The month of June is the month of the Sacred Heart. This devotion spread throughout Europe in the 17th century, with the apparitions to Santa Margarita María de Alacoque. In the 18th century it became known and spread throughout Spain and the lands of the New World (America and the Philippines) thanks to the young Jesuit from Valladolid, Beato F. Bernardo de Hoyos. But it was in the 19th century, with Pope Leo XIII, when the Cult of the Sacred Heart became universal in the Church. This Pope wrote the Encyclical “On the Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus” (1899). The cult was already there, as can be deduced from these words at the beginning of the Encyclical: “We have tried to defend the highly approved devotion regarding the cult of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and place it in great splendor more than once, following the example of Our predecessors Innocent XlI , Benedict XIII, Clement XIII, Pius VI, VII and IX, and we did this very particularly, in a decree given on June 28, 1879”.
The Reign of Jesus Christ is of divine right. In the aforementioned Encyclical, the Pope recalled Jesus Christ’s response to Pilate when he asked him if he was a King: “You say that I am a King”, and these words to the Apostles: “All power in heaven has been given to me and on earth”. For this reason, he warns: “his empire must be supreme, absolute (…)”. In 1689, Jesus commissioned Saint Margaret to ask Louis XIV for the consecration of France to his Heart. Although he went to court to convey it to him personally, the king ignored it (some historians note that, just at the age of one hundred, the bloody French Revolution began). If the Sun King had listened, wouldn’t the social, political and religious affairs in the French nation have been very different? The Heart of Jesus promised through Saint Margaret, these thanks to his devotees: “To the souls consecrated to my Heart, I will give them the necessary graces for their state, I will give peace to families, I will console them in all their afflictions, I will pour out abundant blessings on your company, I will bless the houses in which the image of my Sacred Heart is exposed and honored, the people who spread this devotion will have their name written in my Heart and it will never be erased from it (…), to all those who commune nine consecutive first Fridays of the month, the omnipotent love of my Heart will grant you the grace of final perseverance”.
Josefa Romo Garlito
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