THE ENTHRONEMENT

Let us define it briefly: “The official and social recognition of the loving Kingship of the Heart of Jesus in a Christian family.” This recognition takes a visible form, namely: an image of the Heart of Jesus is definitively and solemnly installed in a place of honor in the home, and the household offers itself to Him without reserve through an act of consecration.

The God of infinite mercy spoke. And at Paray-le-Monial He said: “Since He Himself is the source of all blessings, He would distribute them abundantly wherever the image of His Heart had been placed with the intention of loving and honoring Him.”

And more still: “I will reign despite my enemies and all those who seek to oppose Me.”

The Enthronement, then, is simply the realization, not of this or that request made by the Savior to St. Margaret Mary, but the complete and integral realization of them all, thereby bringing about the fulfillment of the splendid promises with which the King of Love enriched them.

Notice that we say “integral realization” of the whole set of requests made at Paray, because the supreme and transcendent end is not, and must not be, to foster one among so many little devotions, but rather to sanctify the home profoundly and, by sanctifying it in the spirit of the Sacred Heart, to make it the first throne: a living and social throne of the Divine King.

Indeed, in order to transform and save the world, it is absolutely necessary that Christmas, more than a mere feast, become a living and permanent reality; that is, that Jesus, God Emmanuel, truly be “God with us,” dwelling really and effectively among us, His exiled brethren, far weaker than wicked...

Let us not deceive ourselves: in order to arrive, sooner or later, at the “Social Reign of Jesus Christ,” acknowledged and obeyed as King exercising sovereign rights over society, it will be necessary to rebuild present society from its foundations, that is, to reconstruct it upon the basis of Nazareth, upon the profoundly Christian family.

Every people reveals and measures itself according to the moral worth of the family, for a people has always been, in holiness or corruption, what its homes were. This rule has never admitted an exception.

I recall, in this connection, what a great convert once told me: “Father, you can never exaggerate the importance of the Crusade you preach... I have already told you: the Brothers of the Lodge to which I belonged for so many years... pursue only one thing, and that is to de-Christianize the family. Once this goal has been achieved in part or in whole, the Catholics could even be left in possession of cathedrals, churches and chapels. What do these monuments of stone matter when, in order to corrupt society, they have taken possession of the sanctuary of the home!... To the extent that this sectarian strategy succeeds, the victory of hell will be assured. This is how I myself reasoned and acted, Father, when I was enrolled in the ranks of Freemasonry.”

Ah! How sadly true will always remain that saying of the Gospel: “The children of this world are wiser than the children of light.”

The great evil, the evil of evils of our present society, is that it has lost the sense of the supernatural, of the divine...; but this evil certainly has a remedy... What is it? To return by the road of the Gospel, to return to Nazareth.

The all-wise Lord chose to found the redemption of the world upon the cornerstone of the Holy Family; there the Word, Jesus our Brother, began His redemptive work... In no other way should we save the modern world: let us cast it into the mold, simple and sublime, of Nazareth.

How much has been said, with eloquence in speeches and photographs, about the dreadful devastation of churches and temples in what was the immense battlefield of the Great War... Cathedrals, monasteries, chapels shattered by artillery in the inevitable clash of contending armies.

How much more terrible is the moral ruin of the Christian family! For the temple par excellence, and the thrice-holy tabernacle, is the home. Basilicas and cathedrals, however artistic and venerable they may be, will not save the world; holy families will redeem it, divine Nazareth.

This is logical: the family is the fountain of life and the first school of the child. Hence, if the source is poisoned, the nation will perish. What we seek, then, in our campaign, is to inoculate Jesus Christ and the sap of His divine Love so deeply into the home, into the very roots of family education, that the tree may consequently be Jesus Christ Himself in flowers and fruits.

Now then, the Enthronement, rightly understood, is in summary nothing other than Jesus, the King of Nazareth, arriving at the threshold of homes to claim His place: the place that belongs to Him by divine right, the same place that was once offered to Him in the house at Bethany...

His is a place of honor, because He is King and, on a day not far distant, through the loving conquest of the family, He will come to reign over the whole of families—society; a place of intimacy in the bosom of the home, because He truly wishes to be the Friend, since He wishes to exercise His gentle sovereignty above all through His Heart, by means of the mild scepter that has always been the scepter of love...

Let us say it in one word: the Enthronement wishes and ought to reproduce the shared life of that living Jesus of the Gospel, God-Emmanuel, who returns to dwell in the tents of the children of men.

Alas! How little Jesus is known: hence He is so little loved!... The majority of those who call themselves Christians are suspicious and afraid of Him, and therefore live at a distance... If not with their lips, they say to Him by their deeds: “Stay, Lord, You in Your Tabernacle, while we live our family life according to our own judgment, without Your entering too intimately into it... Do not come too close, do not speak to us, lest we die of fear...”

