Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome back to another edition of our Dios and podcast big city Catholics with Bishop Robert Brennan, the Dios of Bishop of Brooklyn, and myself, Father Christopher Henhew, the rector of the Co cathedral of St. Joseph. We're joined today by Father Stas Daly, a priest of the diocese of Columbus, Ohio, who's going to speak a little bit with us about the devotion to the enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We'll begin in prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. This prayer is found in the enthronement prayers of the Sacred Heart. We'll pray. O most holy heart of Jesus, fountain of every blessing. I adore you, I love you, and with a lively sorrow for my sins, I offer you this poor heart of mine. Make me humble, patient, pure and wholly obedient to your will. Grant, good Jesus, that I may live in you and for you. Protect me in the midst of danger, comfort me in my afflictions, give me health of body, assistance in my temporal needs, your blessing on all that I do, and the grace of a holy death. Amen.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Thank you, Father Christopher. Welcome. Father Daley. Thank you for joining us today. Father Daley, so that, you know, is really a good friend of mine. We worked together in Columbus, had a great priesthood, many, many wonderful priests, but Father Daly and I worked very closely together on a number of things. I had asked him to serve as vicar for religious. He was the pastor of a very vibrant inner city parish that had a great deal of devotional life, and I kept putting more and more on his plate. He was very devoted to the religious. I asked him to serve as vicar for religious, and then I asked him even more so he'd get involved in seminary formation and vocations. He's a sought after spiritual director, very holy priest, and now that I'm here in Brooklyn, he remains a good friend. Pops in to visit us in Brooklyn every once in a while and has helped me on particular projects. So, Father stas, welcome.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Thank you, bishop. You know, because of your leadership, Delta gave me frequent flyer miles.
You were the shepherd in Columbus and I was thrown all over the world. That's right, that's right.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:02:17] Speaker C: But it's good to be back in Brooklyn.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: I was going to say the podcast has a very low budget, so we didn't fly you in for this. Delta loves me.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: It's great. And you really opened for me a window to see the vibrancy of religious life in the United States. There's so many wonderful congregations and really, especially women's congregations, so many young people who are responding to God's call. I talk about it all the time here at confirmations. I can point to particular vocations from Brooklyn and Queens, young women who are entering into religious life. We see it in Columbus, and I try to follow and stay in touch when I can. As I always say at the end of confirmation, God is doing amazing things in Brooklyn and Queens, just like he did in Columbus.
[00:03:01] Speaker C: It's true everywhere.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. That's right. God is doing everywhere. Speaking of amazing things, we had a great weekend. This is a time of enormous grace. We're in that time of eucharistic revival. We had our own celebration back in April. The National Eucharistic procession passed through Brooklyn and Queen queens last week. The podcast gave me an opportunity to talk to some of the perpetual pilgrims. I love that name, perpetual pilgrims. I mean, they're walking for 65 days. I don't know that that you would count as perpetual, but the fact is we're all perpetual. Pilgrims aren't walking through this pilgrimage of life. But it was a great experience, and it was so great to see Sunday and Monday the profound faith of so many people. I think I said to one of the pilgrims on the podcast last week, one woman stopped me on Sunday and said, faith is deep. And I thought, wow, as I look around, she's right. The faith is deep. I say, I wish it were a little wider.
