Evening Novena For Pope John Paul II

Sacred Heart Novena

-- Fifth Day

The ages roll swiftly along their course.

God's love for His creatures in undying. The love of Christ lives on in the Mass and in the sacraments and in His abiding presence upon the altar and in the soul.

But men are fickle. Doubt is a cold and chilling thing. The hot flame of passion has a way of dying down to the dark, cold, dusty ashes of bitterness and despair.

So it was that into an age when men taught the denial of God's love, when they rejected His presence on the altar or forbade believers to approach the altar, the God of love came again.

A little nun, holy and loving, knelt in her Visitation Convent. Margaret Mary, she was called. The combination of the two names has become music to the Catholic world ever since that time.

On the altar before her was the vision of the loving Christ.

There was shown the tortured, flaming heart.

There were spoken such words of pathetic beauty, of such divine yearning, of dignity combined with passion that only God could have said them.

"Behold the heart that has loved men so much and has been loved so little in return."

Beholding that heart, we kneel adoringly to say:

O God, who in the heart of thy Son, wounded by our sins, dost deign mercifully to bestow upon us the infinite treasures of thy love, grant, we beseech thee, that we who now pay Him the devout homage of our piety may also perform the duty of worthy satisfaction. Through the same Jesus Christ, Our Lord, who livest and reignest with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end.

Amen.