The Sacred Heart Experience

Throughout the course of this past year I have received the grace to accompany an elderly priest with Alzheimer's disease. Once a star soccer player he is now incapable of even bathing himself. He isn't capable of a conversations but he often repeats:

"Sacred Heart of Jesus...I trust in you!"

It has been a beautiful year, one in which I have learned how much we can learn to love Our Lord despite our smallness.

I've always been fascinated by Chapters 13 - 17 of St. John's Gospel. The Evangelist Saint John wrote them in his old-age and does not offer a chronological order of events - now having spent time with a senile octogenarian, one who has had much to teach me about life - I have begun to understand where, perhaps an order is missing but nonetheless a very deep experience is present.

This is an experience each Christian is called to - the Sacred Heart Experience. Below is an image of our Lord with His Sacred Heart which was scrawled onto the cement walls of a Polish Lieutenant who was awaiting his execution in Auschwitz. We can only imagine the thoughts that went through his mind as he awaited his iminent death. Sacred Heart of Jesus, I Trust in You!




Sacred Heart of Auschwitz
(more info)

Throughout our own lives we can grow in a Heart-to-Heart love for Jesus. That's true Christianity - not just dry words or some sort of intellectualism. It is a personal experience and personal response a Heart that calls out and says, each day as He said to St. Faustina:

Now, rest your head on My bosom, on My heart, and draw from it strength and power for these sufferings, because you will find neither relief nor help nor comfort anywhere else. Know that you will have much, much to suffer, but don't let this frighten you; I am with you. (Diary, 36)