I wish there were more people. But for those who believe, it is deep. And then I saw it again this week. We just had the ordination of our four new priests. Mansinho Grimaldi and I were talking about it, about the emotions. And one of the things that hit each of us separately, we talked about this, was walking into the co cathedral and seeing it full with people. Well, a great turnout of priesthood, incredible turnout. Just seeing the joy and the love in the eyes of those people, my goodness, it was amazing. It was so powerful to see that excitement on that day again. The faith really is deep. And now we have another expression of that, the depth of faith in so many different sacred heart devotions. Father Henry, you mentioned the day that this is released is the feast of the Sacred Heart. We have some great devotions on Sunday. I was with the visitation monastery with the sisters there. They continue that practice of the Sacred Heart Novena, celebrating the revelation of the Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. So they've had the nine day, Novena. I celebrated mass there on Sunday. That's a strong devotion. I know Bishop Cisneros is connected to a group of women, this grada Corazon, who professed such great devotion. And we've all seen devotion in our homes, in so many different places, of the image of the Sacred Heart. It really does stay with us. It's palpable. But I asked Father Stasch to come today to talk a little bit about a devotion that I encountered there in Columbus and that you introduced me to the enthronement of the Sacred Heart.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: Well, like you said, bishop and a father earlier, the reality of the Sacred Heart has a lot of different particular devotions that kind of cultivate an attentiveness within our hearts towards the heart of Jesus. That sacred humanity. And the enthronement is just one of many, many different devotions that an individual, a household, can have to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It's a ceremony, you might say a declaration, a statement at the least of someone who lives in their home. But they acknowledge that the presence of Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus in his most sacred heart, is the king and the brother, and then the friend of anyone who might be there, all who may visit there, dwell there, you know, even just pass through. And I think that's a very powerful expression of someone's love for the sacred heart of Jesus, because the sacred Heart is a universal reality in the church. Of course, you know, he's not foreign to any of us. And whether we have a particular devotion to him or not, we all benefit from his presence, the presence of the heart of Jesus, the Holy Eucharist, the blessed Sacramento. But that enthronement in particular, it's a way of like in the home, making a statement for yourself, obviously, for the Lord. But the whole world. Think of like the words of Joshua in the Old Testament, as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. It's a declaration of those who dwell there, or even just the person, the Lord Jesus, the king, brother and friend of the house.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: And what I loved about two aspects that I love is, one, it's family prayer.
[00:06:52] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Really, this is about a family praying together in a very simple way. And it's a family prayer that's ongoing because the image is also a constant reminder totally of that. And then, as you said, it's the declaration that Jesus Christ is the center of everything we do, of all who we are, and that's so important today. And our families really need a lot of help and encouragement. Right. Families are struggling and so this practice, this enthalpment of the sacred Heart, brings it home. It's a tangible way of reminding ourselves of who we are and what we're about.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: You know, another thing is, we've all survived a period in history over the past couple of years where we know what it's like to be isolated in our homes. And so many people felt isolated from the Lord, from the church, from their brothers and sisters. And yet, through the particular practice of enthroning the sacred heart, acknowledging his heart as the king, brother and friend, there's a consolation, there's the accompaniment, there's company. There's someone else who is there. The Lord is always there, but the enthronement kind of pulls it out of ourselves to acknowledge that he is there and, you know, face facts. We live in an age where everyone wants to declare something about themselves or for themselves, about their house, you know, whether it's what they got on their bumper of their car or the flag on their porch or, you know, whatever.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: You see the lawn signs of who graduated, and you see political statements and some cultural statements that can be sometimes a little disturbing. Some of these are very good, but some of these are very disturbing.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: And yet we just return to this tried and true practice that it goes over every language, every culture, and that's the heart of Jesus. You know, Catholic is universal. The heart of Jesus is universally applicable to every single one of us. And yet it's that statement, it's that declaration. The Lord Jesus is the king, brother and friend of all who dwell here, visit here, live here, even work here. It's a powerful reality, and that's important.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: But tell me first, how did you begin to promote this devotion?
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Well, one of my favorite lines is, God writes straight with crooked lines, and I'm just one big crooked line.
But I just found that prayers happen. Shanton Seminary, the last year or two of formation, and it was one of those weird things, you know, you're kind of like a klepto. You find it and you keep and you say, I'll use this someday. And then in first year of priesthood, first literally week of parish ministry, a young couple came to the office, and the pastor had welcomed me, gave me the keys, and then hit the road for some much needed time away. And the oil was still wet. On my hands of ordination, this couple comes in, and I'll never forget it. It's not only a memory, but it's also kind of like a haunting reality. They wanted me to bless basically their demise. They're like, father, we can't stay married anymore. So we came hoping that you'll give us the blessing we need so that we can just bring this to an end. And, you know, my response was, well, I'm new, but I'm not that new.
