By Rev. Joseph J. C. Petrovits, J.C.B., S.T.L.
The Heart in the second state, i. e., as it resides in the Body concealed under the sacramental species, is a very special object of this devotion. The ineffable love Christ exemplifies in this state induced Him to perform an act which almost reaches the acme of His omnipotence. It is the suffering Heart in the Sacrament of love to which, above all, He asks us to make reparation and amends for the sacrileges and insults offered by ungrateful, indifferent, and unbelieving souls.
After Solomon finished the Temple, the Lord said to him: " I have chosen, and have sanctified this place, that my name may be there forever, and my eyes and my heart may remain there perpetually." This reference to His Heart in the Old Dispensation must be taken figuratively, only as an adumbration to be actualized in the New Testament, when the Heart of a God-man truly and actually was to sanctify the Christian churches with its real presence.
Again, if we reverence the statues and pictures which are only representations, how much more fitting it is to worship the reality of which they are only faint shadows. In this second state we adore that love of Christ which finds its delight in being with the children of men, and which induced Him to remain with us to the consummation of the world.
In the third state we worship the Heart of Christ as it dwells in His glorified body, where it lives perpetually "to make intercession for us." In Heaven it is receiving well-merited special divine honors from the Angels and the Saints whose present felicity was made possible of attainment through the shedding of its redemptive blood. The Sacred Heart dwelling in heaven amply supplies for the lack of love which the rational and the irrational creation show the Creator. There, surrounded by unalloyed love and*homage, it is partly compensated for its past sorrows and humiliations by the enjoyment of infinite beatitude and the plenitude of ineffable happiness.
