign, to His will, to His plan for our future, uncertain as it may seem, we are opening the door to a peace that the world cannot give, a peace which we cannot guarantee for ourselves if we take full control of our lives. Only in our surrender to Him can we find peace. Only in our surrender to Him can we truly find hope, the type of hope which “does not disappoint.” (Rom 5:5)
Although I am writing this article just before I head on retreat, I know that I will be spending a lot of time this week inviting Jesus to reign more fully in my heart as King, and in doing so, to let His will, His plan, His love be more firmly fixed at the center of my heart. For my 15 years as a priest, I have tried to keep Him always at the center, and that has given me freedom to let Him use me as He has seen fit in a variety of ways, and in all of them, He has shown me the goodness of His love for me in blessing me with graces that have sustained me while also being of benefit to the Church. By continuing to let Him reign fully at the center of my heart, I have no doubt that He will continue to bless me abundantly in whatever lies ahead, and I have that same confidence for all of us as we continue our loving, trusting surrender to His reign as King and center of our hearts.