Day 2: The Wounded Heart

The second day of the Sacred Heart Novena turns to the moment in salvation history that the devotion has always treated as its center: the piercing of the side of the Lord Jesus on Calvary. The Gospel of Saint John records: "But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water" (John 19:34). The Catholic Fathers and Doctors of the Church have read this verse from the earliest centuries as the moment in which the sacraments of the Church flowed from the Heart of Christ.

Today's invocation

O most Holy Heart of Jesus, fountain of every blessing, I adore You, I love You, and with lively sorrow for my sins I offer You this poor heart of mine. (Continue with the full opening prayer of Day 1.)

Today's meditation

The Catholic tradition has always understood the wound in the side of the Lord Jesus as more than an incidental detail of the Crucifixion. The Lord had already died at the moment of the piercing; the wound, in the soldier's intention, was a coup de grace to confirm death. But in the providence of God, the wound became the visible sign of an interior reality: from the dead Heart of the Crucified, the sacraments of the Church were given to the world. The water and blood are read as Baptism (the water of regeneration) and the Eucharist (the blood of the New Covenant). Some Fathers add a third reading: the water as the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son and is given to the Church.

Saint Augustine, in his Tractates on the Gospel of John, says of this verse: "The Evangelist used a careful word: he did not say 'his side was struck' but 'his side was opened,' so that there might be opened, in a certain way, the door of life from which the sacraments of the Church flow forth, without which there is no entry into the life that is true life." The Sacred Heart devotion is, in this sense, the contemplation of the door of life from which the Catholic Church and her sacramental life come.

Today's intention

Today, bring to the wounded Heart of Jesus the brokenness in your own life and in the lives of those for whom you are praying. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, wounded for love of me, receive into Your wound this brokenness I bring You today. If there is a particular suffering you are carrying (your own or another's), name it explicitly to the Sacred Heart now.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that the wounded Heart of Jesus is the point of meeting between His suffering and ours. The Lord did not stand at a distance from the suffering of the human family; He took it into Himself, into His own Body and Heart, and on the Cross He bore it through to its end. The Heart that received the spear is the same Heart that now receives every brokenness we bring Him. There is no suffering of which we can say He cannot enter into this with me; He has already entered into it, by anticipation, on the Cross.

The practical Catholic prayer that flows from this meditation is the offering of one's own sufferings in union with the sufferings of the Sacred Heart. The Catholic faithful are taught from childhood to offer it up: to take the small daily sufferings (the migraine, the difficult colleague, the disappointment) and to join them, by an act of the will, to the Cross of Christ. The Sacred Heart devotion deepens this practice: every offered suffering goes into the wounded Heart and is taken up into the redemptive work of Christ for the salvation of souls.

Closing prayers

Pray three times each: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, wounded for love of us, I trust in You.