Home

Mass of the Sacred Heart

Fr. Paul Ward

Introit

Let us go up to the altar of the Heart of Christ,

heart of man filled with God’s own love,

center of time and creation.

Let us go up to the temple of charity,

temple of man filled with God’s real Church,

source of Truth and Good.

Kyrie

My weakness and sinfulness

erupt in mountains of shame,

collapse in valleys of helplessness,

reveals a heart untamed.

What am I, Lord, without your mercy?

What qualities could save me?

What genius could spare me?

And fill me with happiness, what deed?

Hopeless race of men,

we have all strayed,

obeying our pride,

sacrificing ourselves for our sensuality,

shrinking in pursuit of greatness,

growing in our nothingness.

Desecrated heart,

O Stone lodged in man’s breast,

Chilly as the north wind,

Rough as broken steel.

Gloria

Glory and peace.

Glory for your majesty,

peace for your mercy.

Peace of a cool, sunny summer day.

Peace of the man with time, and nothing pressing.

Peace of the diligent man at his hobbies.

Glory to the heart of Christ,

that heart of man which you took unto yourself.

So much did you love us.

We cannot covet the love of others,

for you covet our love with burning jealousy.

Help my heart know how much your heart loves it.

Credo

I believe that love shall triumph,

all success can only be in love.

I believe in the Sacred Heart of the Son of God,

punctured for love of us.

I believe in the Holy Spirit’s love,

love that springs up to the Father in heaven,

love that meekly spills upon the filth of our world,

this desolate and fruitless desert,

to make it flourish.

I believe in the Father’s tenderness,

in sacrificing this heart for love for us,

to take our cold hearts out of our chests,

to fill us with hearts of men,

made after the image of his Son.

I believe in the Church,

I believe in the sacred heart of the Church,

the heart of that mystical body,

the love which makes the love flow,

and sustain it all in life.

I believe in Eternity, which is really all in one word:

Love.

Offertorium

Bread, wine.

Simple elements

of the greatest event of human history.

Transubstantiation, the whole of Christ in summary.

Summary in species, plenitude in content.

In the bread and in the wine I put all.

The love I have – really, wish to have – for my neighbor,

for the poor and the sick,

for the elderly and abandoned,

for the unemployed and imprisoned,

for the blind, deaf and lame,

for those who suffer the torture of sickness,

for those who cry the torture of interior grief.

(Was sin really worth this price? Miserere, Cor Iesu!)

For my enemies I pray,

I put them in the bread and wine,

transform them into yourself and save them,

and save me, a sinner;

for my enemies,

for those who hate me and curse me,

for those who destroy my good name,

for those who abuse me,

for those who use me,

for those who humiliate me,

for those who use me as a stool to appear great,

for those who steal from me and don’t give me what is my due,

for those who threaten what is most in my heart: your Church.

I pray for them,

and know I deserve a sentence worse than any of these,

because when I sinned, I knew.

I put myself in the bred and wine,

transform me into you, and save me;

make me a manifestation of your most Sacred Heart in the world,

that seeing me, they may not see me,

but only your love, and only your truth.

Take my mind and my heart,

Take my imagination and my memory,

Take my senses,

Take my perception and assertions and arguments,

Take my body, your Temple,

so that I may put it all at your service,

and so that it may be more yours than mine.

Consacratio

When you saw what I needed,

you didn’t humiliate me by making me grovel for it.

What man asked you

to come die on a cross, in total humiliation, to save him?

It seems that asking God to be humiliated and killed,

would be so outrageous as to offend you,

so we never asked,

fearing that we’d dig our ditch only deeper.

You came and gave it without us asking.

You gave when we needed.

You sacrificed yourself when we needed your generosity.

You renounced your Godhead, when we needed you down here,

so lost, sinful and confused were we.

You cried, when we needed eternal tears.

Cursed were we, then you came and taught us,

“Blessed are you,” the meek, the humble, the poor and crucified.

We sinned, you saved, and then we sinned less;

and still, you love us anyway;

the memory of this keeps me going day after day.

You made us that way,

Your Perfect Heart created my imperfect heart,

and you’re happy with that.

Your love can poor its mercy upon me,

and your Heart can love

precisely there where I would have thought

you wouldn’t love.

And you wanted to stay with me, a sinner,

until the hour of my death.

You transform this wretched and miserable loneliness of mine,

my miserable state of abandonment and having been forgotten by all,

the frustration of never being known,

the agony of not being able to share what I see,

tell what I hear,

notice in other people’s hearts,

what I fathom in prayer – I, unworthy and sinful beast! –

by being with me, thinking about me, taking me up,

listening to my little do-dads,

hearing what I don’t even know how to tell,

seeing what I can’t really describe,

scrutinizing the hearts of all around me,

and holding me in passionate embrace when I pray,

I unworthy and sinful creature.

Communio

There’s no one I love like you.

We rest upon each other.

Come, Sacred Heart, whisper into my ear,

the eternal stories of your love.

I burn to hear them; I feel deaf.

Caress me, caress my intellect with truth, my will with fire,

Embrace me lest I fall, faint with the grind of the day.

For the day is over, the toil of man for truth;

Evening has come, the hour of the banquet,

where we eat your flesh and drink your blood,

the sacrifice of Melchizedek and Abraham.

Hold my hands, which you have purchased at such a price.

As spouses rejoice in one another,

Let us rejoice in each other,

Hearts in endless embrace,

in chaste selflessness,

in silent awe.

Ite, missa est

I don my sword and shield,

shield in the shape of your heart,

to wage the battle of love

in a world that aggressively rages against its only hope.

Miserere!