First Friday july 5, 2024 

Guards of Honor 1st Friday / July 2024 Fr. David Bellusci, OP 

“My Heart has expected reproach and misery and I looked for one who would grieve together with Me, but there was none; and for one that would comfort me, and I found none!” (Ps. 68)

“We place all the intentions of our members in the Loving Heart of Jesus and ask Him to bless them.”

Sacred Heart: to love with courage

St. Margaret Mary writes to Mother Greyfié who is at the Visitandine convent of Semur. Writing at the end of June, beginning of July in 1686, St. Margaret Mary confides that she feels “annihilated” by her “destroyed” reputation. The acceptance of the divine Revelations was not immediate; and while St. Margaret Mary sought approval for the Revelations, she also faced ridicule by her own community.

We often overlook the fact that the Saints we attach ourselves to had undergone great suffering and purification in order to please God. To simply attach ourselves to a Saint or a devotion without fully appreciating the trials the Saint had undergone is to miss the message: the Church canonizes a Saint recognising holy sanctity -- heroic virtue -- a model whom we can follow and through whom we can seek

intercession. The austerity of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque may not be for everybody, but radicality in living the Gospel is meant for all the followers of Christ. The willingness to defend and correct errors and to live in truth is intended for all of us. Radicality is the opposite of lukewarm. In our religious zeal of reparation to the Sacred Heart, we reduce the outrages and blasphemies directed towards Jesus.

The revelation to St. Margaret Mary is to ask the Father to make the Sacred Heart known, the Holy Spirit to make the Sacred heart loved, and the Virgin Mary, using her maternal influence, have the effects of the Sacred Heart are experienced by all those who turn to Jesus. The Visitandine community of Semur was the first to honour the Sacred Heart of Jesus and so the Semur community won the friendship  of Jesus. Semur becomes the well-beloved community of the Sacred Heart. While the Sacred Heart receives bitterness by the offenses caused by many, Jesus takes pleasure where His Sacred Heart is honoured.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, teach us to love you with courage, not empty feelings, by making your Sacred Heart known.

Prayer to Renew Our Fidelity and Devotion 

Divine Jesus, my Saviour and my King, with all my heart I renew the promise which I have made to love, to glorify and to console Your adorable Heart as a member of the Guard of Honor. Grant O good Master, to make me daily more loving, more devoted and more faithful. I ask this same grace for all the Associates through the Immaculate Heart of Your Mother. AMEN