Daily Reflections

“Heart of Jesus, give us all the graces necessary for our state in life” St. Margaret MaryAlacoque

Sacred Heart Badges

Not many people know that the Sacred Heart Badge owes its origins to the apparitions received by St. Margaret Mary. Our Lord expressed to her a wish that whoever loved Him should wear or carry a picture of His Sacred Heart. St. Margaret Mary made little pictures which she shared with her friends, but the badge became a more public and widespread devotion in 1720, when the city of Marseilles was being ravaged by the plague. The Bishop asked the Visitation nuns to make thousands of Sacred Heart badges, and after a solemn procession he consecrated the city to the Sacred Heart and distributed the badges to everyone present. Not a single new case of the plague was reported after that day.

During the French revolution, the badge was adopted by those faithful Catholics who fought the revolutionaries, especially in the Vandee region. From that time forward, it was often worn and promoted by other counter-revolutionaries: – Andreas Hofer’s Tyroleans fighting against Napoleon, the Cristeros who fought against the Mexican revolution, and the Spanish “requetés,” whose intervention was decisive for the Anti-Communist Catholics in the Spanish Civil War – and others. In 1870, the Sacred Heart badge was especially blessed and indulgenced by Pope Pius IX, who said of it: “This is an inspiration from Heaven. Yes, from Heaven. I am going to bless this Heart and want all badges made after this model to receive the same blessing, so that in the future, it will not be necessary for the blessing to be renewed by a priest. And I want Satan to be unable to cause any harm to those who wear this Badge, symbol of the adorable Heart of Jesus.”

How poignant and important is this sacramental in our times, since we face the same enemies today as did these, our ancestors before us. The Sacred Heart asked the King of France to proclaim his devotion and loyalty by painting the Sacred Heart on his standards, and the king refused Christ this honour. Let us not also be guilty of refusing to proclaim in a public way, whenever called upon, our loyalty and love for Christ our King.

Isaiah 25:1, 2; Hebrews 11:30

O LORD, You are my God:
I will extol you and praise Y our name.
– You have reduced the city to a heap of stones,
never to be rebuilt.

After seven days’ procession around Jericho’s walls,
Israel’s faith brought them down in ruins.
– You have reduced the city to a heap of stones,
never to be rebuilt.

Thursday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

Saints Vitus, Modestus, and Crescentia, Martyrs (Traditional)

Our righteousness will surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees if we turn to the LORD who removes the veil from over our hearts. “Where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is freedom.”  (2 Cor 3:15-4:1,3-6) The LORD’s Spirit moves us to take the initiative in becoming reconciled with others. By that self-surrender, we are transformed from glory to glory and “get into the Kingdom of Heaven” (Mt 5:20-26).

SS. VITUS, MODESTUS AND CRESCENTIA, MARTYRS

 Saint Vitus, born of an illustrious Sicilian family, was a martyr who is spoken of in the Martyrology of  St. Jerome, as being a native of Lucania, or of Sicily, and whose veneration was very widely diffused in Italy during the Lombard period. The Mass was originally of Saint Vitus only but later there were associated with him, the martyrs, Modestus, and Crescentia; the former, according to the Acta Sanctorum, being his teacher, the latter his nurse. St. Vitus was delivered by his father to be scourged because he had been baptized; his judge was struck blind, but healed by his prayers. His teacher and nurse then took him to foreign parts whence he was summoned by Diocletian to deliver his son tormented by the devil. When St. Vitus had done this, he was ordered to worship false gods; upon his refusal, together with Modestus and Crescentia, he was plunged into the caldron of molten lead and flaming resin. They died in 303. 

From a homily on Joshua by Origen, Priest
(Hom. 6, 4: PG 12, 855-856)

The Capture of Jericho

Once Jericho was surrounded it had to be stormed. How then was Jericho stormed? No sword was drawn against it, no battering ram was aimed at it, no javelins were hurled. The priests merely sounded their trumpets, and the walls of Jericho collapsed. 

In the Scriptures Jericho is often represented as an image of the world. There can be not doubt that the man whom the Gospel describes as going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and falling into the hands of brigands is an image of Adam being driven out of Paradise into the exile of this world. Likewise the blind men in Jericho, to whom Jesus came to give sight, signified the people in this world who were blinded by ignorance, to whom the Son of God came.

