Preparatory Prayer
Eternal Father, source without source of all life and all love, who in the fullness of time gave us your only-begotten Son so that the world might have life through Him, grant us during these days to penetrate the ineffable mystery of His Sacred Heart.
Holy Spirit, subsistent Love of the Father and the Son, divine fire who searches the depths of God, open the eyes of our soul so that we may contemplate the unfathomable riches enclosed in the Heart of Jesus Christ. Lead us to that source from which grace, mercy, forgiveness, and life flow. Bring us not only to the knowledge, but to the intimacy of that blessed Heart; not only to its contemplation, but to its friendship; not only to its admiration, but to its love. Introduce us into the burning sanctuary of the Heart of Jesus, so that we may learn to live, to suffer, to hope, and to love with Him.
Amen.
Prayer to the Heart of Jesus the Reparator
Heart of my Jesus, today I wish to pause before a word that for generations was familiar to so many Christians and that today is less understood: reparation. At first glance it might seem a sad word, as if the Christian life consisted in continually gazing at sin, ingratitude, or the wounds of the world. But when contemplated in the light of Your Gospel, reparation takes on a very different meaning. It does not spring from sadness, but from love. It does not arise from a somber spirituality, but from the very logic of a heart that has discovered how greatly it has been loved.
Whoever truly loves cannot remain indifferent to the suffering of the beloved. When someone contemplates Your Passion, when they consider the indifference with which You are so often treated, when they see how many people live as if Your Incarnation, Your Cross, Your presence in the Holy Mass were of no importance, the desire spontaneously arises to offer You something more than admiration. The desire to accompany You is born. Reparation consists precisely in this: in keeping company with Love.
I think of those hours in Gethsemane, when You sought among Your disciples a minimal share in Your agony. You did not ask them to solve the world’s problems or to understand all the mysteries of redemption. You only asked if they could watch one hour with You. That request continues to resound through the centuries with touching delicacy. The Savior of the world, who sustains the galaxies by His power, wished to beg for the consolation of human friendship. There is in this a mystery that overwhelms.
You need nothing from us to be infinitely happy in the bosom of the Trinity. Nevertheless, You have chosen to take us so seriously that You accept our expressions of love and allow them to have real value before Your Heart. You have willed that our prayers, our hidden sacrifices, our silent adorations, and our small renunciations become a response to the excess of love that flows from You.
Therefore reparation is not an added burden to the Christian life: it is a natural consequence of love. Just as a mother stays awake beside the bed of a sick child without considering it a heavy obligation, so too the soul that loves spontaneously seeks ways to console the Heart of Christ.
How often, however, my love proves superficial. I am moved by an image of the Crucified and shortly afterward return to thinking only of myself. I hear of Your self-giving and continue to defend my small comforts with tenacity. I am moved by the thought of Your generosity and keep carefully calculating how much I am willing to give.
Faced with the poverty of my response, Your Heart continues to show me a patience that never runs out. You do not demand extraordinary gestures. You are often content with small things: a visit to the Blessed Sacrament when I would have preferred to go straight home; a kind word when silence would have been easier; a trial accepted serenely; a prayer made faithfully amid weariness; a good deed done without expecting recognition.
True reparation usually has humble dimensions: it resembles more the perfume poured out by Mary of Bethany than great human enterprises. It almost always remains hidden, leaves scarcely any visible trace, yet possesses a mysterious fruitfulness because it enters the very current of redemptive love.
While the world continually seeks what is spectacular, You continue to grant immense importance to what springs from a sincere heart. A glass of water given for love, a discreet alms, a genuflection made with recollection, an act of patience offered in silence, can acquire immense value when united to Your sacrifice.
I would like to learn that hidden science of the saints. They understood that holiness does not consist so much in performing extraordinary actions as in performing ordinary things with extraordinary love. They discovered that the most effective way to repair the wounds of the world was to let Your love first transform their own hearts.
Therefore I do not come today to offer You great promises. I know my fragility too well. I prefer to ask You for something simpler and deeper: that You teach me to love. If love grows, reparation will come of itself. If love weakens, even the most striking sacrifices will end up emptied of meaning.
Make my life gradually become a grateful response to Your friendship. May each day, with its joys and its difficulties, be offered as a humble companionship to the Heart that has never ceased to love humankind. And when the moment comes to appear before You, may Your mercy allow me to find open the doors of that Heart where so many generations of sinners, saints, and simple souls have found refuge.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I trust in You!
Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
Immaculate Heart of Mary, masterpiece of the Holy Spirit and purest reflection of the Heart of your Son, lead us to Jesus.
You who kept all His words in your heart, teach us to listen to Him. You who remained beside the Cross when many fled, teach us to remain faithful. You who knew as no one else the joys, the silences, the sufferings, and the secrets of the Heart of Christ, introduce us into His intimacy.
During this novena may we learn to love Him with something of your purity, to serve Him with something of your humility, to follow Him with something of your fidelity. And when our earthly pilgrimage ends, lead us to that open Heart which will forever be our homeland, our rest, and our beatitude.
Amen.