Homily #080404 ( 05min) Play – On First Friday we have the devotion of the Sacred Heart when every month the local homeschoolers gather at the friary. In this homily, Fr Ignatius connects the devotion to the Sacred Heart with homeschooling as a means to establish the Kingdom of Christ in the world.

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Homily #080502s ( 10min) Play – Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a summary of all which one should do to respond to the love of God. Listen as Fr. outlines the practical steps to this devotion, stressing that it is an act of the will that should spill over into other interior actions (thinking about His sufferings and having heart to heart conversations with Him) and exterior actions (home enthronements, partaking in First Friday devotions)
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Ave Maria!— May’s Theme: Mary Mediatrix

“Just as the Immaculate is the most perfect instrument in the hand of God, in the hand of Divine Mercy, of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, so we are an instrument in Her hand. And through Her we are an instrument of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that is to say, of the Mercy of God. Therefore, may our motto be: ‘through the Immaculate to the Heart of Jesus.'” (cf. SK #339)

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Homily #080606s ( 08min) Play – On this First Friday of June, Fr. Ignatius preaches on the biblical foundations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to which this homeschooler’s Mass is dedicated. He points out that the heart has always been considered the center of our being and heart is mentioned over 800 times in the Old Testament and this is applied to God many times especially in Jeremiah and Job. Once Jesus becomes incarnate then these passages can be applied literally to His Heart.
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Roving Reporter #43 – Enthronement of the Sacred Heart ( 03min) >>> Play

Ave Maria! Fr Ignatius recently led the Sacred Heart Enthronement at the home of Tim & Lisa Hull. Fr Ignatius spoke with the Hulls about this enthronement and why they chose to have it at their home.

The Enthronement of the Sacred Heart is a crusade to establish the social reign of the Sacred Heart in society through the family.

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MOTHER OF FAIR LOVE AND QUEEN OF THE HEART OF JESUS

“Ad Jesum per Mariam” :   To Jesus through Mary.

THE lesson of this retreat would be incomplete and the King of Love Himself would reproach me if I did not speak to you, apostles of His Divine Heart, of Mary the Mother of fair Love; she was intimately and inseparably united to the Word in the divine plan of the Redemption. He was the Redeemer, she the Immaculate Co-Redemptrix.

Let us then respect and adore the design of the Most High by keeping the Hearts of Jesus and Mary per­fectly united. To them be honor and glory for ever and ever! My road to get to the Holy of Holies, to the very heart of Jesus, to the most intimate recesses of that Sanctuary of Justice and of Love, is perfectly mapped out for me. The necessary and direct road is Mary. No one goes to the Father save through the Son, “neither doth anyone know the Father, but the Son and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him.” So, too, we may say that no one goes to the King unless led to Him by Mary, nor does any one know the King but he to whom His beauty is revealed by the Queen.

Through her the Word came to us from the bosom of the Father. The Word could have chosen a thousand other ways, or no way at all, for neither bridges nor intermediaries are necessary to the purposes of God. It was His explicit will that, just as God was to come to men through Mary, so redeemed humanity should also go to God through her. No Christian worthy of the name will choose any other road than Mary, the one planned out by Him Who called Himself “the Way.”

To be unwilling to pass through the arms of the Immaculate Queen in our search for God and for His Son would be to presume to rectify what He Him­self accomplished in the stupendous miracle of the Incarnation. By eliminating Mary we should neither straighten the road, nor shorten the distance between us and God, for, to suppress the Mother of Jesus, the divine intermediary, is not at all the same as abolish­ing the royal antechamber in the palace of the King. Mary is the sanctuary itself, wherein He dwells.

Since the Annunciation, she has occupied such a position between God and His creatures that anyone seeking to avoid her intervention, or to eliminate this “gate of Heaven,” will lengthen the road and be exposed to the grave risk of never reaching the final goal. In Bethlehem, the shepherds, kings and even Joseph received the adorable Babe from Mary’s hands. She took up her Treasure and, after tenderly em­bracing Him, lent Him to those who had been so happy as ro receive a special summons to the Crib. And when they had caressed and adored the Child, they returned Him to His mother’s loving arms.

For many years, Jesus did nothing of importance without asking Mary’s leave, if only to give her another proof of His filial tenderness and love. The words of scripture, “He was subject to them,” show us a fathomless abyss in which stand out in bold relief Mary, who like a queen commands, de­cides, directs, and Jesus Who is obedient to her. Jesus is our perfect model of filial love for Mary, for, except His heavenly Father, no one was so dear to Him.

The first words lisped by the Divine Babe were surely, “Mother … Mary,” and they came from the depth of the God Man’s Heart. He loved her as only God could love the most holy and matchless of creatures. “Thou art all fair, 0 My love, and there is not a spot in thee.” He loved her as only God could love the Virgin Mother from whom He was to take human flesh and blood, that through His Passion and death He might redeem the world.

From the moment of the Incarna­tion, He consecrated Mary as Co-Redemptrix to col­laborate with Him .. Jesus loved her with the gratitude of God, because by her “Fiat” she gave Him what He lacked as God, the power to suffer and to die. Jesus loved her with the gratitude of a Son who drew His life from her and slept peacefully in her loving arms. His Heart enjoyed the tender caresses and watchful care which Mary lavished on Him, the Son of God and her own Son!

Jesus loved her during those thirty years of closest intimacy, when the Hearts of Son and Mother were united by the continual converse of their souls, by that passion and secret agony which throughout their lives crucified them both. Jesus loved her on Good Friday and gave His Heart to her on the Via Dolo­rosa to strengthen and comfort her! How He loved her when He fixed His dying eyes upon her and en­trusted His Church and all mankind to her in the person of St. John.