Jericho will fall, then; this world will perish. Indeed in the Sacred Books the end of the world was proclaimed long ago. How will the world be brought to an end, and by what means will it be destroyed? The answer of Scripture is: By the sound of trumpets. If you ask what trumpets, then let Paul reveal the secret. Listen to what he says: The trumpet will sound, and the dead who are in Christ will rise incorruptible. The voice of the archangel and the trumpets of God will give the signal, and the LORD Himself will come down from Heaven. Then the LORD Jesus will conquer Jericho with trumpets and destroy it, saving only the harlot and her household. 

Jesus Our LORD will come says Paul, and He will come with the sound of trumpets. He will save only the woman who received His spies, that is, His Apostles, in Faith and Obedience, and hid them on the roof of her house; and He will join this harlot to the House of Israel. But let us not bring up her past sins again or impute them to her. She was a harlot once, but now she is joined to Christ, chaste virgin to one chaste Husband. Listen to what the Apostle says of her: He has determined to present you to Christ as a chaste virgin to her one and only Husband. Indeed, Paul himself had been born of her: Misled by our folly and disbelief, he said, we too were once slaves to our passions and to pleasures of every kind.

If you wish to learn more fully about how this harlot ceased to be a harlot then listen to Paul once again: And such were you also, but you have been cleansed and made holy in the name of Our LORD Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. To assure her escape when Jericho was destroyed, the harlot was given that most effective symbol of salvation, the scarlet cord. For it is by the Blood of Christ that the entire Church is saved, in the same Jesus Christ Our LORD, to whom belongs Glory and Dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

Avoiding Fiery Gehenna by Turning to Jesus

Here I am at Thursday. The usual disgust descends upon me; fear of losing my soul comes over me; the number of my sins and their enormity all open up before me. What agitation! In these moments my guardian angel suggested in my ear: “But God’s mercy is Infinite.” I calmed down. 

Early in the day the pain in my head began; it must have been around 10:00. When I was alone I threw myself on the bed; I suffered some but Jesus was not long in appearing, showing me that He also suffered greatly. I reminded Him of the sinners for whom He Himself urged me to offer all my little aches to the Eternal Father on their behalf. 

While I was with Jesus and suffering, and He suffered also, a strong desire came upon me, almost impossible to resist. Jesus realised this, and asked me: “What do you want me to do?” And I immediately: ‘‘Jesus, have pity, lighten Mother Maria Teresa’s torments.” And Jesus: “I have already done so. Do you wish anything else?” He asked. That gave me courage and I said: ‘‘Jesus, save her, save her.” And Jesus answered like this: “On the third day after the Assumption of My Blessed Mother, she will be released from Purgatory and I will take her with Me to Heaven.” Those words filled me with a joy such that I do not know how to express it. Jesus said a number of other things; those words filled me with a joy such that I do not know how to express it.

Saint Gemma Galgani

Saint Gemma Galgani († 1903), from Lucca, Italy, had many mystical experiences, such as seeing her guardian angel and receiving a crown of thorns from Jesus. She died at age 25 and is called the “Flower of Lucca” and “Daughter of the Passion”. [From The Diary of Saint Gemma Galgani.

DAILY MEDITATION

Learn the wickedness of the demons. For it is possible to see both things in the case of these demons: the loving-kindness of God, and the evil of the demons. The evil of the demons, when they harass, and disturb the soul of the demented; and the loving kindness of God, whenever He restrains and hinders, so savage, a demon, who has taken up his abode within, and desires to hurl the man headlong, and does not allow him to use his own power to the full, but suffers him to exhibit just so much strength, as both, to bring the man to his senses, and make his own wickedness apparent….. consider the herds, the flocks of Job, how, in one instant of time he annihilated all; consider the pitiable death of the children, the blow that was dealt to his body: and you should see the savage and inhuman and unsparing character of the wickedness of the demons, and from these things, you should know clearly that if God entrusted the whole of this world to their authority, they would have confused and disturbed everything, and would have a assigned to us, the treatment of the swine, and of those herds, since not even for a little breathing space of time, could they have endured to spare us our salvation. If demons were to arrange affairs, we should be no better condition than possessed man, you, rather, we should be worse than the period for God did not give them over entirely to the tyranny of the demons, otherwise they would suffer for worse things than these, which they now suffer.

Saint John Chrysostom. [+407] – Bishop of Constantinople and greatest of Catholic preachers, foremost among the Four Great Doctors of the East.

Isaiah 49:22, 26; John 8:28

See, I will lift up My Hand to the nations
and raise up my signal for the peoples;
– All mankind shall know that I, the LORD, am your Saviour
your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

When you have lifted up the Son of Man from the earth,
you will know that I am He.
– All mankind shall know that I, the LORD, am your Saviour
your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.

“The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.” – Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen