9-Night Family Prayer and Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

(A Spiritual Journey of knowing the Sacred Heart of Jesus)

St. Margaret Mary once said,
“I do not know of any other exercise in the spiritual
life that is more calculated to raise a soul
in a short amount of time to the height of perfection
and to make it taste the true sweetness
to be found in the service of Jesus Christ.”

Since Grade 3, I have been serving in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish-Obrero as a Choir member, then as a Core Group in the Parish Youth Apostolate until such time that I got married in 2007 and I became a member of the Lector and Commentator’s Ministry. For those long years of serving in the Parish, I never got the chance to know more about the Sacred Heart of Jesus and its 12 Promises, what I only knew then is that I am a volunteer serving in the different ministries of the parish, doing my usual functions. When I accepted the invitation to be among the Family and Life Apostolate (FLA) volunteer in the parish, I was part of the Batch 4 of the Devotees which started joining the 9-night Family Prayer and Consecration last September 2021. Since then, every month, I have been joining the group though there were times that I could not complete the entire 9 nights.

At first, the reason why I joined the family prayer and consecration is not really clear to me, maybe out of curiosity or more of the guilt feeling of not devoting myself to my own Patron. But as months go by, those fancy reasons turned and led me into something truthful and sensible. I was able to obtain my own Sacred Heart of Jesus image placed in our Altar in which is a dream come true on my part. Also, I was able to buy my own scapular which I would wear every first Friday Mass of the month and join the Holy Hour which made me love even more the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In my second and third months with the group, I was given the chance to be one of the sharers in one of the 12 Promises of Sacred Heart which I would consider a once in a lifetime opportunity especially that I am just new in the group. It was a wonderful feeling of sharing and listening to one’s faith experiences and reflections, it was life-changing and revitalizing. The flow of the family prayer and consecration starts with a Holy Rosary followed by a reflection/sharing on the 12 Promises and the 9-day Novena to the Sacred Heart that usually lasted for an hour. I also observed that from less than 10 members, in a period of 6 months, we were already more than 20 members. This is a clear manifestation that the Sacred Heart of Jesus was really moving and touching our hearts because more devotees were able to recruit new members.

Presently, when serving the mass, the guilt feeling is gone already and I felt relieved and comforted because I have devoted myself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Wherever I go and wherever I will be, the Sacred Heart of Jesus will be forever in my heart, guiding and journeying with me. When I got married, our residence belongs to another parish already but my heart remains with the Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, Obrero. The passion and the desire continues to beat even more faster and wider that it reaches even beyond the premises of the parish of Obrero.

Personally, I am looking forward that my perspective of the celebration of the feast day of the Sacred Heart of Jesus this year will be different. By looking at the image and picture of the Sacred Heart, it will not just be a compliance only as part of my role of being a lector to complete the 9-day Novena but it will have a deeper meaning already. It connotes responsibility and a challenge to live out the 12 Promises to become a loving, compassionate, merciful and a forgiving person especially to those people who need it the most during this time of pandemic. Given our limitations and weaknesses, we continue to seek for God’s mercy and love to work in us and to help us become His living instruments of fulfilling His mission here on earth.

Let us bring more souls closer to God through His Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. By consecrating ourselves to the Sacred Heart, we consecrate our lives anew to His love and mercy. “Let us continue to make Jesus known and loved”. (Mary Richelle L. Boholano | Full-Time Faculty, Holy Cross of Davao College)