Sacred Heart

As we celebrate the Sacred Heart, we ask the Lord Jesus to make our hearts like his own. And we pray these words taken from the writings of our Cistercian Father, Baldwin of Forde (d. 1191):

O Lord, take away my heart of stone, my hardened heart, and grant me a new heart, a heart of flesh, a clean heart! O you who purify the heart and love the clean heart, possess my heart and dwell in it, containing it and filling it, higher than my highest and more intimate than my most intimate thoughts. You who are the image of all beauty and the seal of all holiness, seal my heart in your image and seal my heart in your mercy, O God of my heart, the God of my portion in eternity. Amen.

The Sacred Heart, by Odilon Redon.