[Lenten Booklet] Closer to the Heart of Christ! Week 6

THE PIERCED HEART

Each day, the course includes a short word, a short text from the Bible and a small action for you to take.

The prayers for the 6th week (28st of March to 3rd of April 2021) is  to be found in this article. Every week you will have a new article with the reflections of the week. 

You can also follow our Facebook page, where we will post the prayer of the day. 

“You break my heart” said Caesar (Marius, Pagnol).

This week we are entering the Holy Week where Jesus lives his passion. Let us also ask Jesus:  Split my heart of stone when I am insensitive to your passion, when I get used to it. Break my heart before all those little ones who are yours today and who carry their cross. Split my heart and free it from my indifference.

It is the grace of the resurrection to give us a heart like Jesus’: a pierced heart. The crowds who listened to Peter’s speech about the death and resurrection of Jesus had their hearts pierced…

This is the way for us: from contemplating the heart of Jesus in his passion, let light spring from our darkness. May a true conversion take place from within our hearts and may it spring back to our bodies, our feelings, our intelligence. May it irrigate our whole person and our relationship with God. That we may be men and women standing up worthy of their heavenly Father and building on earth the world to come.

Monday

The real conversion is not in the safety of the sportsman who controls all the data to not  risk an injury. Neither truth nor true happiness is found in the opacity of our heart, in the cold and rigid control of our feelings, or in the assurance of success. To convert and decide to love is fundamentally to take the risk of injury, of hardship. It means assuming my intrinsic vulnerability and voluntarily exposing myself… to let myself be healed, to love, to dispossess myself, and to feel the riches of the other’s heart or to discover, in the end, in my weakness, unsuspected treasures of compassion… Mary Magdalene, by kneeling down before Jesus and before all those around her to manifest her love, takes the risk of being mocked, judged.

 “Jesus, having loved his own, loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1).

Action: Today I present my vulnerability to God and contemplate Jesus scourged and crowned with thorns.

Tuesday

A few hours away from passion, no disciple finds self-confidence in himself. They all know that they can betray it. Peter and Judas become images of two opposing destinies. Both of them sinners, yet one of them will shed the tears of his repentance and cross Jesus’ gaze. What if our true conversion was in bringing our darkness to light and letting Jesus lift us up? “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Wash your hands, sinners, cleanse your hearts, you who have not been resolved” (Jas 4:8).

And if we dare like Peter to hand over our sin, our faults to God’s mercy to draw from our pierced heart, the grace to ask forgiveness from our brothers and sisters and to forgive them their own weakness?

Action: I make an appointment to go to confession and I prepare myself for it by meditating on my sin and regretting it.

 

Wednesday

“The chastisement that assures us peace rests on him and in his wounds we find healing” announced the prophet Isaiah (Is 53:4-5).

From the pierced heart of Jesus on the cross, rivers of living water flow forth: water and blood that purify us from all sin are poured out. “The men dressed in white come from the great trial. They have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb“, says Saint John in the Book of Revelation (chap. 7).

What if those around us find healing from our wounds? In our mistakes we can find humility, through our vulnerability we become accessible.

Action: Today I decide to let a wound or a weakness that I carry show through, as Jesus will do for Thomas on Easter evening, sure that my vulnerability will make me more simple and accessible to others.

Thursday

“Rodrigue, do you have a heart?”, We asked ourselves this question at the beginning of Lent. Today, we remember that Christ delivers his body into our hands. Who are the people who are waiting for me to surrender myself to them?

 Action: Tonight we enter into the passion of Jesus. I am re-reading an account of the passion of Jesus, contemplating hour after hour what Jesus experienced from the Last Supper (9pm) to his death on the Cross (Friday 3pm).

7pm: last meal (Jn 13)

8 pm: speech after the Last Supper (Jn 14-17)

9 pm: agony (Lk 22,39-45)

Midnight: arrest and trial at Caiaphas’ house (Jn 18:1-27)

 

 

 

Friday

“They shall look to him whom they have pierced” (Jn 19:37).

On this Good Friday, we invite you to contemplate Jesus, in the secret of your heart, who, for us, went freely to the passion.

6am: trial before Pilate – visit to Herod (Jn 18:28 and Lk 23:1-12)

7am: Flagellation and crowning of thorns (Jn 19, 1-3)

8am: death sentence and Way of the Cross. (Jn 19:4-16 and Lk 23:13-24)

9 am: Jesus is crucified (Jn 19-17 and Lk 23, 33-43)

12 noon : darkness covers the earth (Jn 19:23-27 and Lk 23:44)

3pm: Death of Jesus (Jn 19:28-30 and Lk 23:45-49)

4pm: the pierced side (Jn 19, 31-37)

5 pm: the laying in the tomb (Jn 19, 38-42)

Saturday

The disciple whom Jesus loved, who rested on the Heart of Jesus and was present at the foot of the Cross, took Mary into his home from that day on. St. Ignatius invites us to dialogue with Mary before she leads us to Jesus. Today, we let you speak with her, simply revealing to her what is in your heart.

© Sanctuaire du Sacré-Cœur, Paray-le-Monial

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