Today is June 1, the Seventh Sunday of Easter.
We read at today’s Mass, “Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them” (Jn 17:25-26).
Today begins a month very dear to me: the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus! The love we hear about in today’s Gospel — the love shared between the Father and the Son — is what the Church sets before us in a special way throughout the month of June. It’s the love that burns in the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
To help us kick off this month of devotion, I want to look back to one of the great champions of the Sacred Heart: Pope Leo XIII. Not our current Pope Leo XIV, but his great predecessor who, in 1899, consecrated the entire world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In his encyclical Annum Sacrum, Pope Leo XIII wrote, “There is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ, which moves us to love one another.”
Isn’t that beautiful? The Sacred Heart is not just a pious symbol. It’s a compelling image of divine love that moves us — moves us to mercy, to compassion, to acts of self-giving love. It’s an invitation to make a gift of ourselves, just as Christ gave himself for us.
The first step toward deeper devotion
Pope Leo went even further. He taught that wherever truth, justice and charity flourish, there the reign of Christ — and the reign of his Heart — is present. That was a bold theological and political claim in his time. But beyond all the high arguments, Pope Leo gave one more reason for his act of consecration, a deeply personal one: He had been gravely ill and believed he had been healed by the mercy of God. In thanksgiving for that healing, he wanted to honor Christ’s Heart publicly and permanently.
So today, I want to begin our month of meditating on the Sacred Heart by asking: What mercy have you received from the Lord? Can you think of a moment when God poured his love into your life — an answered prayer, a healing, a conversion, a quiet moment of grace?
Let’s start this month by thanking Jesus for that mercy. And if you’d like, share it with someone. Tell a friend or write it down in a journal. Gratitude, after all, is the first step toward deeper devotion.
Let us pray,
Graciously hear our supplications, O Lord, so that we, who believe that the Savior of the human race is with you in your glory, may experience, as he promised, until the end of the world, his abiding presence among us. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
