JUNE: THE MONTH OF THE Sacred Heart A S E R MO N BY F R T H OM A S C R E A N O P
You shall draw water with joy out of the Saviour’s fountains (Isaiah 12:3)
W
e may sometimes be tempted to wish that we were living at a different period in the history of the Church. Would it not have been fine, we may think, to have lived in the early centuries of Christianity, when the lives of the apostles and the miracles which converted the pagans were still vivid in the memories of the faithful? Or, would it not have been fine to have lived in the Middle Ages, when Christendom was strong and great cathedrals were being erected in every city? Yes, it would have been good to have lived in such times; yet, God in His goodness gives to every age certain blessings which other ages lack, and we who are the children S UM ME R 2 021
of the Church in these later days enjoy therefore some advantages which our ancestors in more ancient times did not possess. Of these advantages which we possess, certainly one of the greatest is the revelation, for our devotion and for the sacred liturgy, of the mystery of the divine Heart of Jesus. Of course, there was never a time when the Church was ignorant of the love of Christ for His people, both for His people as a whole and for each of the faithful in particular. But the Holy Spirit willed that this love be brought before the minds of Christians more vividly in these later days. The first of the instruments which He chose for this task was the German Benedictine St Gertrude, sometimes called St Gertrude the Great. She was only twenty years old when, in the year 59
