For this Sacred Heart Friday, I’d like to post a little thought-piece on a relationship between the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux.

The Sacred Heart is, as you must know by now, the intense love that God has for humanity.  A love so great that He gave up His only Son so that we would be redeemed from our sins and be restored to His friendship. A key part of that is our response to that love: we return it by offering sacrifices and prayers in reparation for other people’s sins. God died for us, He suffered for our sins even though He was sinless Himself. We ‘pay it forward’ so to speak in this manner. In making reparations for the sins of others (as well as our own, but it’s important to recall the ‘otherness’ of the act) we extend Christ’s sacrifice. Although He died so that all may have life and have it abundantly with Him in Heaven, by making reparations we participate in what St. Paul mentioned in Colossians 1:24,

‘For now I rejoice in my passion on your behalf, and I complete in my flesh the things that are lacking in the Passion of Christ, for the sake of his body, which is the Church.’

So essentially the practice of the Sacred Heart Devotion helps us to work this out.

Now, the Little Way of St. Therese is the act of doing little things with great love. Her Little Way is described as the ‘easy’ path to Heaven. We needn’t worry about doing mighty deeds or being great evangelists and so forth. If we just focus on doing our daily tasks but doing them with love, that may go a great way toward sanctifying ourselves and others. How? By doing ‘little things’ with great love, be it sweeping the floor, picking up something a person dropped, or whatever, we conquer our pride and self-love. These are the great sources of sin. 

Working out the Little Way can augment the Sacred Heart practices. It’s like a devotional ‘two-for,’ two sanctifying or reparative practices in one!

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