These pages will help you pray about God's unconditional and faithful love for us and learn to respond to that love in a meaningful way.

Through contemplating the pierced Heart of Jesus we are led to enter into the very centre or our Faith: the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord, saving realities that, together, are known as "the Paschal Mystery".

As Pope John Paul II put it: "The Church seems in a particular way to profess the mercy of God and to venerate it when she directs herself to the Heart or Christ. In fact, it is precisely this drawing close to Christ in the mystery of his Heart which enables us to dwell on this point - a point in a sense central and also most accessible on the human level - of the revelation of the merciful love of the Father." (Dives in Misericordia, 13).

These pages offer you a "missionary novena", nine days of prayer. For this novena to be a real experience of Jesus' love, constant meditation on the Word of God will be important, as will conscious and mature participation in the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession).

All this will help you become more aware of the presence of the Lord in your everyday life.

Through these pages the Comboni Missionaries would like to share with you their spirituality of the pierced Heart of Jesus.

The Missionary Novena challenges all of us to base ourselves on Christ's example of love, a love that reaches everyone in the world, especially the poorest and most abandoned.

Our love for the poor has its origin and model in the love of the Good Shepherd who offered his life on the Cross for humanity.

The contemplation of the pierced Heart of Jesus is a challenge to missionary action and to that fraternal charity which must be a distinctive sign of the disciples of the Lord.

"This is the proof of love,
that Jesus laid down his life for us,
and we too ought to lay down
our lives for our brothers and sisters" (I John 3:16).
--- Fr. Rinaldo Ronzani mccj

0 most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother,
may we know you more clearly,
love you more dearly,
and follow you more nearly.
--- Fr. Bernard Ward mccj

Devotion to the Heart of Jesus has its foundation and beginning in the Father's revelation of his love in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Right from the first centuries, Christ's pierced Heart has been seen as a symbol of his unconditional love for all mankind. This tradition begins from the Gospel of John.

Streams of Living water (Jn 7:37-39)

During the Feast of the Tabernacles, when the Jews called to mind the miracle of the Exodus, when Moses had saved the people by making water flow from the rock (Exodus 17:1-7),  "Jesus cried out:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.
Let anyone who believes in me come and drink.
As Scripture says: From his heart shall flow streams
of living water" (7:38).

In other words, from Christ’s heart God's Spirit will flow like living water from a fountain. As water brings new life to parched land, saving the crops and the people who depend on them, so Jesus, the new Moses, will bring salvation to his people.

The pierced side (Jn 19:34-37)

The prophecy about the streams of living water is fulfilled in the pierced Heart of Jesus.

"One of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water" (19:34).

The blood shows that the Lamb (Jesus) has truly been sacrificed for the salvation of the world, and the water, symbol of the Spirit, shows that the sacrifice is a rich source of the Father's life-giving love.

The Preface of the Mass of the Sacred Heart has a truly biblical inspiration when it proclaims:

"From his wounded side flowed blood and water,
the fountain of sacramental life in the Church.
To his open heart the Saviour invites all people
to draw water with joy from the springs of salvation".

The first centuries

The earliest reference to the mystery of Christ's Heart is found in the works of St. Irenaeus who died in 202. He wrote: "The Church is the source of living water which flows from the heart of Christ".

Many of the first great Christian teachers interpreted the water and blood as symbols of Baptism and the Eucharist, and these two sacraments as standing for the Church which is born from the side of the crucified Christ.

The Middle Ages

Throughout the first centuries devotion to the Heart of Jesus remained at one with the Bible and the Liturgy.

In the 12th century mention of the 'heart' grew more and more: it was a time when people were searching for the warmth and humanity of Jesus. The 'heart' called to mind the personal experience of Jesus, which implied feelings and emotions, with its emphasis on his humanity. In the Heart of Jesus the great mystics and saints saw the sign of the Word made flesh, the charity and love of God in human form.

Eventually, contemplation of the pierced Heart began to spread among ordinary people, thanks to the work of the Jesuits.

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690)

She entered the Visitation Convent of Paray-le-Monial in France in 1671, where she led a life of rapid progress along the way of perfection and was granted mystical revelations especially concerning the Heart of Jesus. In her visions she was told to encourage devotion to the Sacred Heart and to have a feast established in his honour.
She wrote:

I believe that the reason behind our Lord's great desire that special honour should be paid to his sacred heart is his wish to renew in our souls the effects or our redemption. For his sacred heart is an inexhaustible spring which has no other purpose than to overflow into hearts which arc humble, so that they may be ready and willing to devote their lives to his goodwill and pleasure.

Modern times

In 1856, the Feast of the Sacred Heart was extended to the whole Church, a sign that the devotion had spread widely.

Later, several Popes commended the devotion to the Church in their encyclical letters and expanded its doctrinal and scriptural foundations. In 1956, Pius XII issued an encyclical - Haurietis Aquas - where he reminded the faithful that the worship we render to the Sacred Heart is essentially a worship of adoration: we adore the glorious Heart of the Lord.

The Liturgy of the Solemnity of the Sacred heart does not stop with Jesus' human heart: it plunges us into the depths of love within the Trinity.

Father,
we have wounded the heart of Jesus, your Son,
but he brings us forgiveness and grace.
Help us to prove our grateful love
and make amends for our sins.

