From the heart of Jesus to the heart of the world: a Eucharistic life. This is what our Society for the Evangelical Life of the Heart of Jesus, our Cor unum Family, strives to live in close solidarity with the whole human family. It is also a concrete way of applying the words of the Second Vatican Council. The joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the people of our time, especially the poor and all those who suffer, are also the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anxieties of the disciples of Christ (Gaudium et Spes 1).
Our Society for Evangelical Life of the Heart of Jesus and our Cor unum Family live out this close solidarity with the whole human family.
Placed at the heart of the world
On this 350th anniversary of the apparitions at Paray le Monial, we share Jesus’ sentiments. ‘See this heart that has so loved mankind…’. This is why we have committed ourselves to contemplating the Heart of Jesus:
- in prayer,
- in times of prayer
- the Eucharist
- the sacrament of reconciliation.
These are the places where we drink from the Source.
The Apostleship of Prayer
We are all familiar with the Apostleship of Prayer, which was born in 1844 and now takes concrete form every month in the Pope’s World Prayer Network. Every day since I was a child I’ve started my day by praying:
Divine Heart of Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you the prayers, works and sufferings of this day in reparation for all our offences and for all the intentions for which you continually offer yourselves on the altar, and particularly for the intention proposed by the Pope this month.
This prayer is in the old style, but it retains the essential: the offering of the day in union with Jesus’ offering to his Father for the world and for the Church.
The offering at the heart of our days
- “This, then, is the offering we present before you, we your servants and your whole family, Lord, in your kindness accept the (Eucharistic prayer 1). It is Christ’s Paschal sacrifice.
- “Lord, look upon him who offers himself in sacrifice. Grant that all who partake of this bread and drink from this cup may be gathered by the Holy Spirit into one body, so that in Christ they themselves may become a living offering to the praise of your glory (Prayer 4).
- “May the power of your loving Spirit make us, from now on and for eternity, members of your Son, as we partake of his body and blood (Prayer 2).
- Through the Eucharistic bread and wine, by taking communion in the Eucharistic body of Jesus, our own body and that of our community can become a sacrament of God on earth today (cf. ‘Coeur du Christ, Icône de Dieu’, Jacques Delaporte).
Becoming God’s heart on earth
Let us humbly become the heart of God on earth! God created his heart and placed it in the middle of the world for all eternity. Everything is ordered to God’s eternally beating heart. Eternal life takes up residence in a human heart. God dwells among us in a human heart (cf. ‘The Heart of the World’, Urs von Balthasar). Jesus king and centre of all hearts, that is to say of all loves This heart is defenceless. It receives nothing but indifference and contempt: ‘These people honour me with their lips but their hearts are far from me’.
To be God’s heart humbly on earth
Jesus tells us: ‘It is from within, from your own heart, that evil thoughts and reflections come. He suggests that we examine our own intentions’ (Mk 7:20-23, Mt 15:18-20). Blessed are the hearts purified by union with the loving Heart of Jesus. Aware of our frailties, our weaknesses, our inner faults, humbly united to the Heart of Jesus we will be able to be on earth, in our world, the heart of God.
You have been told what the Lord expects of you: to do justice, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6, 8).
We will be missionary disciples, we will bear witness to mercy, we will proclaim the Good News, we will form an evangelical society, a cor unum, by putting ourselves in the school of Jesus, gentle and humble of heart.
Clorivière and the heart of Jesus
Father de Clorivière exhorts us:
Let us immerse ourselves more and more each day in the Heart of Jesus to pray there. That’s where I’ll meet you. The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are a fountain of salvation and peace. These hearts are the altar where the fire of the purest love burns night and day. Jesus will present you to his Father by presenting him with his heart, in which your hearts are enclosed (5th circular letter).
We are the Eucharist of the Body of Christ
In the Cor unum family, thanks to the diversity of our vocations, we are actors in the Eucharist of the Body of Christ… By making our lives an unceasingly renewed ‘yes’ to the person of Christ living in all our neighbours, we consecrate and sanctify the part of the world in which we live. We live the Eucharist of the whole Church at the heart of the world. Let us concretely translate the love of Christ into the land where we are planted. Let us offer on the altar of our hearts a life of resurrection.
Becoming signs of God’s tenderness
In a world that is often indifferent or alienated from the Gospel, let us be concerned, by our behaviour and our words, to be signs of God’s infinite tenderness and to be peacemakers (Life Plan 52). As members of the Church-Body of Christ, we are concerned to build communion in a critical and inventive fraternity (54).
Placed at the heart of the world
We live in Nazareth, we live at the heart of the Galilee of the nations, discovering there the signs of the Spirit. Several moments of the Olympic and Paralympic Games were significant of this communion to which the Holy Spirit makes the world aspire, the whole human family with the universe within which it lives (GS 2).
Offering this world
With the Heart of Jesus, let us live at the heart of the world. It is about us that Jesus pronounces the words of the Last Supper: ‘This is my body, this is my blood’. We are the body of Christ, we are the blood of Christ.
In solidarity with our brothers and sisters in humanity
As the nations marched past for the opening of the Paralympic Games, I prayed, thinking of all the distress in every country, the wars, the starving, the millions of exiles and immigrants in every country, the children on the streets, the homeless… a universal prayer. We offer our solidarity and our prayers, especially for Ukraine, Palestine, Israel, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Kivu, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Bangladesh and all the countries where Christians are persecuted.
Taking the world to heart
With Jesus, we take the world to heart. ‘The fire that love kindles in us must be universal. It must extend to all people and share the qualities of the fire that burned in the Heart of Jesus. It must be active, ardent and strong as death (Clorivière, first circular letter)’.
