BY THE REV. H. NOLDIN, S.J.
AUTHORISED TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN.
REVISED BY THE REV. W. H. KENT, O.S.C
10. They make it their earnest endeavour to live, to labour, to pray, to suffer in constant union with the Heart of Jesus. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is our own, our riches in our poverty. Would that we understood how to employ the treasure which Christ our Lord has given us in His Heart to our spiritual profit and advantage! All our prayers, our actions, if united to the Heart of Jesus and to His supplications, acquire a resemblance to those He offers, and consequently are agreeable in God's sight. For inasmuch as nothing is so well-pleasing to God as the Heart of His Son, nothing is more acceptable in His eyes than the soul which is united to that Heart: "He hath graced us in His beloved Son;" Gratificavit nos in dilecto Filio suo. (Eph. i. 6.) Therefore they are wont to offer all their actions, prayers, and sufferings with the same intention with which Christ Himself prayed, laboured, and suffered during His life on earth. This was B. Margaret's constant practice; she learned it from Our Lord Himself, and the Church in structs her priests to pray for the same intention.
And as the Heart of Jesus perfects all our actions, prayers, and sufferings, and renders them pleasing to God, so by Our Lord's virtues and merits He makes amends for all negligence's, infidelities, and faults of which we are guilty. Accordingly the adorers of His Heart do not fail to offer all their works and prayers to that Sacred Heart, in order that it may supply the deficiencies and remove all the imperfections to be found in them. Such was the practice of the devout Fr. Luis da Ponte; and Ven. Blosius the Benedictine has recorded the formula he employed in the same intention; it is this: ''Pater cælestis, ego pro frigida et misera cordis mei ariditate offero tibi fervida desideria ardentissimumque amorem Cordis dilecti filii tui Jesu Christi.
