Thursday, June 14, 2007

Vigil Of the Feast Of the Sacred Heart


My most loving Jesus, my own heart is glad when I think upon Thy most Sacred Heart, all tenderness and sweetness for sinners, and I am filled with confident hope of Thy kind welcome. But O, my sins! how many and how great are they! Grieving now, like Peter and like Magdalene, I bewail and abhor them, because they are an offence to Thee, my Sovereign Good. O, grant me pardon for them all. Would that I might die before I offend Thee again! I pray Thee, by Thy Sacred Heart, that I may live only to requite Thy love.
From The Chaplet of the Sacred Heart from The Raccolta

Because the devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary are so closely linked (indeed St. Jean Eudes tells us that the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary are One), artists often execute matched sets of the Two Hearts in the same style. It just happens that the Immaculate Heart image that is the match for the above Sacred Heart is the one that was in my house when I was growing up: