Blessed Claude de la Colombière discovers three principal virtues in the Sacred Heart. Christ is, indeed, the fountainhead of all virtues everything that is lovable and good is found here. But one observes, especially, a most ardent love of His heavenly Father and a deep reverence for Him. The first recorded word He spoke has reference to that Father, and, just before His eyes close in death, He once again pronounces that name.
The highest form of reverence and adoration is submissiveness, and it is clear that in every single detail of His life Jesus Christ was moved and directed by one only motive the Will of His Father. This desire it was that rendered sweet to Him the hardships of Bethlehem and Nazareth, the exile in Egypt, the isolation He felt through the inability of those around Him to see His point of view. He adored that Blessed Will throughout the agony of the Passion and bowed His head in acquiescence when death finally came.
We live in a time when most men either do not know God or deny God or make a butt of God or ignore God. The sight of such a world must send a sickening feeling into the soul that is convinced of the truth of God, the absolute nature of His claims upon the loyalty and obedience of the whole universe. The Heart of Christ would keep us steady and true to our principles when the world is rocking around us. God's claims we dare not, nor will, to neglect, and the Heart of Christ keeps us reminded.
Father de la Colombière finds, secondly, in the Sacred Heart, "infinite patience, and ... the trust of a tender son together with the shame of a great sinner." A whole family is disgraced if one member commits a public scandal. A girl can bring shame to parents; a father or mother can ruin the chances of their children by having themselves first forfeited their own good name. When one person in the family is known to be of evil reputation, it is not seldom that all the others are "tarred with the same brush."
Sin could never enter the allholy soul of Jesus Christ. "Which of you," He asked, "shall convince Me of sin?" But "the chastisement of our sins was upon Him . . . He hath borne our iniquities; He was pierced for our sins. . . ." He deigned to make Himself one with us, to share, therefore, in our humiliations. In us, He was "shamed." Contemplation of the Sacred Heart reveals the horror of sin and fires the earnest soul with the desire and determination to overthrow the reign of sin in itself and in others.
"Who can understand sin?" Not this crazy world which takes sin in its stride, not the poor blinded sinner who laughs and enjoys himself as he lies in false security as close to hell as anyone can be without actually entering it. Those who would understand sin must often come to Calvary, look upon Him Whom they have pierced, and in the Heart exposed here realize that there is one only evil in the world and sin is its name.
Thirdly, the Sacred Heart is a symbol of the most lively compassion for our wretchedness. "Behold this Heart," said Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary, "which has so loved men that It has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love."
Jesus, men ignore and deny God, and Your Sacred Heart reverences and adores Him. Jesus, men have lost their sense of sin, and Your Sacred Heart is pierced in order to restore that sense. Jesus, sinners need an advocate with the Father; their condition is pitiable, mine is pitiable; have mercy on them, have mercy on me.