That's not something we do. And in desperation, in my desperation, but in the Lord's providence, I just immediately said, work with me for nine days. Just work with me for nine days, you know, and I gave him the information I had found in seminary, in the throwaway pile at seminary, and I said, you pray with me for nine days. You pray where you are, I'll pray where I am, we'll stay in touch. And it was the enthronement of the sacred heart. And I said, let's just walk together for nine days. And, you know, in reality, I was hoping they would just give a little bit more time. But on my side of things, I was like, I need to figure out what to say. I need to figure out what to do. So it was like every three days, literally, over the novena, every three days, we'd come together, we'd get in touch, and it was powerful. But by the end of the novena, you know, when it came time for them to acknowledge Jesus Christ as king, brother, and friend of not just their house, but actually their marriage, and not just their marriage, but themselves, like, as each. As an individual, I have to know the Lord, and I have to realize I don't know everything, but he does. You know, it didn't make everything perfect, and I think that's. That's important. It didn't, like, bring another honeymoon into the situation, but what it did was it gave them the grace to realize they don't know everything. They don't need to know everything, and most importantly, my spouse doesn't know everything, and I shouldn't expect them to. The Lord was able to enter into the situation, and through the twists and turns, the reality of not having to wear the crown yourself, but let the Lord wear the crown. I don't have to sit on the throne. He does. Sure. You know, I'm not the one who reigns. I'm the one who serves well, that it changed the tone of how they loved one another, served one another, lived with one another. And I saw it firsthand, and it was incredibly powerful and beautiful, because as a new priest, young, newly ordained priest, there's a powerful lesson. Sales, not management.
Sales, not management. I just got let upper management step in, you know, and it's. It was a point of, I would say, humility, but also humiliation. You know, it's like, as a priest, I'm not the one who fixes. I'm the one who points out the way or brings in or introduces the one who does. We have stayed in touch. We're very, very good friends. And it just went from one family, one household, another couple to another. You know, it was amazing.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: And you mentioned then that this is indeed a process, and that's important to recognize. It's not superstition, it's not magic.
[00:12:05] Speaker C: It's not one and done, and it's.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Not one and done. It really is about entering into a relationship, making Christ the center. So tell us about that process a little bit. How does a family enthrone the sacred heart?
[00:12:15] Speaker C: Well, the invitation comes from Jesus himself. Like, someone labor, I mean, someone gets a prompting. You know, bring me into your home, you know, can you bring me in off the porch?
Or even more like, I was like, you know, can you let me come out of the formal dining room where no one visits?
[00:12:32] Speaker B: I love that. I often quote father stage and say, you know, Jesus doesn't want to be a picture on the wall in the formal dining room. He wants to be central. He wants to be kitchen table. He wants to be where the family is talking, where the decisions are made.
[00:12:45] Speaker C: You know, where people are real.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:12:47] Speaker C: Where they reveal who they are and what they're trying to survive. That's where the Lord wants to be. But there is a process. Someone is prompted by the Holy Spirit to open themselves, open their house, their household, their family, their marriage, whatever the case may be, to the Lord and his mercy and his love and forgiveness, but also to the idea of making reparation, to repair. And so he prompts, and I'm a firm believer, after 16 years of priesthood, everybody's receiving this prompting. It's just people don't always know what it is, but when you kind of put the light on it, they realize the Lord's speaking to me, asking me to bring his heart into the home, my life, my family, my marriage. And there's different processes, you know. Father Matteo Crowley was the great apostle of the sacred heart of Jesus. And the idea of the enthronement, it's been sponsored and protected, you might say, by every pope since then, going way back to Pius IX and even before him. But it usually consists of either three days, seven days, nine days. You know, some people will orient the process, the time of it, around Sunday mass, Sunday to Sunday with their parish priest. But what matters the most is you kind of have that preparation, the workout. I say before you go for the run, you want to do the stretches. You don't want to just set off on the jaw. You want to stretch. So you needed to kind of do some spiritual exercises before you actually make that declaration. Because like you said, bishop, it's not one and done. It's not superstition. It's entering into a relationship. And every time you see the heart of Jesus in your home or in your cubby, at work or in your car, it's an invitation to speak and to listen, you know, to listen and to speak.