In order to be a good Catholic and remain in a state of grace, man needs to admire each of the virtues extolled in the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, because they are essential for the spiritual life. In His earthly existence, Our Lord gave the most outstanding, striking and beautiful examples of these virtues; indelible examples that will enlighten the world throughout human history on earth, and the blessed in Heaven for all eternity.
There is, however, one invocation that is particularly noteworthy and little commented on: Heart of Jesus, King and centre of all hearts.
Lord of our will
What is the difference between being King and being the centre of all hearts?
Since our Lord is true God and true Man, He is King of all creation and therefore of mankind. But there are differences between reigning over men and reigning in hearts.
A monarch is able to exercise power effectively by right; however, if he does not manifest the virtues and qualities proper to kingship, he may be disliked and even detested by his people. This is why reigning in hearts is far superior to reigning only over people.
True God and true Man, Our Lord is King of all creation, but there is a difference between reigning over men and reigning in hearts
According to ancient symbolism, the heart represents human affectivity. In this way, the aforementioned invocation means that Jesus has the right and, indeed, the power to attract the tenderness and love of all men.
However, these feelings are elements of a whole – the human will – which is greater than its parts, and of which Our Lord is therefore King and centre. Accordingly, this will must recognize the duty to love Him, and we have the obligation to practise the volitional act ordered to this love, even though we may sometimes find ourselves in a state of aridity and a complete lack of sensible tenderness and love – a frequent trial in the spiritual life.
It is important that we have a firm, steely will, which knows what it should want and wants what it should, convinced that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the King and centre of all wills and therefore has the right for all men to tend seriously towards Him with the principal element of love, which is the will.
An often unrecognized royalty
In the Garden of Olives, Jesus lamented to the Apostles that they were unable to keep vigil with Him for an hour. Twice He came to them bathed in blood that he had sweat because of His state of affliction, which should have elicited their compassion. But the disciples’ sensibilities were not moved. They awoke, saw Him and went back to sleep…
However, the worst evil was that they did not have the firm will and resolution to keep Him company, to console Him and then to follow Him to the height of Calvary. The subsequent episodes clearly demonstrate this.
Our Lord had the right to be King of those hearts. However, He was not truly so, because they did not acknowledge His kingship; they did not love Him as they should have.
The entire lack of responsibility shown by the Apostles in the climactic events of the Passion shows what man is capable of when he has only a sensible affection for the Redeemer, and not the strength of will that renders him faithful in dryness and even in desolation.
Reign of Mary, Reign of the Sacred Heart
So when will the reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus begin on earth? Obviously, in the Reign of Mary. One Reign leads to the other. In fact, Our Lady is entirely focused on Christ. To establish her Reign is to establish that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Through the insistent prayers of the Blessed Virgin, which even now and especially during her Reign will become extraordinarily powerful, humanity will be granted not only the greatest degrees of sensibility towards the Heart of Jesus, but an extraordinary firmness of will in relation to His regal designs. In other words, since Christ is our rightful King, we will take the attitude of subjects towards their monarch, even if we have to give our lives fighting on the steps of His throne to defend His Kingdom.
The role of firm convictions
It should be added that no one who lacks firm convictions will have a firm will. Anyone who does not have an unshakeable faith in the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Holy Roman Catholic Church will be incapable of great resolutions. When the time comes for sacrifice and holocaust, there will be a conflict. In fact, if there is a threat to the instinct to preserve one’s life or possessions – such as wealth, reputation, social position, health – the tendency will be to spare these for the benefit of the person concerned. Selfishness is the hypertrophy of this instinct.
At moments like this, a question will arise, fuelled by the instinct itself: “Does the motive for sacrificing myself for Him really stand up to reason?” This is one way that human cowardice finds to escape from duty, without having the sensation of violating it.
In this way we understand how persuasion is a fundamental element in this set of factors by which Our Lord Jesus Christ is recognized as King of hearts.
Christ, our King by right, becomes King de facto if we are convinced of the truths of our Faith and ready to surrender ourselves to Him entirely
So our certainties need to be as firm or even firmer than our resolutions. The Catholic must say to himself: “I have an unshakeable faith, which excludes any doubt that Jesus Christ is my God and Redeemer, was on earth and performed all the actions narrated in the Gospel, among them that of founding the Church. He taught the doctrine and performed the miracles it describes; He proved through His Resurrection the truth of everything He is and said, and ascended into Heaven. Convinced of these reasons, I am ready to die for Our Lord.”
These are hearts according to the Heart of Jesus. He gave us every possible proof of being our arch-model, having made His sacrifice to the point of crying out from high on the Cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46) just before expiring. Our Lord’s words to the good thief – “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43) – show His certainty and determination to go to the end, through the worst obstacles and the greatest difficulties.
Spring of graces and mercies
Furthermore. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the source from which radiate the graces that make us capable of acquiring that certainty and strength of will which man, on his own, cannot claim in relation to supernatural ends; he can only achieve this by the help of grace.
The sensible aspect of the symbol contributes to this: the Heart of Jesus is the receptacle full of mercy and love for those who ask these graces of Him. He desires to grant them and is waiting, in the infinity of His riches, for someone to ask Him for part or all of them – depending on the capacity of the recipient – so that He may immediately respond.
Then our Lord, King by right, becomes King de facto. If men are like this – and it does not need to be all of them numerically speaking, but rather the part with the greatest influence and resonance in society, the part capable of guiding wills – then the Reign of Mary will be established.
