The Feast of the Sacred Heart of our Lord sets before us clearly, and indeed vividly, the redemptive purpose and character of his incarnate life. The devotion itself finds its roots in the Middle Ages, in the writings of Saint Bernard for example, and later in those of Saint Catherine of Siena, as well as in one at least of the surviving works of the English mystical writers. The living tendrils of the devotion had already sought the light, when it received its final impetus from Saint Margaret Mary and Blessed Father Claude de la Colombière and was given full recognition by the establishment of the Feast as a part of the Liturgy of the Catholic Church.

The Feast itself takes the Sacred Heart of our Lord as the point of its adoration and as the object of our devotion; for the heart of Christ comprehends and draws within it all the love that animates the deep mystery of God's being, all the love that gave us his incarnate Son, all the love that raises us up by divine grace and quickens our own hearts in response.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart is perhaps the most popular devotion of modern times, and in its present form it may be said to date from the revelations made by our Lord to St Margaret Mary in the 17th century. But though so ‘modern’ it is as old as the Gospels. Our Lord himself taught the Apostles. Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart', and when, after the Resurrection, he invited Thomas to put his hand into his side, the doubting Apostle must surely have felt there the beatings of the heart of whom he forthwith confessed to be his Lord and his God. St John, who leaned upon the Lord's breast at the Last Supper, and who has left us in his Gospel some account of the secrets he learned there, also describes how the soldier opened our Saviour's side as he hung dead on the cross, so that blood and water gushed forth, and it has always been the belief of saints and commentators that the lance pierced the heart too.

To say that sacraments are magic may be no more than vulgar abuse but it may be a scientific attack. In this short article we will suppose it is the latter and try to deal with it accordingly, and it may be worth while to say at the start that most of the reasons why men are tempted to classify Sacraments as magical are due to their being considered as more or less separate and independent elements. Indeed the writer seems to remember a learned lecturer in the Angelico College at Rome some years ago speaking of the danger of treating the Sacraments nimis avulsa from the person of Christ. This is a most important aspect of sacramental theology which deserves an article to itself. Here we would take it simply as a starting point for opposing an attack on the sacraments which reveals a danger in the use of them.

In our age of psychoanalysis and complicated machinery simplicity is a quality of life and character much, underrated, if not actually despised. Perhaps this is the reason why so many of the Saints recently placed on the altars by the Church for our example are men and women of striking simplicity, and even children. St Bernadette, the Curé d'Ars, St Thérèse de Lisieux, Bl. Maria Goretti—a peasant girl, a peasant priest, a young Carmelite cultivating the childlike spirit in its integrity, and a child martyr for purity. It seems as if the Holy Ghost deliberately opposed simplicity to the neurasthenic complications of the modern world.

Our age is given to despise simplicity, perhaps because it is so difficult to understand and even more difficult to attain, except for those in love with it; and it certainly is almost impossible to define.

We cannot take leave of Richard Rolle without listening to his principal message and the one which is the dominant theme of the illuminative way. His greatest work was on ‘The Fire of Love’, his most unique mystical experience was the burning of love in his breast, and his poetry which did more than anything else to spread his spirit among his contemporaries is concerned with the sweet love of Jesus, his Spouse. Love is thought, with great desire of a fair Loving.

The illumination as we have seen comes principally from the shining of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the beginning of infused contemplation. But this light cannot of course be separated from the Word whose function it is to enlighten the understanding. Indeed the activities of the second and third Persons of the Blessed Trinity in this respect cannot be separated; it is the one action of the Verbum spirans amorem.

Great abundance of ghostly comfort and joy enters the hearts of those who reverently recite or sing the Psalms in their praising of Jesus Christ. The Psalms drop sweetness into men's souls, pour delight into their minds and enkindle their wills with the fire of love, making them hot and burning within and lovely and beautiful in the eyes of Christ. And those who persevere in their devotions he raises to the contemplative life and often indeed to the song and joy of heaven. The singing of Psalms puts the devil to flight, moves the angels to come to our assistance, banishes sin, pleases God, fosters perfection, puts away and destroys strife of spirit and makes peace between body and soul. It brings desire for heaven and contempt of earthly things.