Trusting in the Sacred Heart of Jesus

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

When Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary near the end of the 17th Century, He held out His Heart wrapped in a crown of thorns with flames of ardent love coming from within it. He asked her to have an image of it made to remind the faithful of how His Heart burns with love for us and longs for our love in return. Then in 1939 the Lord appeared to St. Faustina and asked her to make an image of how she saw our Lord with the red and pale rays coming from His breast with the inscription below: “Jesus, I trust in you!” Doesn’t it seem clear that the Lord is trying to tell us something? Yet, these revelations are but reminders of what He told His disciples in His preaching.

In the sixth chapter of St. John’s gospel, Jesus says to the crowds, “Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.” “Everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life….” Is this what our Lord is trying to remind us of when He appeared to St. Margret Mary and later to St. Faustina?

With the difficulties of everyday life and the mounting challenges to faith in God in our times, trust in the love and mercy of the Lord and His power to save makes the words of the Gospel and its later reassurances evermore meaningful for us.

“My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.” “No one can take them out of my hand!”