Thus you see, dear apostles, that we have learnt the love of Mary in a good school, that of the Heart of Jesus. We cannot be mistaken in loving what He loved and as He loved. By thus imitating Him in the love He bore His mother, we are drawn into a closer intimacy with His most Sacred Heart and we procure Him great joy and glory. Let us therefore love to re­peat the “Salve Regina” with a slight and very beau­tiful variation: Not only after but during this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus, 0 clement, 0 loving, 0 sweet Virgin Mary.

Fr. Mateo SS.CC.

The Enthronement of the Sacred Heart Apostolate was founded in 1907 by Fr. Mateo Crawley-Boevey, SS.CC.

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Homily #090605s ( 06min) Play – At this Mass for the 1st Friday Sacred Heart Devotion for the local homeschoolers Fr. Ignatius emphasizes the Gospel message of forgiveness in the sacrament of confession and how Our Lady helps us to persevere in grace.
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Homily #090606s ( 14min) Play –  It is Our Lady who at Fatima, Portugal asks for the 1st Saturday Devotion to the Immaculate Heart to do reparation for the sins of the world, to save many souls from falling into Hell.
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Ave Maria Mediations

Jesus, our Savior, true God and true man, must be the ultimate end of all our other devotions; otherwise they would be false and misleading. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and end of every­thing. ‘We labor,” says Saint Paul, “only to make all men perfect in Jesus Christ.”

For in him alone dwells the entire fullness of the divinity and the complete fullness of grace, virtue, and perfection. In him alone we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing; he is the only teacher from whom we must learn; the only Lord on whom we should depend; the only Head to whom we should be united and the only model that we should imitate. He is the only Physician that can heal us; the only Shepherd that can feed us; the only Way that can lead us; the only Truth that we can believe; the only Life that can animate us. He alone is everything to us and he alone can satisfy all our desires.

We are given no other name under heaven by which we can be saved. God has laid no other foun­dation for our salvation, perfection, and glory than Jesus. Every edifice which is not built on that firm rock is founded upon shifting sands and will certainly fall sooner or later. Every one of the faithful who is not united to him is like a branch broken from the stem of the vine. It falls and withers and is fit only to be burnt.

If we live in Jesus and Jesus lives in us, we need not fear damnation. Neither angels in heaven nor men on earth, nor devils in hell, no creature whatever can harm us, for no creature can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Through him, with him, and in him, we can do all things and render all honor and glory to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit; we can make ourselves perfect and be for our neighbor a fragrance of eternal life.

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SAINT LOUIS DE MONTFORT

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Our Lady of the Sacred Heart

June is dedicated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is deserving of our special veneration, because it is the sensible origin and seat of all the affections of our Divine Redeemer, and especially that of His burning Love; likewise, His Heart is the center of all the interior Sorrows which He suffered during His mortal Life. Moreover, the adorable Heart of Jesus, united to His Sacred Humanity, is thus inseparably united to the Divine Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

The importance of the veneration of these beautiful truths was first revealed to St. Gertrude the Great (d. 1302), which she recorded in her book The Herald of Divine Love. Later, Jesus showed His Heart to St. Margaret Mary, surrounded with thorns, with a cross on top, and in a throne of flames, saying: “Behold this Heart which has loved men so much, and has spared nothing for love of them, but which receives from the majority of men no other recompense but ingratitude and insults towards the Sacrament of love; and what grieves Me most is, that these hearts are consecrated to Me.”

It is only fitting that the Blessed Virgin Mary is also honored during this month under the title of “Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.” For it was from her most pure and sinless body that Our Divine Lord took His own Flesh and Blood, and thus she gave to Him that Most Sacred Heart, the physical organ which was not only the primary fountain of His own natural life, but the actual seat of the burning love of the very Son of God, which was finally to be pierced upon the Cross, and so pour forth the last drops of His most Precious Blood, in order to give supernatural life to all those who would love Him in return.

St. Gertrude understood this incomparable prerogative of Our Lady, and justly endeavored to honor her under the beautiful title, “The Immaculate Lily of the Most Holy Trinity.”

St. Bede the Venerable (673-735) convincingly refutes those who, while claiming to accept and truly believe in the Divinity of the Redeemer, deny this singular privilege of His Mother, which also necessitates her Immaculate Conception. “Heretics of a later day”, he writes, “denying that by the power and operation of the Holy Ghost, Mary, ever a Virgin, did verily give of her own flesh and blood in bringing forth the human Body of the Only-begotten Son of God, have maintained that He ought not to be acknowledged as the true Son of Man, consubstantial with His Mother.”

For if the very “Flesh of the Word of God”, he argues, “had no connection with the flesh of His Virgin-Mother, without reason do we call ‘blessed the womb that bore Him, and the breasts that nursed him’. But the Apostle says: ‘For God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law’. Neither are we to listen to them who would interpret the passage thus: ‘Born of a woman, made under the law’; but: ‘Made of a woman’; for being conceived in the womb of a virgin, He took not flesh from nothing, nor from elsewhere, but He partook of His Mother’s flesh. Otherwise he could not truly have been called the Son of man, since he would have had no origin from mankind.”

“For the Mother of God was blessed indeed, in that she gave flesh to the Word of God in time, but still more blessed, in that she ever keeps that same Word in her love, throughout all eternity.”

(From the Homily of St. Bede the Venerable,
Book 4, chap. 49, on the Gospel of St. Luke, chap. 11)

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