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: So practically speaking, I learned in the diocese of Columbus from you and from many of the lay people. This is a beautiful lay movement that really caught on. It's a movement through the diocese, but it's also part of St. Gabriel radio. Yes, an independent catholic radio station in Columbus that really did a lot to get this spread very widely. You have the Sacred Heart Congress in the fall and all kinds of things to help remind people, to ground people and then to draw new people to it. So there's a website, it's called welcomehisheart.com. welcomehisheart.com. All one word. There are many different websites and different ways for the enthronement so you can look and find your own. But the one that was used and promoted in Columbus was welcomeisheart.com. and basically they'll provide you with the materials, with the images, with the prayers so that you can make this a family devotion. And when you get to that point, basically what you do is for a few days in preparation, it's the family praying, the rose.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: We usually encourage, like the litany of the Sacred Heart. There's a prayer of the Sacred Heart that we began our podcast with. It's a very beautiful prayer, the litany of the Sacred Heart. We encourage people to kind of go as far as they can go. If they can include the litany and the rosary, those are powerful. You know, there's scripture quotations pertaining to the heart of Jesus, the Sacred Heart. You know, you referenced Matthew earlier. Come to me, all you who labor. But entering into that period of preparation, if you can just think of it like stretching the muscles before you go for the run.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:51] Speaker C: You know, we usually, at the bare minimum, find a prayer to the sacred Heart that really speaks to you and say that for the three days, the seven days, the eight days, or the nine day novena, most powerful, you know, and then enter into the litany of the sacred Heart of Jesus. I'm a huge proponent of find the image of the Lord that speaks to you, find the image of the heart of Jesus, his heart exposed, which speaks to you, your family, your culture, your language, you know, the experience you've had in this life, and then use some of what keeps you a part of the bigger family, the church, the litany of the Sacred Heart. So many beautiful, very rich prayers to the sacred heart, and you kind of embrace that. And there's a variety of formatted programs you can use. But the most important thing, I think, is just to get the heart of Jesus into your life, into your home.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: You mentioned culturally, and I know, like we have some irish relations, and certainly in almost every house in Ireland, is that image you walk in and my grandmother's houses and all of my aunts and uncle's houses. But unfortunately, and I guess it kind of does reflect what you mentioned, is it the image or is it just the picture on the wall? It's definitely there, and it's very palpable and it's very noticeable. And that light is always, there's always some light on, on it all the time. And. But truly hoping to keep developing that relationship, I might say, embarrassingly, there's no image of the Sacred Heart, even in this rectory. And so that's an invitation for us as the priests of the house to come and say, maybe this is something that we could do together.
[00:17:15] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Thanks to this experience in Columbus. Father Patrick Keating and I, we share the same house, and we do have the formal dining room where we have events, but we have a little kitchenette, like a nook or something. We have the image of the sacred Heart of Jesus and the immaculate heart of Mary right there. And, you know, it's a great reminder, because when we're sitting at table and talking, it's a reminder of what we're really all about. You can get caught up in the, in the business, yes. You're in sales, I'm afraid I'm in management.
And sometimes you can get caught up in the management, but really it's all about the love of God. The mercy of God poured out in Jesus Christ. That's what this devotion is really all about, timing wise. I started off by talking about this being a moment of tremendous grace in the church, and we see nationally, I think, there is a hunger to know Jesus Christ. There's a desire for something more. I sometimes joke it's not a laughing matter, but I joke that a lot of the world is striving to rediscover things and put new names. So you hear practices like meatless Monday, dry January, and all these things that we've had all along under different forms. And it reflects that there's a desire in the world to go deeper, to know something deeper, and the Lord provides that for us, and if we can share that joyfully with other people. The other thing is, I started talking about the eucharistic revival and the feast of the sacred heart of Jesus, our own ordinations. Corpus Christi. We just celebrated last Sunday, Corpus Christi. There's a real link in all of this, isn't there?
[00:18:58] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. You know, and I think it's important that we're in the 350th anniversary. We begin that two and a half.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Years right now, the 350th year, next year, the feast of the sacred Heart, June 27.
