The Sisters Of the Visitation of Tyringham

Live + Jesus

CONTEMPLATE THE WOUNDED HEART OF JESUS

by Visitation Sisters

March 2009

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Dear Friends of the Heart of Christ,

One of the blessings of living in a monastery is having the chance to pray every day before the Blessed Sacrament. Our rule of life sets aside an hour and a half of the day's time for what we call mental prayer or personal ‘quiet' prayer. We have our own individual prayer places in the chapel and there we go each day, morning and evening, to read or say the rosary or engage in contemplative prayer. Our attention as we look toward our sanctuary is focussed on a large hand-carved crucifix which hangs on a high reredos or backdrop. During Lent this symbol of our redemption becomes particularly meaningful as we reflect on the sufferings which gripped the life of the Lord Jesus. The corpus or body of Jesus is life-sized and under different lighting effects seems to take on a reality of its own. Is it only a beautifully crafted work of art or is it the real person of Jesus crucified in our midst? The eyes of contemplatives and the eyes of our devoted visitors study the evocativeness of this crucified Jesus and do not leave our chapel without gathering a certain measure of strength and inner peace from their prayer.

At my prayer place on the left hand side of the choir (we change our prayer places every year), I have an especially good view of the pierced side of the Lord. This will become my locus of encounter with the wounded heart. Every drop of suffering that is afflicting humankind will become concentrated in that opened, bleeding gash...families struggling to survive the present financial crunch, addicts caught in the web of ongoing dependencies, priests unsure of their vocations, unborn babies endangered by our pro-choice society...the list goes on and on.

When any of us dwell upon the root cause of that sacred wound, we become aware of a deep spiritual insight: living with love is only accomplished at a great cost. When we attempt to live in love, real love, we are going to suffer and we are going to get wounded. Think of how Jesus loved. For instance, he confronted the darkness of people's minds and hearts by his penetration through what were only surface appearances. He went straight to the core of what actually existed in the human heart. He saw clearly through the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, wept at the fickleness of the people, rebuffed the myopia of his disciples. Possessing the fullest powers of love and truth, he challenged people to re-examine their values and follow in his footsteps; few remained indifferent to his message. And because of this mission, his heart was wounded, pierced by the iniquity of our wayward human choices.

Jesus suffered for us and the question remains: Is he suffering still? For those who answer in the affirmative, the Church has provided spiritual means of ‘consoling' the wounded heart of our Lord. In the year 1863 one of our Visitandine sisters in our French community of Bourg-en-Bresse (Sister Marie de Sacre Coeur) devised a means of practicing both reparation and adoration to the Heart of Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament. Her simple method eventually became an international movement (an archconfraternity in the Church) called the Guard of Honor. Essentially the goal of the association is to "foster an intimate relationship of its members with the Heart of Jesus, principally through the offering of our ordinary activities during a special hour each day. By uniting ourselves to the Heart of Jesus during this chosen hour of presence, we participate in proclaiming the Kingdom of God by making a concrete response of love to God." Our monastery became a center for the Guard of Honor in 1888 and still carries on this mission. (More information on the Guard of Honor will be forthcoming in our future monthly talks).

Today, however, I would like to introduce you to a great promoter of the Guard of Honor whose fervor earned her the name of "Zelatrice" or zealous apostle in spreading the devotion to the Sacred Heart. She is known in the Church as Blessed Marie de Jesus Deluil-Martiny (1841-1884), recently beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1989. Marie was born in Marseille, France in an upper middle class family and had the distinction of being a direct relative on her mother's side to a very famous Visitation sister who was also a great lover of the Sacred Heart, the venerable Anne-Madeleine Remuzat (1696-1730, considered a ‘second' Saint Margaret Mary in our Order). Through one of her frequent visits to the Visitation at Marseilles, Marie received from one of her former teachers a small pamphlet entitled, End and Purpose of the Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was the title ‘Guard of Honor' that struck her heart with the new association's quality of being at one and the same time mystical and practical. Taking the book home, Marie read and reread it, and in a few days wrote to the Superior of the Visitation Convent at Bourg, asking for the privilege of having her name inscribed among the Guards of Honor and promising to give the undertaking her full and enthusiastic support.

It was through Marie's efforts that the Guard of Honor began to spread through the local parishes. She was also successful in communicating her zeal to influential church ecclesiastics who aided her by their favorable recommendations. She offered this spiritual endorsement to one of her new members: "You know that the Guard of Honor has for its particular mission the honoring of Jesus wounded on the cross by the lance, and of attracting to the Church...a special effusion of grace from that wound of love. Point out this means of grace to all the associates whom Providence will send you. A simple aspiration, a simple intention of the soul suffices; is it not beautiful to see at each hour of the day a legion of Guards of Honor gathering in the chalice of their hearts the blood and water from the divine wound, and offering them through Jesus to the adorable Trinity?" She closes with this timely thought: "The Church is on Calvary; now is the time to rally around the Heart of Jesus wounded on the cross!" [p. 49 of Immolation: Life of Mother Mary of Jesus (Marie Deluil-Martiny, 1926 official biography].

Marie Deluil-Martiny was ultimately to found a religious community known as the Daughters of the Heart of Jesus. She was to taste the suffering of her Lord in a most dramatic way: at the age of 43 she died a violent death at the hands of an anarchist who gunned her down before the eyes of her own religious sisters in their convent's garden. Her feast day falls on the anniversary day of her death, February 27th.

Today, the privilege of managing the association of the Guard of Honor belongs to Blessed Marie's congregation, the Daughters of the Heart of Jesus, although Visitation monasteries still serve as centers of enrollment and spiritual sustenance, carrying forth the original inspiration of our Sister Marie du Sacre-Coeur. The wounded Heart of Jesus is the Object of the Guard of Honor and love and reparation are its aim. In the words of Marie de Jesus: "The Guard of Honor of the Sacred Heart was placed by the infinite Love of our Master at the entrance of the Wound of His Divine Heart. There, it calls souls, unites them, calls them together, preaches to them, if one may say so, pushes them, and draws them into the interior of the Divine Wound...it leads them there, and introduces them therein, after having, so to speak, opened to them the door of this sacred refuge...Souls, entering this safe abode are sprinkled, washed, whitened, purified, healed, and supernaturalized by a most efficacious application of the Blood and Water that came forth from the Divine Wound."
[quoted from Fr. Mark's blog, Vultus Christi, for February 27, 2008].

Although our contemporary age may scorn such practices as prayer and meditation as a waste of time, our deepest cravings for what is transcendent impel us toward seeking God's heart, honoring it, and trustfully surrendering ourselves into its loving embrace. Faithfully, we place ourselves in spirit at the foot of the Crucified and gaze up into the pierced side. All of our wounds and the wounds of our world stand in need of its regenerating powers. Let our hearts be sensitized to its spiritual gifts, drawing us to a keener awareness of what is good in the sight of God, to a better witness of how the heart of God views things.

If we can incorporate some time into our busy days to think about God's immeasurable love for us and image his wounded heart in our thoughts, then our Lenten journey may bear the kind of spiritual fruits we see in Jesus: trust, patience, mercy, love. In some small way, we can hopefully change the tide of human coldness and indifference toward God into a response that will vibrate with gratitude and joy-filled praise and service. Truly, that will be a sign of resurrection glory. +

This presentation was given at the Monastery of the Visitation of Tyringham, MA on Sunday March 1, 2009

God be Praised