It is rare when I enter someone’s home that I do not see a picture of a family member or a friend adorning a wall or on a piece of furniture. If I ask who the person is, the response is one of honoring he or she for who they are or were or what they do or did.
Just as rare is seeing a picture or an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, including in my own home. It is not because of a lack of belief or that I do not adorn my walls with Christian images (I have a wall with crosses from all over the world). It is that I do not want to limit myself to a specific image, knowing that if I did have such an image my family would be blessed and honored according to the ninth promise.
Writing that seems contradictory to one who believes he has been called by God to serve all that He has created. This is especially important considering our Catholic faith being centered around the Incarnation (God become man in the Person of Jesus Christ). The Catholic Faith is an Incarnational/Sacramental religion.
It is important to understand that God created humans both with spirit and flesh in His divine image and likeness. Jesus confirms that because he came to us in human form and with the Spirit as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Jesus is true God and true man. In addition, we are not pure spirits like angels but are body-soul composites. The Catholic faith is a religion for spirit and flesh.
As believers we are not iconoclasts who attack beliefs or institutions. Nor are we destroyers of images used in religious worship. That heresy was condemned in the Second Council of Nicaea in A.D. 787. Sacred images remind us of God and comfort us and help bring about true devotion to God.
In fact, the Council said that images are to be venerated and honored in that they foster love and remembrance for what it represents, the reality of Him who is painted in it. It also reminds us of Christ and heavenly protectors so we can pray to them and pay our respects.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus offers us two main exhortation points to consider for exposition of His image in our home and reasons why we should consider doing so.
Its first exhortation point concerns Devotion and its reasons for praising the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Pius V in 1799 and the Congregation of Indulgences in 1878 sanctioned and approved the exposition in public as a powerful incentive to devotion.
The Heart of Jesus is our refuge and strength. In sorrow and affliction we can fly to it for comfort and in danger and weakness we can fly to it with strength. We need powerful and faithful friends to counsel, to support and to aid us on the way to heaven.
Exhortation to Perfection is its second point. It is about how we maintain our hearts in the state of grace as united by the bonds of love to draw others to a better life. The thorns that lacerate His tender heart forcibly reproach us for our many sins, faults and negligence, our manifold irreverence before the altar.
As we behold the cross that surmounts the Heart of Jesus, it tells us that we are to be His true disciples. We too must bear our cross with Him to Calvary to realize Jesus’ generosity in doing and suffering all for us, shedding even to His last few drops of blood for our salvation.
Hopefully, we will ponder placing a picture or image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in our homes. May all this help us to return to be an open book to read about the awful consoling lessons of Jesus’ passion and death. And to return some small acts of generosity and love to bless our homes, relatives, and friends.
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