J U N E
Consecration of the Family to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
SACRED Heart of Jesus, You made clear to Saint Margaret Mary Your desire of being King in Christian families. We today wish to proclaim Your most complete kingly dominion over our own family. We want to live in the future with Your life. We want to cause to flourish in our midst those virtues to which You have promised peace here below. We want to banish far from us the spirit of the world which You have cursed. You shall be King over our minds in the simplicity of our faith, and over our hearts by the wholehearted love with which they shall burn for You, the flame of which we will keep alive by the frequent reception of Your divine Eucharist.
Be so kind, O divine Heart, as to preside over our assemblings, to bless our enterprises, both spiritual and temporal, to dispel our cares, to sanctify our joys, and to alleviate our sufferings. If ever one or other of us should have the misfortune to afflict You, remind him, O Heart of Jesus, that You are good and merciful to the penitent sinner. And when the hour of separation strikes, when death shall come to cast mourning into our midst, we will all, both those who go and those who stay, be submissive to Your eternal decrees. We shall console ourselves with the thought that a day will come when the entire family, reunited in heaven, can sing forever Your glories and Your mercies.
May the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the glorious patriarch Saint Joseph present this consecration to You, and keep it in our minds all the days of our life. All glory to the Heart of Jesus, our King and our Father!
A Prayer for the Wheat
(Feast of Corpus Christi)
DEAR Lord, in many broad fields of this vast country of ours, the wheat is growing now. Some is still young and green, some is headed out, and all, before very long, will be golden ripe.
Most of it, dear Lord Jesus, will go to feed the hungry. In countless loaves of bread and in cereals, it will find its way to tables in city and country almost all over the world.
Some of it will be used at another table. It will be ground into fine flour and used to make the hosts, the altar-breads for Holy Mass. Priests will take it into their anointed hands and pronounce over it the words of consecration, and it will cease to be ordinary bread, and will become the Bread of angels. It will look as it did before, but we know and believe that it will be the Body and Blood, the Soul and Divinity of You, Lord Jesus Christ, there really present, under the appearances of bread.
O Jesus, bless the broad, rich fields of wheat in our whole land. Protect them from hail and beating rains, from blight and rust, from windstorms and drought. Let them be full and rich, so that the hungry may be fed, and may praise You and thank You as You deserve. And may all the Holy Masses that will be said with hosts made of this wheat hasten the day when at last there will be enough reapers working in Your harvest, which is ripe and ready now, waiting only to be gathered home. Amen.
A Novena Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
SACRED Heart of Jesus, we know that there is but one thing impossible to You: to be without pity for those who are in suffering or distress. Look down on us, we beg of You and grant us the grace which we humbly and earnestly implore, through the Immaculate Heart of Your most sorrowful Mother to whom You confided us as her children, and whose prayers are all powerful with You. Amen.
(From "Heart Speaks to Heart," The Sacred Heart Program.)
A Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
MOST Sacred Heart of Jesus, each morning we offer to You again, all the thoughts, words, and actions of our whole day. Every single thing we do: our labor in the fields and barns, our work in the kitchen and all the house, our laughter and our play and our tears--all is consecrated to Your Sacred Heart. Thus everything we do is an act of love, and a prayer to You. Every thing except our sins. And yet, by the measureless mercy of Your Sacred Heart, even these sins of ours, once they are repented of, confessed, and forgiven in the sacrament of penance--even our sins become monuments to Your loving and generous mercy.
Dear Sacred Heart, still beating now in our tabernacles with infinite love for us, we adore You. We thank You for Your unending generosity to us, so clear in all the bountiful, beautiful gifts of nature, in field and wood, by night and day. We beg of You to forgive us all our sins, and those of the whole world. We ask You to help us, in our little way, to make up to You for the love and service that is not given to You by so many men. Countless people who should serve You are Your enemies. Help us to realize that by doing our humdrum daily duties well, and offering them to God with Your merits, we can do very much to make up for our sins and those of all men. Help us, by Your grace, to bear patiently and lovingly, the little trials and sufferings of each day, happy to repay You in these little things for all the great things You have done for us.
All these our efforts then, dear Heart of Christ, we offer You through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, our Mother, and in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is at this very moment being offered to our most loving and generous God. Amen.