At the “School of the Sacred Heart” 

by Ottavio De Bertolis

We have seen that this practice consists in meditating or contemplating the Passion of the Lord for a whole hour and continuously, with the desire to offer him love and reparation for our infidelities and betrayals, and in particular those of the souls especially consecrated to him. There is no particular "system": one can either read and meditate on the story of the Passion of one of the Gospels, in whole or in part, or pray with the painful mysteries, or do the Via Crucis, or even stay in silence and pour out your heart before Him.

Everyone prays as best they are able: I propose, especially for those who are starting out, to focus on the story of the agony in Gethsemane, or a passage from the Passion; after reading and rereading it a few times, simply ask yourself what the text says and what the text tells me, what it says to me, to my life; let us allow ourselves to be touched by the Word, and finally, when it comes spontaneously, let us say something to the Lord who comes to meet us. Or let's try to imagine the scene we read, let's enter into it, imagining ourselves in there, and have a conversation with the people present there, according to how inspired we are, spontaneously and freely. As for the position of the body, let it be the one that helps us the most, even varying it: standing or kneeling, sitting or prostrate, as we feel most useful. And let us remain in this prayer until we have drawn fruit from it. It is clear then that a similar prayer is always very welcome to Jesus, without specifying days or times: but it is also true that Thursday night is precisely the exact memory of that Thursday night, of that hour in which the power of the darkness. Keeping watch also has an important meaning: you keep watch at night, and night is not only the external darkness, but also the internal darkness. Let us learn to illuminate the night with prayer, our personal night, that of the world, and perhaps even the night of the Church. Moreover, it is at midnight that the groom arrives, and we run to meet him (see Mt 25:6): the heart of Christ, on which the beloved disciple rests his head, is the heart or chest of the groom, on which the bride he says, in the intimacy of love: «Put me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; because love is as strong as death" (Song 8, 6). Naturally it is not necessary to stay in Church to do all this, even if it is true that praying before the sacrament is praying in a different way: but it is not necessarily a question of leaving the house, and perhaps it is precisely the opportunity to enter into the silence of own room and to pray in secret. In this hour each of us, and especially priests, will find an inexhaustible source of grace, of consolation and personal comfort, of intercession for one another, of apostolic fruitfulness in our own ministry. It is a true "school of the Sacred Heart", because ultimately this spirituality is not taught or learned from books, but it is Jesus himself who reveals it to everyone according to their own grace. In my opinion it is the best way to learn about true knowledge, not bookish but lived, not "by hearsay" but by having "seen and touched", the very heart of Jesus, which shows itself to those who seek it.