The Sacred Heart

THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

20.  Letter of Luisa Piccarreta to Federico Abresch from Bologna

Most esteemed one in the Lord,

You cannot imagine the contentment I feel when I hear that one wants to live in the Divine Will, because it is a victory of Jesus; and as He conquers our will, we conquer His Own.  In the Kingdom of the Divine Will no one loses, we are all winners, both God and the creature.

I am surprised by your doubts.  How is it?  Don’t you know that Redemption is preparation for the Kingdom of the Divine Will?  And the Sacred Heart of Jesus is nothing other than the immense Reign of His Will.  It is not the Heart that dominates; it is the Divine Will that dominates His Divine Heart.  Poor Heart, if it did not have a Will to dominate it, it would be good at nothing.  If the will is good, the heart is good; if the will is holy, the heart is holy.  If our will gives place to the Divine, letting It raise Its throne in our will, the heart acquires the divine qualities by grace.  Therefore, both in the Divine and in the human order, it is always the will that has the first place, the prime act, its rule.  The heart and all the rest are in the secondary order... Therefore, to say that the Heart reigns, if the Divine Will does not reign, is absurd.  They can be called devotions, pious practices...; if the Divine Will does not reign, the Kingdom does not exist.  It exists in Heaven, but has no place on earth.  However, the Holy Church, organ and messenger of the Supreme Fiat, through the Sacred Heart, through the Celestial Mama, beseeches the Kingdom of the Divine Will.  She does not say it with words, but says it with facts.  The Divine Volition is the King - His Heart, His wounds, His precious Blood, the sweet Queen, form the ministers that surround the King, and through them beseech the Kingdom of the Divine Will in souls.

Vol. 4 - November 18, 1900
The union of one’s heart with that of Jesus makes one pass on to the state of perfect consummation.

 “My beloved, which one would you like: my Heart or yours? If you want Mine, you will have to suffer more. Know, however, that I have done this to make you pass on to another state, because when one reaches union, one passes to another state, which is that of consummation, and in order to pass to this state of perfect consummation, the soul needs either my Heart in order to live, or her own completely transformed into Mine. Otherwise, she cannot pass on to this state of consummation.”

Vol. 4 – November 20, 1900

Since Luisa must live from the Heart of Jesus, He gives her rules in order to undertake a more perfect way of living.

While I am outside of myself, my adorable Jesus continues to show me my heart inside of His - but so transformed, that I can no longer recognize which one is mine and which one is Jesus’s. He has conformed it perfectly to His own; He has impressed on it all the insignia of the Passion, making me understand that, from the moment of His conception His Heart was conceived with these insignia of the Passion; so much so, that what He suffered at the end of His life was an outpouring of that which His Heart had suffered continuously. I seemed to see one just like the other. I seemed to see my beloved Jesus occupied with preparing the place in which He was to put the heart, perfuming it and bejeweling it with many different flowers. And while He was doing this, He told me: “My beloved, since you must live from my Heart, it is appropriate for you to undertake a more perfect way of living. Therefore, from you I want:

1. Perfect conformity to my Will, because you will only be able to love Me perfectly if you love Me with my own Will. Even more, I tell you that by loving Me with my own Will, you will arrive at loving Me, and your neighbor, with my same way of loving.

2. Profound humility, placing yourself, in front of Me and of creatures, as the last among all.

3. Purity in everything, because any slightest fault against purity, both in loving and in operating, is reflected all in the heart, and it remains stained. Therefore I want purity to be like dew upon the flowers at the rising of the sun, which, its rays reflecting upon them, transmutes those little drops into as many precious pearls, such as to enchant the people. In the same way, if all your works, thoughts and words, heartbeats and affections, desires and inclinations, are adorned with the celestial dew of purity, you will weave a sweet enchantment, not only for the human eye, but for the whole of Heaven.

