9nd Stage - Family and community dimensions of consecration
Family and community dimensions of consecration
In so far as consecration is a renewal of baptismal consecration, as we have seen in the second part of our journey, it is a personal commitment offered to all, lay people, single, married, or religious, as well as to priests. We have proposed a simple way to live it, in the seventh step.
In this ninth stage, we look at how this process can be extended to take on a family, ecclesial and even social dimension. It can be renewed at any time and in any place, personally or as a family, in a parish, in a community, according to the frequency that the Lord inspires us.
Family consecration
First of all, at family level. Jesus promised to shower every kind of blessing on families who honoured his Heart, and that «by this means he would reunite divided families and assist and protect those in need». We'll come back to this when we talk about the enthronement of the image of the Sacred Heart in the home (tenth stage).
This consecration, too, is a response of love to the one that the spouses celebrated on their wedding day, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: «Christian spouses, to fulfil worthily the duties of their state, are strengthened and, as it were, consecrated by a special sacrament.» (CCC, § 1535).
The family is the «domestic Church,» the first Church in a way. It shows in Jesus the true shepherd of our families, the «King of hearts,» He who watches over all our affairs (family, professional, social) as long as we give Him first place in our hearts and homes. This is the meaning of the consecration of the family.
In practice, the family consecration is proposed after the personal consecration has been made by everyone (I refer to step seven which outlines a simple process). It is the parents who make it, thereby drawing their children into the vocation they received on their wedding day and of which they are the fruits. It is not necessary for all the children to be present, nor even for both parents to be so. Thus, even in the pain of widowhood, separation, or civil divorce, a single parent can quite easily consecrate their family to the Heart of Jesus.
Prayer for Family Consecration.
Lord Jesus,
You who consecrated yourself to the Father out of love for us, we wish, in the breath of your Holy Spirit, to give you love for love by consecrating ourselves to You.
We want to dedicate our family's life to you in its current situation.
We consecrate to You our past, our present and our future, our home, our work and our simplest actions.
We dedicate to You our joys and our trials, so that the Love with which You have loved us may keep us in You and remain in us forever.
May the fire of your Love set the whole world ablaze, and may the rivers of living water from your Heart flow for all, unto eternal life.
Amen!
Community dimension of consecration
In the second stage, we explained the meaning of a communal consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Personal consecration draws me into a broader dynamic, which involves my family, my parish, my community, my school or my diocese...
There isn't really a one-size-fits-all formula for the consecration of a community or parish. It is up to each community and ecclesial reality to discern, in communion with its pastor, the opportunity and the way to live a consecration. All the better. Some will draft a communal prayer that embraces the history and spiritual accents proper to their spirituality. Others will use an existing personal consecration formula which will be prayed by all on a special occasion, such as the feast of the Sacred Heart or the patronal feast.
Community consecration prayer proposal.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Redeemer of the human race,
We turn to your Most Sacred Heart with humility and trust, with reverence and hope,
with a deep desire to give you glory, honour and praise.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Flourless World, we thank you for all you are and all you do.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of the living God, we praise you for the love you have revealed through your Sacred Heart, which was pierced for us and has become the source of our joy, the source of our eternal life.
United in Your Name, which is above all names, we consecrate ourselves to Your most Sacred Heart, in which resides the fullness of truth and charity.
Devoting ourselves to You, we, the faithful, renew our desire to correspond to the rich outpouring of Your merciful love.
Lord Jesus Christ,
King of Love and Prince of Peace, reign in our hearts and in our homes. Be victorious over all the powers of evil and make us participants in the victory of your Sacred Heart.
May we all proclaim and give glory to you, the Father and the Holy Spirit, the only God who lives and reigns for ever and ever!
Amen.
Build the civilization of love
Devotion to the Heart of Jesus enlarges our heart to the dimensions of the world and leads us to a zeal to proclaim the Lord by what we are, by our words and by our deeds, with gentleness and humility. In this way, Marguerite-Marie devoted the last years of her life to making known the love of the Heart of Jesus. And so, moved by a surprising zeal, she asked King Louis XIV to put the image of the Sacred Heart on his standard and to consecrate herself to the Heart of Jesus. We do not know whether this request reached the King of France, who in fact ignored it. The point here is not to dwell on the historical, theological and political questions that this raises, but rather to perceive the deep intuition that drives Marguerite-Marie: devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not individualistic, it is called to be translated into social life, to «establish the reign of Christ in all our lives and in the world around us», to quote the Scout ideal. It becomes missionary.
This is what is meant by the expression «the social reign of the Heart of Jesus», which enjoyed great success in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the institution of the second liturgical feast of the Sacred Heart, the Feast of Christ the King, in 1925. A certain political recuperation of the Sacred Heart partly explains the mistrust of a large proportion of Catholics, particularly in France, from the second half of the twentieth century onwards. However, this possible drift should not lead us to lose sight of what is right in this intuition, namely that true devotion to the Heart of Jesus is also expressed at a social level and transforms the way Christians get involved in public life.
Pope John Paul II, following in the footsteps of Pope Paul VI, used a new expression that gave new vigour to this aspect of devotion to the Sacred Heart: the «civilisation of love». He states that «The civilisation of love is born of God, because God is love, and in Christ, this love which is God «has manifested itself among us». It is from the pierced Heart of Jesus crucified that the civilisation of love is born. In the sanctuary of that Heart, God bowed down to man and gave him the gift of his Mercy, enabling him, in turn, to open up to his own brothers and sisters in mercy and forgiveness».» (Address to the faithful in the stadium of Nuoro, 20 October 1985)