[00:19:09] Speaker C: And I think, you know, it's when the Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary and he spoke, first of all, let's remember, he spoke of his heart is on fire with love for humanity. We're never so far from him as sometimes we think we are. The other thing is he spoke of a desire for us to love him in response. Of course, at that time in the life of the church, Corpus Christi was celebrated over eight days. She had Corpus Christi Thursday, which in and of itself was the 9th Thursday after Holy Thursday. So you had a kind of novena of weeks, nine weeks since Holy Thursday. And then for eight days, there'd be prolonged adoration and you'd celebrate Corpus Christi for eight days. Well, when the Lord appeared to St. Mark and Mary 350 years ago, he spoke of a particular way. He's like, I want that Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi to be the feast of my most sacred heart. And when you celebrate this feast, the solemnity of my most sacred heart, my sacred humanity. You know, keep in mind, during Corpus Christi, we bask in the glory of how he has loved us. He's given himself to us as flesh to eat the Holy Eucharist. But on that Friday, you know, we've now considered how do we give ourselves back to him and the Eucharist? Think of the mass we receive. We partake, we welcome the presence of Christ into us. But in the sacred Heart, devotion, it's how do we give ourselves back to him, he who is king, brother and friend, you know, and it's like whether you're at the breakfast nook, bishop, you and your priest brother, and you think, you know, how do I give this conversation to the Lord? You know, how do I make sure that his thoughts are my thoughts? My thoughts are his thoughts. You know, it's a process. It's an experience of conversion, really. But the idea of Eucharist and the sacred Heart, you know, the eucharistic revival were underway. Now the anniversary of the sacred Heart devotion. Before we began, of course, we were saying not all of us can have a tabernacle in our living room, but we can have that image of the heart of Jesus which takes us directly to the closest tabernacle in our parish church or a chapel, an oratory. You know, the Catholic Christian will survive, I might say, with their sanity. They'll survive with their sanity when they know, when they see and when they love the heart of Jesus so close to them that they know he gives himself to us and all he wants is for us to give ourselves back to him.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: You know, on Sunday we're going to hear the story of original sin, the great lie of the devil, that God loves you, but maybe not fully, you know, God kind of loves you, but God, he's in charge and he's distant, and you have to take matters into your own hands. And this feast that we'll have celebrated just before this feast of sacred heart reminds us, no, it's by turning ourselves over that God does indeed love us without bound, and that we don't get ahead by grasping, but by turning ourselves over to him. The feast of the Sacred Heart is also a day of reparation for priests. I ask you, please pray for all of us. Pray for us, your priests, that we may grow in holiness, that we may grow in fidelity to the Lord. Holy Father, on Holy Thursday in his prison mass, give a beautiful, beautiful homily about compunction, about being honest about who we are and where we are and our need for God's love and mercy. So pray for our priests. We had a great celebration this week. I gathered with all the pastors for a meeting, but I also celebrated a mass with the Jubilerians, those who were celebrating 25, 60 and 65 years. We didn't have any 50 years, isn't that interesting? But we had a number of 25, 60 and 65 years. And we had one priest, our second oldest priest. He was there as a guest, not as a jubalarian. He was ordained 69 years ago that very day. These days of Jubilee are great reminders to us of the way that the Lord is working in our lives, calling us to holiness and giving us new opportunities to recognize that call, to hear that call. And that's why I feel so lifted up, invigorated during these days, because there are great moments of grace for the church. And now what we want to do is to let that sink in and live it in our daily lives.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: You know, Father Stasch, actually, as bishop was mentioning at the pastor's meeting, one of the presentations was by Deacon Kevin McCormack, who's our superintendent of schools. And he mentioned that it's a great blessing that school kids realize and remember the devotion on first Friday, devotions to the sacred Heart. You know, what other practical ways do you think we can continue this?
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Yes. So there's the enthronement itself.
[00:23:30] Speaker C: But then to renew the enthronement regularly, anytime there's a big event in the life of the family, a birth, a marriage, a graduation, someone leaving the home, or even someone going on to eternity, it's an opportunity to renew the enthronement. There's prayers for that. But then there's also the, practically speaking, like every month, first Friday of the month, to attend Mass in your parish church or wherever you can. But with the idea of when I attend Mass on the first Friday, I'm offering up the graces of that holy communion, maybe confession in reparation for sins against the heart of Jesus, that sacred humanity of the Lord. If we think about it like a love affair, a love exchange, you know, it's not just I'm going to get, it's I'm going to give. And on Sunday we go to get the Lord, hear the word, receive him. But on the first Friday of the month, it's a beautiful way to kind of rekindle, renew our devotion to the heart of Jesus presence among us and just kind of bring that presence back.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Home again for you who are listening. Just a practical way to start. First of all, you can do whatever you want. The idea is to pray. But if you're looking for some assistance, if you're looking for an image, this whole kit is provided for you. Please go to welcomehisheart.com. it's one way of being able to find what you need or just search anything on the enthronement of the sacred heart. Go to a religious article store and get yourself an image of the sacred heart. But the key thing is prayer, family and making Jesus Christ the center of your home. Thank you, Father Daley, for joining us today.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Bishop, perhaps you could end with a prayer.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Sure.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Grant to us, O Lord, the strength and the love of the heart of your son so that we may draw our hope from him and live as his faithful, joyful disciples, Jesus Christ our Lord.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. May almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:25:28] Speaker A: Great again to have you, Father Stas. And thanks for joining us. Thanks to all who listen. We hope that you'll tune in again next week. Pleased to welcome Father Christopher O'Connor, one of our jubalarians, who will be joining us next week in the new edition of Big City Catholics. God bless.