Axis around which everything approaches or moves away
We must now analyse the other words in the invocation: centre of all hearts. The word centre – not the geometrical centre, because this is a metaphor – implies the idea of a multitude of hearts with a point of attraction around which all move to accept or reject something. Even if we are not aware of it, the movements of each person’s individual life, as well as those of history, are all made around the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Imagine a gigantic magnet around which an immense quantity of iron filings are arranged, and there is a wind blowing over them. The wind tends to scatter the filings, while the magnet works to attract them.
Let us suppose that each of the filings is endowed with intelligence and free will, and at every moment, because of the wind and the attraction, it feels compelled to choose between approaching or distancing itself from the magnet. This is an image of the meaning of the words King and centre of all hearts. Thus, at every moment of our lives, we are moving closer to or further away from the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This is the significance of our every act.
At every moment, in every one of our actions, we are either approaching or distancing ourselves from the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Who blows this wind that scatters us and tries to draw us away from Our Lord? It is obviously Satan. We must constantly be moving towards the centre, that is, towards God, opposing the attraction exerted by the devil. By right, Our Lord is the magnet.
He is also the magnet in the sense that He exerts an attractive power over all hearts. But He gives man free will. If he refuses, he will sin and, if he does not repent, he can go to hell.
These considerations also apply to countries, which have, as it were, a collective intelligence and will, which make up Public Opinion. The latter moves like individual opinions, because it is the synthesis or sum of them. Thus, each one of us exerts a small or large influence on the inclination of Public Opinion, and has responsibility for its orientation towards one side or the other. This is especially true of those who belong to a movement like ours, which specifically aims to act on the general consensus in order to combat the bad “wind” blowing on the fragile filings of individual opinion, in other words, to counteract the devil’s action on souls, and to create favourable conditions for the attraction of Our Lord Jesus Christ to be fully exerted.
In favour of the King and the Queen, His Mother
In this sense, we are the King’s soldiers who seek to conquer for Him filing by filing, or particle by particle of the filings, the whole of which constitutes Public Opinion, and bring them to that divine centre of all hearts. And, as we emphasized earlier, the Reign of Mary will be established when the most powerful, weighty and decisive part of Public Opinion has led the human race to belong effectively to the Heart of Jesus.
In a word, the Reign of Mary is a necessary means for the Reign of Jesus to exist, which will represent an immense grace for humanity, an unfathomable mercy for men who have done little or very little to deserve it. This gift will only come to us through Our Lady, Mediatrix of all graces.
Nothing is impossible for those who trust
Finally, if we take into account that the victory for which we are striving so much depends primarily on grace – without grace it will not happen, without much grace it will not happen, without torrents of grace it will not happen…
[At this precise moment in his presentation, Dr. Plinio, gesturing with his left arm, inadvertently knocked over the goblet in which he would be served water, placed on a table beside him. The glass, made of fine crystal, hit the edge of the small table and bounced to the ground, falling in an inverted position. After hitting the carpet, it bounced into the air and righted itself, finally landing upright. It did not suffer the slightest scratch, as if it had been placed there by a careful hand. The unusual event produced a natural reaction, a mixture of surprise and delight, in everyone who saw it. Dr. Plinio took advantage of the circumstance to draw another lesson from it.]
We were talking about the need for torrents of graces that depend on the intercession of Our Lady, who chooses the right occasions to dispense them. Sometimes when the soul, convinced of its own misery, is most touched and oriented towards receptivity; sometimes in the worst moments of its spiritual life, when grace acts and overcomes our wickedness.
I therefore insist on the idea that the sovereign role of grace, and that of Our Lady in obtaining it from the infinitely merciful Heart of her Son, are decisive in history. Under these conditions, we should not be so obsessed with human factors and circumstances. The important thing is that God, in His clemency, be favourable to us, which we can achieve by praying to Our Lady.
The story of the drop of water in the goblet proves that nothing is impossible for those who trust in Jesus and Mary!
Let us imagine that at the bottom of that glass there were a drop of water endowed with thought. It would be happy to live in a crystal goblet, with its characteristic brilliance. It would never think that the recipient might be knocked over, and would say: “I am in the bowl of this goblet and nothing will happen to me!”
Suddenly, the crystal is elbowed by a less than cautious speaker… The drop is startled, feels a shudder and, realizing that the glass is tilting dangerously, exclaims: “It is nothing. Trust in Our Lady!” When the crystal tumbles, it asks itself: “What is going to happen to me now? I am going to fall…” But it continues to say: “It will be nothing. Have confidence in Our Lady!” And the goblet lands upright.
In other words, the virtue of confidence is both the fruit and the condition for perfect devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. No matter how many setbacks we suffer, no matter how many disasters we seem to be facing, let us trust in Our Lady. And if things do not go our way, and She allows us to take a tumble, we should remember the metaphor of the drop of water: it clung with all its might to the smooth surface of a fascinating crystal, until finally perceiving that the goblet had landed upright.
When we turn, then, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us bear in mind that He is the King and centre of all hearts, the King and centre of history, and let us consider the need to possess a firm mind and will, a strong and manly sensibility, which can withstand even the great eclipses of the senses and, in the worst aridity, remain with the unshakeable desire to offer everything to Our Lord through Mary, so that the Reign of the Sacred Heart of Jesus may come, through the Reign of the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God.
Someone might say: “How difficult this is!”
I reply: “The story of the drop of water in the goblet proves it: nothing is difficult, nothing is impossible for those who trust in Jesus and Mary!” ◊
Excerpts from: Conference.
São Paulo, 7/6/1991