Guard of Honor

I first heard about the Guard of Honor several years ago when I gave a retreat to the Visitation Sisters in Brooklyn, NY.  I saw a dial with twelve hours in which people's names or initials could be written.  Subsequently a Sister at the Visitation Monastery in Tyringham, MA sent me some materials about the Guard and wondered how we might collaborate in promoting devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  I wasn't sure.

The Guard is exactly 150 years old, having been founded in a Visitation Monastery in France by Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart Bernaud. She wanted, in the words of one of the Guard's brochures, "to find a way in which ordinary people could draw closer to Christ's Heart even while immersed in their everday activities. She had the inspiration that each person, in whatever walk of life, could dedicate one hour to the Sacred Heart of Jesus each day while engaged in their regular duties.  In this way ordinary actions could be sanctified and a gift of love made to the Heart of Christ."

This sounds very much like the spirituality of the Apostleship of Prayer in which one's entire day is offered to God with the Morning Offering.  And so I resisted.  Why offer one hour when you can offer twenty-four hours? 

My question has been resolved and today, the Feast of the Sacred Heart in the year 2013, I have joined the Guard of Honor here at the Visitation Monastery in Toledo, OH.  I have promised to offer the hour of 7 to 8 every morning.

What changed my mind?  Ultimately it was the grace of the Novena which I have been giving here and which culminates today.  While I will continue to make my Morning Offering and strive to offer all the prayers, works, joys and sufferings of my day, and every thought, word, and deed with every breath I take and every beat of my heart, I will focus particularly on the offering of the 7 AM hour.  I will try to live that hour  with a deeper and more conscious love for Jesus even in the midst of my usual activities, whether it be praying my breviary, celebrating Mass, eating breakfast, reading the newspaper, or driving to work.  In this way, I hope to inspire a more conscious love for Jesus throughout the rest of my day.  I hope the "Hour of Presence," as it is also called, will help me to better live my Daily Offering.

As I prayed about this during the past week, I wondered which hour I should pick.  I thought about the 3 o'clock hour, the Hour of Mercy, but one of the Sisters told me that this is a very popular hour. With what one might call "Jesuit practicality," I chose an hour that would be easier for me to remember. 

More information about the Guard of Honor can be found at the Mobile, AL Visitation Monastery's website and also at Dom Mark Kirby's "Vultus Christi" site.

Happy Solemnity of the Visitation!

For most of the world, today is the Feast of the Visitation, but here, at the Toledo Visitation Monastery, it's a Solemnity, the highest rank for liturgical celebrations.  Thus besides singing the Gloria at Mass today we also prayed the Creed and at the end of Mass had a special Papal Blessing.  That's because this is the patronal feast of the Visitation Order. 

Writing about the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, Wendy Wright captures well the spirit of the Visitation Sisters.  The following passage from her book Heart Speaks to Heart: The Salesian Tradition speaks of the place that the mystery of the Visitation held for the founders, St. Jane Frances de Chantal and St. Francis de Sales:

"It was the Virgin, dear to Jane's own heart since childhood, who was the patroness of the fledgling foundation. And it was the biblical image of Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-56) that summarized in iconic fashion the spirit of the new congregation. The mystery of the Visitation for Jane and Francis summed up all the Christian mysteries, and as such it was first and foremost a mystery that expressed the dynamics of love. ... Since love wants to be shared, it likes to visit. Indeed, the mystery of the Incarnation, captured in the biblical scene of the Annunciation, was seen as God's 'kiss' to humanity, God's loving union with humankind through Mary, the spouse and lover. ... Having been visited and prompted, Mary in her turn recapitulates this loving dynamic: she hastens to the hill country and the house of her cousin Elizabeth. There, these two pregnant women meet--one older, long barren and now expecting, the other young and ripe with Love's own longing for the world" (pp. 52-3).

Two hallmarks of the spirituality of the Visitation are humility and gentleness.  God visited Mary with humility and gentleness as the Holy Spirit overshadowed her. Divine humility and gentleness are seen in how God comes to us: not with an army of angels to force the divine plan of love on the world, but as a tiny baby to attract and invite humanity's loving response.

