Francis P. Donnelly - How to Love As Jesus Loves: Unlocking the Treasures of Christs Sacred Heart

How to Love as Jesus Loves: Unlocking the Treasures of Christs Sacred Heart was originally published in 1911 by the Apostleship of Prayer, New York, under the title The Heart of the Gospel: Traits of the Sacred Heart. This 1999 edition by Sophia Institute Press includes editorial revisions to the original text and omits the preface and final chapter of the original edition.

Copyright 1999 Sophia Institute Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Jacket design by Lorraine Bilodeau

The cover artwork is from Lionello Spadas The Return of the Prodigal Son, the Louvre, Paris, France (photo courtesy of Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York).

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Sophia Institute Press
Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108
1-800-888-9344
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Imprimi potest: Joseph F. Hanselman, S.J., Praepositus Prov.,
Maryland/New York
Nihil obstat: Remigius Lafort, S.T.L., Censor Deputatus
Imprimatur: John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
May 1, 1911

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Donnelly, Francis P., 1869-

[Heart of the gospel]

How to love as Jesus loves : unlocking the treasures of Christs sacred heart / Francis P. Donnelly.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-918477-99-9 (alk. paper)

1. Repentance. 2. Sin. 3. Christian lifeCatholic authors.

I. Kane, John A., 1883- School of repentance. II. Title.

BT800.K35 1999

To my father

Editors note: The biblical references in the following pages are based on the Douay-Rheims edition of the Old and New Testaments. Where applicable, quotations from the Douay-Rheims edition have been cross-referenced with the differing numeration in the Revised Standard Version, using the following symbol: (RSV =).

Contents

Christs Sacred Heart
is the perfect symbol
of His love

You are my friends, if you do
the things I command you.

John 15:14

Devotion is not to be identified with devotional practices any more than patriotism is with fireworks. A man may spend the great holidays quietly in his home, may saw wood on Washingtons Birthday, and may read a book on the Fourth of July, but if he observes the laws of his country and practices the Ten Commandments, he will be a true patriot and he need not worry because he has not shouted himself hoarse hurrahing for the blessings of freedom, or burned his fingers setting off firecrackers, or even tired the muscles of his arm waving the Stars and Stripes. All of these actions are laudable and have their good effects. They are manifestations of patriotism, although not the highest manifestations, and they are meansand in some cases, necessary meansto enkindle and foster true patriotism.

Devotional practices are indeed much more necessary to devotion than all the usual means of displaying and stimulating patriotism are for the proper development of that virtue, yet a devotion may exist and be intense without having any particular and exceptional ways of manifesting itself. The hymns, the lights, the pictures, the beautiful shrines, the special services on certain days: these and many other excellent practices are required to arouse and keep alive true devotion. Without all that, there may often be reason to suspect the absence of devotion or to be skeptical of its intensity. By such displays, too, true devotion is exercised and developed, not wasting itself by use, but growing stronger, like a muscle, with exercise.

Devotional practices, then, are helpful and even necessary, but they do not constitute devotion. Light and air are helpful and necessary for life, but they are from without and life is from within, and devotion, too, is from within.

We sometimes hear good men say, This business of devotion is not for me. I am not much for feeling or sentiment. What should be said in answer? These good people should be politely but firmly assured that they do not know what devotion is.

If devotion is not the same as devotional practices, neither is it the same as sentiment and feeling. True devotion is not feeling; it is willing. It is conviction, not sentiment. Feeling and sentiment are not always within our complete power. They may vary with the weather or with the pulse. Devotion does not watch the thermometer or fluctuate with the barometer. It does not disappear with our appetite and return after a good meal. Devotion belongs to the will and has its source in solid convictions. Give a man a firm, unyielding grasp of a truth; follow that up with a relentless determination to abide by that truth, and you have equipped a man with a full-fledged devotion.

Every year, many of our gallant firemen meet the death of heroes. Do they wait, when the alarm comes, for a gush of sweet feeling or the spur of sentiment to rouse them from sleep and put them in motion? They have no time to wait for such superfluities. As they rush to their post, hastily tightening their belts, one idea is uppermost in their minds: There is a fire somewhere, and our place is to be there to put it out. That is their conviction; that is their willing. The next morning, perhaps, they may feel the warmth of feeling and sentiment, if they can find in the papers, as often they will not, the scanty recognition of their bravery. Do they have devotion? The noble deaths of so many are a testimony beyond the power of words to show that men who may not know how to define devotion or call it by its right name know well how to practice it in its highest and most unselfish form.

Yet, even if devotion is not perfect or perfected without some devotional practices, we may not deny the splendid influence of true feeling and right sentiment upon devotion. The man who would banish sentiment and feeling from the hearts of the world is an active worker for the return of the glacial period of very hard rock and very cold ice. Who would eclipse the dawning hopes of youth or draw the curtain of twilight over the sunset memories of old age? Must all the canvas on which are painted the pictures of the world be made into flour sacks, and all our monuments broken up to macadamize our roads? The eloquent vender of food tablets may prove by facts and figures, by analytical tables and accurate weights, that his vest-pocket breakfast has all the nutriment of a table dhte dinner, but the world will not be won away from its varied and substantial meal to any tasteless, odorless, colorless, sizeless substitute for a bill of fare.

If man were a machine, sentiment would be as useful as a bouquet on a locomotive. If we were all angels and had minds not continually swayed by conflicting currents of the body or forever unsettled by brilliant pictures of the imagination, then a truth would mean a resolution, and a resolution would mean an act, and we would leap without pause from duty to devotion. But we are not bodiless angels. We throb with feeling; we glow with sentiment.