Consecration
How to Consecrate Yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Marian consecration · 6 steps
Personal consecration to the Sacred Heart: what the devotion is, how to prepare, choosing the day, the Litany and the act, and living it through the First Fridays and the Morning Offering.
6 steps · About 15 minutes
Devotion to the Sacred Heart honours the human heart of Jesus, pierced on the Cross, as the sign and centre of the love with which God has loved us. Pope Pius XII's encyclical Haurietis Aquas (1956) sets out its foundations in Scripture and Tradition and calls it 'the most effective school of the love of God.' The devotion took its modern shape from the revelations to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial (1673-1675), and Pope Leo XIII consecrated the whole human race to the Sacred Heart in 1899. To consecrate yourself to the Sacred Heart is to answer love with love: to give Jesus your heart, and to make reparation for the coldness with which his love is met.
What you need
- An image of the Sacred Heart, at home or in church
- The text of an act of consecration to the Sacred Heart
- Confession arranged in the days before
- The Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
When to pray it
Any day; most fitting on a First Friday, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart (the Friday after the second Sunday after Pentecost), or during June, the month of the Sacred Heart. The act of consecration of the human race is prayed publicly on the Solemnity of Christ the King.
Steps
Step 1: Understand the devotion
Read Haurietis Aquas, or at least its central teaching: the heart of Jesus is the natural sign of the threefold love of the Word made flesh — divine, spiritual and sensible — and devotion to it is nothing other than devotion to the love of Christ, above all as shown in the Eucharist and on the Cross. The devotion asks for two things: love returned, and reparation for love refused. The First Fridays and the Holy Hour grew from Saint Margaret Mary's revelations; the Church treats those revelations with respect but does not oblige anyone to believe them, and the devotion stands on Scripture and the faith of the Church.
Step 2: Prepare with prayer and confession
Spend a few days, or a novena of nine days, praying the and reading the Gospel of Saint John (chapters 13-19 especially). Go to confession before the day of consecration, so that the gift you make is made from a clean heart.
Step 3: Choose the day
Pick a First Friday, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, or a day in June. Attend Mass and receive Holy Communion on that day: the consecration is to the Heart of Jesus present in the Eucharist, and it is most naturally made in thanksgiving after Communion or before the Blessed Sacrament.
Step 4: Pray the Litany of the Sacred Heart
Before the image or the Blessed Sacrament, pray the , approved for the whole Church under Pope Leo XIII. Its thirty-three invocations — 'Heart of Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father', 'Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance', 'Heart of Jesus, our peace and reconciliation' — are themselves a summary of what the devotion honours.
Step 5: Make the act of consecration
Pray the slowly and in full, aloud if you can. Saint Margaret Mary's own act ('I give and consecrate to the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ my person and my life...') and the act of Leo XIII ('Most sweet Jesus, Redeemer of the human race...') are both in common use. Then be silent for a few minutes: you have given your heart, and the Lord answers.
Step 6: Live it: the Morning Offering and the First Fridays
Each morning pray the , giving the Heart of Jesus the prayers, works, joys and sufferings of the day. Keep the First Fridays: confession, Mass and Holy Communion in a spirit of reparation, and if possible an hour before the Blessed Sacrament on the Thursday night or the Friday. Renew the act on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart each year.
Tips
- The devotion is at heart the Eucharist, the Cross and reparation; the images and prayers are ways into that, not ends in themselves.
- Keep the consecration simple and daily: the Morning Offering each morning is the whole devotion in a few lines.
- A family can make the act together; see the guide to enthroning the Sacred Heart in the home.
- The Manual of Indulgences grants a plenary indulgence, under the usual conditions, for the public recitation of the act of dedication of the human race to Jesus Christ the King on that solemnity, and a partial indulgence for praying it devoutly at other times.