Sacred Heart of Jesus

A reading from “Christ, the Ideal of the Monk” by
BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION 6
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When a person fails in charity, and receives Christ in Holy Communion, he cannot say to him: ‘My Jesus, I love you with all my heart.’ It would be a lie, since he does not envelop Christ and his members with a self-same love. He has not accepted the mystery of the Incarnation in its totality; he stops at Christ’s individual manhood, and forgets the spiritual prolongation of the Incarnation which is the Mystical Body of Jesus. So, then, when we communicate, we ought ever to be ready to embrace, in one and the same charity, Christ and all that is united to him; for the measure of the giving of Christ to our souls is that of our own donation to our brethren. The Eucharist is a Sacrament of union with Christ, and of union between souls.
Thus a soul who draws near to our Lord, in Communion, in these dispositions of unreserved love towards the neighbour is very pleasing to the Sacred Heart. Christ showers magnificent gifts upon it; moreover, faults and shortcomings in respect to the other virtues are at once forgiven, because of this fervent love it bears towards the members of Jesus. When, on Maundy Thursday, the Abbot has communicated all the members of the monastic family, the angels who behold us see that we are all one in Christ, each one being united to Christ Jesus, and Christ being one, we are then truly one in him. We thus fulfill the dearest desire of the Word Incarnate.
Indeed, at the supreme farewell hour, when Christ Jesus spoke for the last time with his Apostles before entering into his sorrowful Passion and sacrificing himself for the world’s salvation, what is the exclusive theme of his discourse and the first object of his prayer? Spiritual charity. A new commandment I give unto you… by this shall all men know that you are my disciples… Father… that they may be one, as we also are one, I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly one. That is the testament of Christ’s Heart.
Our Blessed Father St Benedict, in concluding his Rule, also leaves us as his last testament, his magnificent teaching on good zeal. After having set forth in detail the ordering of our life, he sums up all his doctrine in this short chapter. And what does he tell us? Does he speak to us of prayer? Of contemplation? Of mortification? Undoubtedly, the holy Patriarch forgets nothing of all this, as we have seen; but having reached the end of his long life so full of experience, at the moment of closing the monastic code which contains for us the secret of perfection, he speaks to us, before all else, of mutual love; he wishes, with that intense desire which was that of Jesus at the Last Supper, to see us excel in most fervent love. This chapter is the worthy crowning of a Rule which is but the pure reflection of the Gospel.

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Blessed Columba Marmion, Christ, the Ideal of the Monk, 2.17.5