Being busy doing many different things came naturally to Daniel Comboni.As a missionary in Africa in the middle of the last century,he was used to working hard.However, Comboni was not just a man of action,he was also a man of prayer,able to find God in many different ways.He could do this because he saw the whole world filled with the love of God expressed in the pierced Heart of Jesus.

Comboni's sense of the love of the Heart of Jesus came especially from an experience which he had in Rome in 1864. On the eve of the beatification of Margaret Mary Alacoque, praying at the tomb of St.Peter,Comboni had a deep experience of the love of the Blessed Trinity and of God's will for the salvation of "Africa"expressed in the love of the Heart of Jesus.The importance of this experience is not how long it lasted,or that it might have happened only once; what is important is the depth and meaning of the exper-ience. It was sufficient to inspire Comboni for the whole of the rest of his life.

For the rest of his life he wanted to call people into the love of the Heart of Jesus.After his experience in Rome Comboni wrote that he "was carried away under the impetus of that love set alight by the divine flame when it came forth from the side of the Crucified One on Calvary to embrace the whole human family".Following this vision Comboni wrote his basic missionary "Plan". Comboni's particular gift was to take this experience, translate it into action, and pass it onto others. This is the centre of Comboni-missionary life: experiencing the love of the Trinity through the Heart of Jesus and sharing it with others.

Looking at the wounded side of Jesus today helps us to see that there is no doubt that we arc included in the love of the Trinity. In our prayer we ask that we may feel this for ourselves. We become missionaries when we ask that all other peoples may also share in it and feel it.

--- Fr. Bernard Ward mccj

This divine Heart bore the wound of the enemy's lance, in order to pour forth from that sacred wound the sacraments through which the Church was founded. This Heart has never ceased to love men, and continues to live on our altars, a prisoner of love and a victim of propitiation for the whole world.
(Daniel Comboni)

The spirituality of the Heart of Jesus gives us deep insights into the mystery of Christ.

The biblical symbol of the heart represents and calls to mind all the love with which the Lord loves us. The 'heart', in fact. speaks of love, concern, care, affection and intimacy: through the Heart of Jesus we are brought closer to the Father in the Spirit and. at the same time, we are challenged to respond to this marvellous gift by reaching out in love, after the example of Jesus himself to the poorest and most abandoned.

Jesus the human being

First of all the 'heart' points to the humanity of Jesus, to his whole person, to his history as a man. This is wonderfully described by Vatican II: "Jesus worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind and loved with a human heart"(Gaudium et Spes.22).

Through the symbol of the heart we can come to terms with Jesus' life and ministry which led him to the unconditional offering of his life for his fellow men.

Consequently, the heart is the symbol and the source of the love Jesus shows us ,because he is the 'sacrament', the sign who makes the Father's love really present.

The Paschal Mystery

The symbol of the pierced heart points to the Paschal Mystery: the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord. The Paschal Mystery is the 'heart' of our faith and the pierced Heart of Jesus summarizes the movement of the Paschal event: from the painful experience of death (crucifix-ion) to the experience of newness of life (resurrection).In other words, the evangelist John, through this symbol, has given us the image of a heart pierced in death which has poured out life in the signs of blood and water.

The Eucharist

The pierced Heart reveals Jesus' love for us and the Eucharist brings us even nearer to that love which is more powerful than death.

There exists a deep association of content and meaning between the Eucharist, recalled by the Solemnity of Corpus Christ, and the feast of the Sacred Heart.

Both celebrations are the manifestations of the mystery of the Father's love as revealed in Jesus under the different symbols of bread, wine and heart. These symbols are the features through which we can experience the presence of God here and now (bread and wine, Eucharist),and the revelation of God's love (heart)as it has been revealed and manifested in the Paschal event.

Reconciliation

The pierced Heart expresses, in a wonderful way, the mystery of our being "reconciled" to God, of being forgiven:

"Father, forgive them..."(Luke 23:34).

Infinite are the readiness and power of forgiveness which flow continually from the Heart of the Saviour .In the sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession)each person can experience in a unique way, the love that is more powerful than sin.

Our response

As we contemplate the pierced Heart of Jesus we are drawn into the mystery of Jesus' absolute and unconditional love for us. Through the symbol of the Heart we experience Jesus' call to life and communion as a free gift: all this leads to FAITH in Jesus as well as an active COMMITMENT to dedicate ourselves to others.

In the mystery of the Heart we contemplate, in their fullest Expression, Christ's innermost attitudes and make them our own:

--- his unconditional giving of Himself to the Father
Jesus, the obedient Son, allows his whole life to be shaped by the Father. His deepest experience is that of being loved by the Father, that is why he speaks of the absolute goodness of God and lives in total dependence on his Father.

--- his all-embracing love for the world
God the Father is passionately in love with all his children. Christ's love reaches everyone. The Good Shepherd seeks the lost sheep, is concerned about the sheep that are not of his fold and is ready to lay down his life for them.

--- his involvement in human suffering and poverty
The poor and the sinners are truly loved by God. Especially through his life-style and actions, Jesus reveals that LOVE is present in the world. This love makes itself particularly noticed in contact suffering, injustice and poverty.

We pray, then, as the Liturgy invites us:

Father,
may the Eucharist fill us with your love.
Draw us closer to Christ your Son
and help us to recognize Him in others.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

"Trusting in that most Sacred heart I feel more inclined to suffer and to die for Jesus Christ and for the salvation of the peoples of Central Africa." (Daniel Comboni)