4. Obedience, which must be connected with my Will, because if this virtue regards the superiors I have given you on earth, my Will is obedience which regards Me directly; so much so, that it can be said that both one and the other are virtues of obedience - with this difference alone: one regards God, and the other regards men. However, both of them have the same value, and one cannot be without the other; therefore you must love both one and the other in the same way.”

Then He added: “Know that from now on you will live with my Heart, and you must see things the way my Heart does, that I may find my satisfactions in you. Therefore be careful, for this is no longer your heart, but Mine.”

November 5, 1902
The Tree of Life, rooted in the Heart of Jesus.

This morning my adorable Jesus made Himself seen in my interior, and He seemed to have a tree planted in His Heart, and so rooted into It, that its roots arose from the center of His Heart. In sum, it seemed to be born together with It, with the same nature. I was amazed at seeing its beauty, strikingness and height, which seemed to touch the heavens; and its branches extended out to the farthest ends of the world. Now, on seeing me so amazed, blessed Jesus told me: “My daughter, this Tree was conceived together with Me, in the center of my Heart, and from that moment I felt in my inmost Heart all the good and the evil that man would do with this Tree of Redemption, called ‘Tree of Life’. In fact, all those souls who remain united to this Tree will receive the life of grace in time, and when the Tree has raised them well, It will administer to them the life of glory in eternity. Yet, what is not my sorrow? Even though they cannot root out the Tree, nor can they touch the trunk, many try to cut some branches so that souls may not receive life, and to take away from Me all the glory and the pleasure that this Tree of Life would have produced for Me.” While saying this, He disappeared.

Vol. 24 – March 25, 1928

Extending the Rays of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

After this, my sweet Jesus made Himself seen with His Divine Heart unleashing many rays of light; each knowledge about the Divine Will was impressed at the point from which the rays started, in such a way as to form the most beautiful crown of light around that Divine Heart. And my beloved Jesus added: “My daughter, look what a beautiful crown of glory and of light my Divine Heart possesses! A more beautiful and refulgent crown It could not possess. These rays are all the knowledges about my Will; however, these rays are hampered – they cannot extend, because their knowledges are not known; this is why they cannot extend and expand so as to fill the whole earth with light. It happens as it would to the Sun if its rays, which start from the center of its sphere, were forced to remain in the air, without being able to extend so as to touch the earth and invest it with light and heat. Unable to extend its rays, the Sun would not be able to give the effects that its light contains, nor could the earth receive them. There would be a certain distance between the earth and the light of the Sun, and this distance would prevent the Sun from doing good to the earth, and the earth would be sterile and infertile. Such are the knowledges about my Fiat: if they are not made known, their rays cannot extend and take souls as though in their hands to warm them, to remove from them the torpor of the human will, to mold them anew, to transform them again in the life which my Fiat wants to infuse into them; because these knowledges are, and contain, the new creation of transforming the creature as he came out of Our creative hands.”

Luisa’s prayer to Jesus  Vol.10 – Nov. 28, 1910:

Only and always together with Jesus

And in Jesus I shall live,

Into His Heart I will plunge myself,

And together with Jesus and with His Heart,

Love, Love, I will love You.

Although the Heart of Jesus is distinct from that of Mary and infinitely surpasses it in excellence and holiness, nevertheless, God has so closely united these two Hearts that we may say with truth that they are but one, because they have always been animated with the same spirit and filled with the same sentiments and affections…

Add to this that Jesus so lives and reigns in Mary that He is the Soul of Her soul, the Spirit of Her spirit, the Heart of Her heart; so much so that we might well say that Jesus is enshrined in the Heart of Mary so completely that in honoring and glorifying Her heart, we honor and glorify Jesus Christ himself.

O Jesus, living in the Heart of Mary, be the life of my heart.  Mary, Mother of Jesus, obtain by thy intercession I beseech thee, that I may have but one heart with thy Beloved Son and Thyself. 

St. Johnn Eudes

L. Bauer

5/1/17