9781644135945

The Time After Pentecost
Heart of Jesus! “O God, who in the heart of Thy Son dost mercifully vouchsafe to bestow on
us the infinite wealth of Thy love.”
We who by nature are so poor, may become rich at the moment we cease to depend on
ourselves and attach ourselves completely to Jesus and make use of His Sacred Heart. “I
no longer pray for anything, nor even offer anything. I simply unite myself to the Savior
and say: ‘O God, I offer Thee, in thanksgiving for all the benefits Thou has bestowed upon
me, Thy beloved Son as my gift, as my adoration, instead of all my own works. I offer Him
to Thee in place of all my love and everything else I have. Take Him, heavenly Father,
in place of all the things Thou couldst have from me. For I have nothing that would be
worthy of Thee, but Him whom out of such great love for me Thou has given me’” (St.
Margaret Mary Alacoque).
“If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink” ( Jn 7:37). Do we not thirst to love God
and honor Him as He deserves to be loved and honored and adored? If we exerted ourselves to
the utmost, by ourselves we could not worthily love and honor Him. Therefore we must entirely
forget our own inefficacious efforts and offer Jesus to the Father, together with His heart, His
love, and His adoration; we can make this offering every moment of the day through the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass. That is the best method of honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Prayer
Teach us, O Lord, who have tasted the sweetness of Thy most dear heart, to despise what is
temporal and to love what is eternal. Thou who livest and reignest for all eternity. Amen.
Saturday
At Pentecost we receive the Holy Ghost. Through the reception of the Holy Ghost we become
mature Christians fortified for Christian life, for struggle and suffering. In order to fortify us
and strengthen us for suffering, the Epistle today admonishes us: “Be ye humbled under the
mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in the time of visitation. . . . But the God of all grace,
who hath called us unto the eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little, will
Himself perfect you, and confirm you, and establish you” (Epistle). The way of all perfection is
this: “Be ye humbled under the mighty hand of God,” for “God resisteth the proud, but to the
humble He giveth grace” (1 Pt 5:5).
“God resisteth the proud.” He is proud who lives by his own spirit and who will not subject his
own will to the commands, ordinances, and plans of God, and who sets up his own plans and
his own will against the will of God. He is proud who wishes to be his own master, and who
wishes to be in no way responsible to God. Pride is the source of all sin and the root of all evil
in men. Pride is at the bottom of man’s every departure from God, and it is the most formidable
obstacle in his return to God. It is the real cause that prevents man from being united to God
and from subjecting himself to God. And pride thrives, not only in the world, but in the hearts
of the baptized, and even in the hearts of many good Christians. Pride is the cockle in the wheat.
Like all weeds, pride needs no cultivation. Every gust of wind spreads its seeds abroad, and the
better the ground, the deeper the roots sink into it. It may be torn up a thousand times, but it
443