8th Step: Commentary on the Jubilee Prayer

The last step proposed a simple outline for living out the consecration to the Sacred Heart. In this eighth step, here is a commentary on the prayer of the 350th anniversary jubilee.

Lord Jesus,
You revealed to Saint Margaret Mary your Heart, so passionate in love for all men and for each one in particular. Today, you invite us to draw from the source of your Heart, which remains more open than ever.
In this sacrament of Love that is the Eucharist,
We offer you our fatigue and our weariness: grant us rest;
We expose to you our sufferings and our wounds: console us and heal us;
We present to you our hardness of heart: transform us in gentleness and humility;
We lay before you our ingratitude and our indifference: may we render you love for love;
We express to you our thirst to love you and proclaim you: send us forth in the power of your Holy Spirit.
Lord, we consecrate ourselves to your Heart, furnace of ardent charity. Make us instruments that draw hearts to your Love. Burn us with your compassion to testify to the world of this Heart that has loved us so much. Amen.

This prayer consists of three parts: the introduction, the litany-like requests, and the final conclusion. Its commentary allows us to grasp in prayer many of the things that have been said and to enter more deeply into the essence of devotion to the Heart of Jesus.

The Introduction

Lord Jesus, you revealed to Saint Margaret Mary your Heart, so passionate in love for all men and for each one as an individual.

The prayer addresses Jesus and is expressed in the first person plural because devotion to the Sacred Heart is both personal and ecclesial. The first sentence recalls the event that the jubilee commemorates: the Apparitions of the Sacred Heart 350 years ago. It directly refers to the first great apparition, on 27 December 1673, during which Jesus declares, “My divine Heart is so passionate in love for men, and for you in particular.”

Today, you invite us to draw from the source of your Heart, which remains more open than ever before.

The second sentence expresses the relevance of the grace experienced at Paray and contains an allusion to the song of Isaiah 12: “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (v. 3); a verse that inspired the title of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical in 1956, Haurietis Aquas in Gaudio. The final part echoes Pope John Paul II’s affirmation on 6 January 2001, at the closing of the Holy Door of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 in Rome: “With the closing of the Holy Door, it is a symbol of Christ that is closing. But the Heart of Jesus remains more open than ever.

The Six Liturgical Requests

In this sacrament of Love that is the Eucharist, the second part is introduced by the expression “Sacrament of love,” which the Lord uses to refer to the Eucharist during the great Apparition of June 1675. It is composed of five liturgical requests that teach pilgrims about the spiritual experience of Saint Margaret Mary.

We offer you our fatigue and weariness: grant us rest;

Firstly, on 27 December 1673, she rested for a long time on the Heart of Jesus: “He made me rest for a very long time on his divine breast.” In a letter to Father Croiset, she specifies that this rest lasted “several hours.” In doing so, she responds to Jesus’ call in the Gospel to come and rest on his Heart: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:28-29). The disciple Saint John experienced such a moment at the Last Supper (John 13:25), a significant event for which the Gospel alludes to again after the resurrection (John 21:20). Very early on, the first Christians indeed associated John with this particularly unique experience. Thus, in the year 180, Irenaeus of Lyons wrote: “Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who rested on his breast, also published the Gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus in Asia.” (Against Heresies III,1,1).

We expose to you our sufferings and our wounds: console us and heal us;

Secondly, the Heart of Jesus is a source of consolation and healing. Pope Francis invites us to bring our wounds to the wounds of Jesus. The hymn of the first letter of Peter applies to Jesus what the prophet Isaiah announced in the fourth poem of the suffering servant: “By his wounds, we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24). During the audience granted to the colloquium organised by the sanctuary of Paray on spiritual reparation in May 2024, Pope Francis prayed “that the sanctuary of Paray-le-Monial may always be a place of consolation and mercy for anyone seeking inner peace.” The analogy of the Heart with the image of the sun and furnace during the 1674 apparition recalls the verse from the prophet Malachi: “The sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 3:20), frequently cited in Paray spirituality.

We present to you our hardness of heart: transform us in gentleness and humility;

Thirdly, on 27 December, Jesus asked for his heart from Margaret Mary. “I begged him to take it, which he did, and placed it in his adorable Heart, in which he showed it to me as a small atom being consumed in this ardent furnace. From there, he withdrew it as a burning flame in the shape of a heart and returned it to the place where he had taken it.” In doing so, the Lord fulfils the promise prophesied in Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Jesus says that his Heart is “gentle and humble” (Matthew 11:29) and notes the hardness of heart of his interlocutors or disciples (for example, in Matthew 19:8 or Mark 6:52).

We lay before you our ingratitude and our indifference: may we respond to love with love;

Fourthly, during the 1674 apparition, Jesus complains about the lack of love from humanity: “He revealed to me the inexplicable wonders of his pure love, and to what extent he had borne the excess of loving mankind, of whom he received only ingratitude and unrecognition.” He asks Margaret Mary to “return love for love,” a phrase that appears several times in the writings of the Visitation nun. This is also the theme chosen for this Jubilee of 350 years.

We express to you our thirst to love you and proclaim you: send us forth in the power of your Holy Spirit.

Fifthly, the devotion to the Sacred Heart renews us in missionary zeal to bear witness to the world of this burning love, which both Margaret Mary and Claude La Colombière committed themselves to, each according to their calling. “My divine Heart is so passionately in love with mankind, and with you in particular, that unable to contain within itself the flames of its ardent charity, it must spread them through you and reveal itself to them to enrich them with its precious treasures that I uncover for you,” Jesus said during the apparition of 1673. The theme of thirst associated with love is also very present in the apparitions. In one of her letters to Father Croiset, Margaret Mary says that Jesus chose her as an “instrument to establish this devotion and attract hearts to love his adorable Heart, which had such a burning thirst to be known, loved, and honoured by mankind.”

The Final Peroration

Lord, we consecrate ourselves to your Heart, furnace of ardent charity.
Finally, the third part appears as the culmination of the spiritual movement of this prayer of consecration to the Heart of Jesus. It is important to recall that the place of offering is the Eucharist, as stated earlier. To consecrate oneself to the Heart of Jesus is nothing other than to consecrate oneself to his person, to Jesus himself. Jesus speaks of his Heart to Saint Margaret Mary as “the ardent furnace of pure love” (letter to Mother de Saumaise). Throughout the apparitions, the symbol of fire predominates, as seen in the 1674 apparition depicted in the fresco of the Chapel of the Apparitions: “Jesus Christ, my sweet Master, appeared to me, all resplendent with glory, with his five wounds, shining like five suns, and from this sacred Humanity flames burst forth from all sides, but especially from his adorable breast, which resembled a furnace; and as it opened, it revealed to me his most loving and lovable Heart, which was the living source of these flames.”

Make us instruments that draw hearts to your Love.

In the retreat of 1678, Margaret Mary noted this affirmation of Jesus: “I want you to serve as an instrument to draw hearts to my love,” echoed in our prayer.

Burn us with your compassion to testify to the world of this Heart that has loved us so much. Amen.

The request “burn with compassion” resides within the symbolic register of fire in which the spiritual experience of Margaret Mary is situated, as we have just said. It involves entering into “the sentiments that are in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5), in the compassion for the crowds that stirred his innards: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36). The prayer concludes with the expression from June 1675, which appears as the peak of the spiritual experience of Saint Margaret Mary: “Behold this Heart that has so loved mankind that it has spared nothing, even exhausting itself and consuming itself to testify its love for them.”

In the ninth step, we will see how personal consecration can expand into a family and community approach.