The 11th annual Sacred Heart Congress drew more than 500 people to Westerville St. Paul Church and more than 400 online participants on Saturday, Nov. 5.
The half-day event is the largest of its kind in the nation devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This year’s theme was “Rebuild, Renew and Restore the Domestic Church Through the Heart of Jesus.”
The morning of spiritual renewal began with a rosary and then a Mass celebrated by Bishop Earl Fernandes.
Mass was followed by featured presentations from Father Joseph Laramie, S.J., a Jesuit priest, author and national director for the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network; and Father Thomas Dailey, OSFS, a member of the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales who serves as the John Cardinal Foley Chair of Homiletics and Social Communication and as a professor of theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia.
The morning concluded with prayer, Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Attendees also had the opportunity to go to confession.
“It was a great turnout and lots of support,” said Emily Jaminet, a local author, speaker and executive director of the Sacred Heart Enthronement Network who served as emcee for the morning.
In a homily by Bishop Fernandes and the talks by the two priests, all three focused on the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Father Laramie, who also is a preacher for the National Eucharistic Revival initiated in June by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, asked those present in the pews and watching online to put a hand over their heart and close their eyes.
“Truly our hearts are formed and shaped in the image and likeness of Jesus in the Gospels, by the whole range of human emotions,” Father Laramie said. “We see the heart of Jesus in moments of great joy and also in moments of sorrow.”
He drew a connection between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Mass.
“We know from the great documents of Vatican II that the Mass is the source and summit of our faith,” Father Laramie said. “The Mass is sort of this fountain of grace. It’s a summit, a high point, and also something like the fulfillment of everything that God wants to offer to us.
“This is also a beautiful description of the Sacred Heart – source and summit, that source of grace (with) different spiritual writers even seeing this heart of Jesus as something like a fountain pouring out blood and water as He hangs upon the cross.
“There’s that beautiful Psalm here at this Mass: ‘We will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.’ In that Psalm, there’s an image of the Sacred Heart that we want to draw water from Your heart for it to come to you for communion, friendship, forgiveness and renewal – all the graces that we seek from this heart of Jesus.”
Father Dailey began by focusing on the conference theme of restoring and rebuilding the domestic church through the heart of Jesus.
“That’s a pretty lofty thing but also a very worthy one,” he said, “because the domestic church goes to the core that is the Church and is what the Church seeks to facilitate in the world. And the way we share it is precisely through the interconnection of hearts – ours with God and ours with one another – a connection that begins and is learned in the parent-child relationship that forms a family.”
The priest explained that interconnected hearts is a worldview espoused by St. Francis de Sales, a doctor of the Church and the patron of his religious order. St. Francis de Sales also was the founder in the 1600s with St. Frances de Chantel of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary, which counted St. Margaret Mary Alacoque as one of its members.
St. Margaret Mary was a mystic whose writings form the foundation of contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart.
“At the basis of our devotion to the Sacred Heart are images found in the Gospels, images in story form, that invite us to reflect upon the heart of Jesus as it is manifest in his earthly ministry,” Father Dailey said.
“Those sacred stories, if we look with the eyes of our mind, we can see the pulsing heart of a child in the womb, as recognized joyfully by John the Baptist, during the visitation to Mary and Elizabeth.
“We see the beloved heart of God’s own Son, as announced at His baptism we see a heart at once compassionate in the feeding of the crowds for the public. It’s a heart that will also be broken and troubled, as we see in Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. But He promises that this heart, which lives eternally through the resurrection, will abide in those who keep His commandment to love.”
Images like the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father Dailey explained, spark devotion within the human heart and inspire individuals to strive to live out the truth that the images represent.
He pointed out that imagery has evolved over the centuries from the wounded and suffering heart of Jesus – the painfulness and personal abandonment that Jesus felt and were part of St. Margaret Mary’s vision – to the newer icons that generally depict a more tender and reassuring love of Jesus.
“But now the question before us is this: How can every image of the Sacred Heart have a transformative impact on the domestic church?” he asked.
“Jesus promises to give us the means and meaningfulness and fulfillment for which we yearn.
We learn specifically from His heart. St. Francis de Sales tells us how when he said this: ‘Remember the principal lesson which Jesus left us through just three words so that we would never forget it, so that 100 times a day we can repeat it. Learn from me, He says, for I am meek and humble of heart.’
“The Christian life is all about having a heart gentle toward the neighbor and humble before God.”
A video of the congress and more information about the Sacred Heart Enthronement Network are available at www.welcomehisheart.com.