I've often said that humility is not thinking less of oneself but thinking of oneself less.  It's not putting oneself down but taking the attention off oneself.  We see this in Mary after the Annunciation.  She does not think of herself but of her elderly cousin and so she races to her.  At their meeting, Elizabeth praises Mary as "most blessed ... among women."  Mary accepts this praise, recognizing that "all generations will call me blessed," but then she humbly gives credit where credit is due saying, "the Almighty has done great things for me." True humility is truthful and it involves getting the focus off  oneself and onto God and neighbor. 

Mary carried Jesus to Elizabeth. In doing so she was, as Blessed John Paul II put it, "the first tabernacle in history."   He wrote the following in his last encyclical: "When, at the Visitation, she bore in her womb the Word made flesh, she became in some way a “tabernacle” – the first “tabernacle” in history – in which the Son of God, still invisible to our human gaze, allowed himself to be adored by Elizabeth, radiating his light as it were through the eyes and the voice of Mary."

Pope John Paul also wrote that Mary's "Fiat" at the Annunciation--"let it be done to me according to your word"--is echoed in the "Amen" spoken when we receive Holy Communion. In the Eucharist we receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ into ourselves. He joins Himself to us in an intimate union in which the two become one flesh (see Ephesians 5: 31-2).  In that sense we too, one with the Body of Christ, become tabernacles carrying Christ into the world. We become "monstrances" who radiate His light through our eyes and voices. 

But it takes great humility to do this.  It means, in the words of St. John the Baptist, "He must increase; I must decrease" (John 3: 30).  This is the goal of every Christian and the Visitation Sisters embody this ideal in a special way for us.

Sacred Heart Novena in Toledo

The first novena or nine day period of prayer took place in the first century (see Acts of the Apostles 1: 4, 13-14). After rising from the dead Jesus told His followers "not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for 'the promise of the Father'"--the Holy Spirit.  Then, after Jesus' ascension, "they entered the city" and "went to the upper room where they were staying" and where they "devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus...."  These nine days of prayer culminated in Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Since then novenas of one kind or another have been offered and today the Church begins the Novena of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  I am privileged to be participating in it at a special place--the Visitation Monastery in Toledo, Ohio.

According to these Visitation Sisters: "Through our Sister, Saint Margaret Mary, we have received the mission to love and make others love the Sacred Heart of Jesus."  One of the ways in which they do this is through the annual celebration of the Novena of the Sacred Heart.

For the next nine days I will celebrate Mass for the Sisters and visitors to their chapel at 7 AM and 7:30 PM.  The novena prayers are recited during the Prayer of the Faithful and after Communion. I'll preach and also celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation after each Mass. 

As the followers of Jesus entered upon the first novena with trust and confidence, so do we enter upon this novena.  "Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in Thee!" 

Today's Gospel (Mark 10: 46-52) is a perfect beginning for our novena.  The blind man Bartimaeus cries out to  Jesus, asking him to "have pity."  The crowd tries to silence him, but he continues to cry out.  Jesus stops and tells them to call the blind man over. They say these most consoling words to Bartimaeus: "Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you."  But then, when he comes to Jesus, he is asked a question: "What do you want me to do for you?"  It seems odd that Jesus would ask him that.  Isn't it obvious to anyone with common sense much less to one who, as the first reading from Sirach 42 says, "plumbs the depths and penetrates the heart?" The man is blind and he wants to see. But Jesus, with utmost respect, does not make assumptions about the man's desires. He invites him, and us, to be in touch with the deep desires of our hearts and to put words to those desires.  Only after the man states clearly "I want to see" does Jesus heal him.

And so, as we begin this Novena of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we, like Bartimaeus, hear the words of the crowd echo in our own hearts: "Take courage; get up, Jesus is calling you."  We hear Jesus ask, "What do you want me to do for you?"  What is it we want Jesus to do for us and our loved ones and our world during this powerful period of prayer?