Why consecration to the Sacred Heart?

One of the ways we Catholics punctuate our lives and mark time with our faith is through liturgical seasons and feasts. In addition to seasons such as Lent and Easter, Advent and Christmas, we also dedicate certain months to fostering various devotions that further integrate our lives with the practice of our faith.

March is dedicated to Saint Joseph, May is dedicated to Our Lady and October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary, to name a few better-known examples.

The month of June is dedicated to growing in devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. June also is almost always the month in which the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is celebrated. This liturgical feast is a movable feast. This means it is not fixed to a particular date, like the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8 or the Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi on Oct. 4. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart falls on the Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost, which is nearly always in the month of June.

This year, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus fell on June 12. The day before this great feast, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops solemnly consecrated the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This act of consecration was taken in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

This solemn consecration enacted by the conference of bishops, as the successors of the Apostles in our country, was undertaken not simply on your behalf or in your place, but in pastoral leadership and as an example we hope you will follow in your parishes, homes and daily lives.

As an archdiocesan community, we gathered on June 3 at the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine for a Mass and procession in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Each parish is invited to offer 250 hours of Eucharistic adoration and 250 works of mercy as a gift of affection and devotion to Jesus and his Sacred Heart.

The initiatives listed above are not meant to be the beginning and end of this moment of intentional devotion to the Sacred Heart. Our love for Jesus – something evoked and focused by devotion to his Heart – cannot remain a private devotion or something that comes and goes with each passing pastoral initiative.

Our love for Jesus is the central focus of our lives as Catholic disciples. Our love for Jesus – which is a response to the love with which he first loved us – must transform how we live our lives; it must transform how we live as citizens of this great nation.

Our entire lives are meant to be offered as a living sacrifice in thanksgiving for the Passion, death and Resurrection of Jesus by which we are saved from sin and given eternal life. This self-offering is not meant to be relegated to Sunday Mass and personal prayer time and study.

It is meant to inspire and form our participation in the life of our nation.

We as disciples of Jesus, people who love his Sacred Heart, have our eyes fixed on eternity and on the New Heavens and New Earth, which are already inaugurated in the Resurrection of Jesus but will be brought to completion when he comes again in glory.

However, this focus does not mean that we somehow may neglect or excuse ourselves from civic and social responsibilities. On the contrary, we are meant to be agents of the New Creation here and now. We are called to be ambassadors of Christ and his Kingdom. We are not passive spectators waiting for this world to pass away, but we are active participants in reshaping this world to more fully resemble the world to come.

Our devotion to the Sacred Heart should impel us to make this world as pleasing to him as possible. We do this through obeying the timeless commandments that Jesus himself identified as the greatest: to love the God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

This is how Jesus lived while on earth and how he calls us to live as disciples and as Americans.