The Sacred Heart of Jesus Novena

The Sacred Heart of Jesus Novena is one of the great traditional Catholic devotions of the modern era. It is drawn from the apparitions of the Sacred Heart of the Lord Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Visitation nun, at the convent of Paray-le-Monial in eastern France, between December 1673 and June 1675. The Sacred Heart devotion became one of the principal devotional currents of the Catholic Church from the late seventeenth century onward, was canonized as a universal feast of the Roman Calendar by Pope Pius IX in 1856, and was extensively developed by every modern pope including Saint John Paul II, who consecrated the third millennium to the Sacred Heart in 2000.

Origin and history of the Sacred Heart devotion

The roots of the Sacred Heart devotion reach far back into the medieval Catholic mystical tradition. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) preached on the wounded side of Christ and the love poured forth from it. Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) developed the theology of the wounded Heart in his Vitis Mystica (the Mystical Vine). Saint Gertrude the Great (1256-1302), the Benedictine mystic of Helfta whom we treat at Saint Gertrude the Great, received extensive mystical revelations of the Sacred Heart and is honored as one of the principal medieval predecessors of the modern devotion. The fourteenth-century Carthusian writer Ludolph of Saxony, in his Vita Christi, gave the devotion its first widely diffused form in the late medieval Catholic world.

The decisive moment for the modern devotion came at Paray-le-Monial. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) was a Visitation nun, a member of the order founded by Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Jane Frances de Chantal. Beginning on 27 December 1673 (the feast of Saint John the Evangelist), the Lord Jesus appeared to her in a series of mystical apparitions, revealing His Sacred Heart and entrusting to her the diffusion of the devotion in the modern Catholic Church. The principal revelations occurred over the next eighteen months and culminated in what is traditionally called the Great Revelation of 16 June 1675, in which the Lord asked for a feast of the Sacred Heart to be established on the Friday following the octave of Corpus Christi.¹

The diffusion of the devotion in the modern Catholic Church was the work principally of Saint Claude La Colombiere, S.J. (1641-1682), Margaret Mary's spiritual director, who recognized the authenticity of the apparitions and committed the Society of Jesus to the spread of the Sacred Heart devotion. After Margaret Mary's death in 1690 and Claude La Colombiere's posthumous publication of the Spiritual Retreat, the devotion spread rapidly across France and then across the Catholic world. Pope Clement XIII approved the feast of the Sacred Heart in 1765 for the diocese of Cracow and the Roman Confraternities; Pope Pius IX extended it to the universal Catholic calendar in 1856; Pope Leo XIII consecrated the entire human race to the Sacred Heart in his encyclical Annum Sacrum of 1899.

The Twelve Promises of the Sacred Heart

The Lord Jesus communicated to Saint Margaret Mary twelve specific promises for the souls who would devote themselves to His Sacred Heart. The Catholic faithful have memorized and prayed these promises since the late seventeenth century. The principal twelve are:

1. I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life.
2. I will establish peace in their homes.
3. I will comfort them in all their afflictions.
4. I will be their secure refuge during life, and above all, in death.
5. I will bestow abundant blessings upon all their undertakings.
6. Sinners shall find in My Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy.
7. Tepid souls shall become fervent.
8. Fervent souls shall quickly grow in holiness and perfection.
9. I will bless every place in which an image of My Heart shall be exposed and honored.
10. I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts.
11. Those who shall promote this devotion shall have their names written in My Heart, never to be effaced.
12. I promise you in the excessive mercy of My Heart that My all-powerful love will grant to all those who receive Holy Communion on the First Fridays in nine consecutive months the grace of final perseverance...

The twelfth promise, the Great Promise of the First Fridays, is the foundation of the traditional Catholic devotion of receiving Holy Communion on the first Friday of nine consecutive months. The promise of the grace of final perseverance (that the soul will not die in the state of mortal sin) is conditional on the worthy reception (in the state of grace, with proper preparation, with subsequent perseverance in Catholic life), but the conditional promise itself is one of the most consoling Catholic teachings of the modern era.²

Structure of the Sacred Heart Novena

Each day of the Sacred Heart Novena follows the same form:

1. Opening invocation: O most Holy Heart of Jesus...
2. A meditation on a theme proper to the day.
3. The petition: the specific intention for which the novena is being prayed.
4. The classical Sacred Heart novena prayer of Saint Margaret Mary.
5. Closing prayers: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be, and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in You invocation.

The nine days move through the principal aspects of the Sacred Heart devotion: the Heart as source of all love, the Heart wounded for our salvation, reparation, trust, consecration, the First Friday devotion, the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist, Mary's relationship to the Heart of her Son, and the Twelve Promises and Reign of the Sacred Heart.

When the novena is prayed

The Sacred Heart Novena is most commonly prayed:

• In the nine days before the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, which is the third Friday after Pentecost, in the moveable feasts of the Catholic year).
• In the nine months of First Fridays, as preparation for receiving Communion on each First Friday.
• In June, the traditional Catholic month dedicated to the Sacred Heart, often as the daily devotion of the month.
• At any time of personal trial, particularly when seeking conversion of a family member or peace in the home (Promises 2 and 6).

Pairing the novena with other prayers

The Sacred Heart Novena is paired with:

• The Holy Rosary, particularly the Sorrowful Mysteries.
• The Anima Christi, which expresses the same eucharistic love of the wounded Christ.
• The Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, an indulgenced prayer in the Catholic tradition.
• The Surrender Novena of Don Dolindo Ruotolo, which shares the same theology of trust in the love of the Heart of Jesus.

For Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque herself, the Catholic devotion to the saints recognizes her as the principal modern apostle of the Sacred Heart. For the broader theological context, see the Communion of Saints.

Sources

Footnotes

1. Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Autobiography (composed in obedience to her spiritual director and her superior, completed shortly before her death in 1690). The standard French critical edition is in Vie et Oeuvres de la Bienheureuse Marguerite-Marie (1876, four volumes). English translation of the Autobiography is by Vincent Kerns, M.S.F.S., 1961. Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), "Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque" and "Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus," available at newadvent.org. ↩

2. The Twelve Promises of the Sacred Heart are preserved in Saint Margaret Mary's writings and were synthesized in their current form by the Jesuit Father François Xavier Gautrelet in 1844. Pope Pius IX, decree of 23 August 1856, instituting the feast of the Sacred Heart in the universal Catholic Church. Pope Leo XIII, Annum Sacrum (encyclical, 25 May 1899), consecrating the human race to the Sacred Heart. Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas (encyclical, 15 May 1956), the principal magisterial treatment of the theology of the Sacred Heart. All available at vatican.va. ↩