reconciling things

I do not have adequate words to capture what it meant to me to Enthrone the Sacred Heart in our home and to Consecrate our family. The adoration of the Sacred Heart is a devotion we have been increasingly cultivating in our family over the last two years. This year, on the fifth day of Christmas and the Maronite feast of the Holy Innocents, we officially Enthroned and Consecrated. This is the anniversary of my Grandma’s passing, who died on the Roman feast of the Holy Innocents three years ago.

Israel painted the image. As a bonus he painted the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Chaste Heart of St. Joseph. Hearts of the Holy Family, pray for us.

We used the book “Jesus King of Love” by Father Mateo Crawley-Boevey to prepare ourselves. It beautifully points the reader’s eyes to Jesus and His burning Heart of love for us, inviting us to hide ourselves in deeply within his Heart. We embrace him King, Brother, and Friend. The goal: the home as the new Bethany and the family as the new Lazarus, Mary, and Martha—Jesus’ true friends. The place his heart could be at rest.

“Behold, the Great King is Coming! Fortunate are those who are prepared to receive Him! Happy are those families who possess these priceless treasures—a Christian home, and the Sacred Heart King of the home. What a grace it is to know your home is the palace of the great King; that the adorable King is really the sovereign in your family.” (Fr. Mateo Crawley-Boevey)

“The cross and the Tabernacle prove that He loved us without measure. Think how He has given Himself in the Holy Eucharist, that folly of love. There He is our own entirely, for ever, and with all His treasures. If our Lord had measured and calculated as we do, he would never have gone to such extremities of love. But when Jesus, wounded by the ingratitude He meets with, finds a soul, one only soul, who loves Him with the love of absolute surrender, He appears then to forget the betrayal and hatred He has endured for centuries…Establish a kind of rivalry between Jesus and yourselves as to who will give most! He will easily come out the victor, for, having infinite treasures, He can give the infinite. But remember: he who gives his all, be it only a mite, heaps up the measure. You cannot give the infinite, but when you have given without reserve, when you have given your all, you can say with the Little Flower to Jesus: ‘Lord, we are quits! Though gavest the infinite, and I have given myself wholly: more I can neither imagine, desire, nor offer.’” (Fr. Mateo)

Jesus being the King of our Home in this way is a beautiful and wholly transformational thing. It is the only thing that makes sense of the suffering—physical, emotional, relational we have endured over the years. We have been passing through the thorns to find a deeper place of love within His Heart, under his triumphant cross and protected by the flames of his heart.

When I was too sick to pray the Rosary or string a coherent sentence together, all I prayed on repeat was “O’ Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.” It is the thing. The only thing. Everything aims at that simple phrase. And now that beautiful heart is Enthroned in my home, making it truly his home.

After this time of blessing and prayer, of course, we had to feast. Catholicism, for all its talk of embracing suffering, is really the only place to learn how to feast. For without the fast there is no feast.