Thus the Jews spoke to Yahweh; thus children continue to speak to their Father and Shepherd! We insist on seeing in Jesus the Savior, so gentle and approachable, so meek and simple, only the terrible Yahweh who hurls lightning from Sinai, and not the King of Love “whose delight is to dwell with the children of men,” who rejoiced during His mortal life to lodge in the houses of sinners, to preside at the wedding feast of Cana, and to show us in a thousand charming and marvelous ways that the longing of His Heart was to share our life as it is, with all its thorns and all its holy joys.

We plead our unworthiness! What an absurdity! As if Zacchaeus had been worthy, whose curiosity and no other reason set him on the road to his Savior!... As if the Canaanite woman and the Samaritan woman had already been worthy and holy; as if Simon the Pharisee had been holy, and so many, so many of our fellows in moral leprosy, misery and baseness!...

No, none of them was worthy; but they believed in the merciful love of the Master and simply accepted His condescension. Happy unfortunate ones, whose very misery attracted and moved the Heart of the Savior! And for that reason, into those homes and those souls, together with Jesus, came salvation, peace, conversion... “Today salvation has come to this house.”

Oh, Pharisaical pretext: respect! It is already audacity and insolence that, when the God of all majesty, stripping Himself of His mantle of splendor, calls us, stretches out His arms to us, offers us His hand..., we should presume to give Him a lesson and, under the pretext of respect, remain at a distance, as though saying to Him: “Remember that You are God and King; stay away.”

Look, if you will, at the thousands of pseudo-Christians who, despite the Redemption, claim to serve the Redeemer while placing between Him and themselves valleys, mountains, abysses—and always in the name of respect!

Respect, in substance, is love and not etiquette, at least with Jesus; by His explicit will, respect is not distance, since He abolished distance in the Incarnation and in the Eucharist. And in abolishing it, He nevertheless demanded a fuller and more perfect adoration than that offered Him by the Jews, trembling and from afar...

How many Christians are baptized only in the skin, Jews in soul, living in exaggerated trembling..., who, if Jesus spoke to them, if He said filioli, “little children,” amici mei, “my friends”..., would die, not of emotion and love, but of fright!

As for me, let me say and repeat to satiety: “Let all the Moseses and Prophets be silent... Let the men whose voices, however honeyed they may seem, suffocate me be silent... Let the nightingale-creatures be silent, for my soul longs to hear You, Jesus, You alone, who have words of eternal life and love... Let me hear You so that I may preach You, authentic Jesus, Love of loves, Son of the living God and son of Mary!”

Hear me: I detest a Jansenist a thousand times more than a hundred Protestants, and even more than an unbeliever.

I remember that a gentleman who considered himself as Catholic as anyone told me: “I, Father, place a Sacred Heart in my drawing room? Never. What a lack of respect—certainly not!”

What would this exemplary Catholic have done if he had seen with his own eyes the King of kings rubbing shoulders with sinners and Himself seeking the confidence and familiarity of publicans and so many other people who were certainly not very respectable or distinguished?...

How often such forms of “respect” are nothing but masks for human respect..., and also for pride...

As though He whom the bride and groom of Cana invited to preside at the wedding feast could not feel honored in a drawing room that calls itself Christian! Is He not, indeed, the King of kings?...

Ah! How sadly true it is that, after twenty centuries of Christianity, Love is not loved, is not loved, a thousand times no! We do not preach enough the love of Jesus Christ, and yet this charity is not sickly sentimentalism—ah, no!... To love is a flame, to love is a life, and what a life!...

And all this comes, at least in part, from the fact that the Gospel is neither read nor, still less, meditated upon, even though on every page there shines forth one single divine longing: that of intimate familiarity with man.

Did those little children of Galilee perhaps fear Jesus, those who threw themselves into His arms, were captivated by His eyes, rested upon His Heart? Ah! When they were forcibly torn away from that nest, how quickly they returned to Him, attracted, magnetized by the breast of the Master.

How do you expect Him to be known, to be loved with divine passion, when our Christianity and our piety are not based upon closeness and intimacy with Him? How can we love Him with holy and delightful intoxication when we contemplate Him disfigured and far away?

On the contrary, “he who has heard Your sweetness, what will he not consider deafness and misfortune?” Fray Luis de León.

Savor a scene that I dare to call evangelical, although we do not find it textually in the Gospel. Let us entitle it “The First Four Visits of Jesus to Bethany.” If you read me with the heart, at the end you will say, sighing with love: “If not the frame, at least the picture must have been a happy reality... Something, and perhaps much of it, must have happened at Bethany.”

When Jesus first came to Bethany, He was received by Lazarus and Martha—Mary was still the wandering and lost little sheep—with a certain reserve, not without legitimate curiosity. To see up close the famous Nazarene, of whose marvelous deeds everyone spoke, to kiss His hand, to hear Him in intimacy... Who can He be?... A Rabbi? A Prophet?...

Lazarus and Martha certainly felt honored by such a distinction, but at the same time they were greatly intrigued by such a personage... They listened attentively, though from a certain distance. They judged and admired Him with the inevitable reservations.

Nevertheless, something mysterious, ineffable, emanating from His whole Person, had secretly moved and conquered the most delicate fiber of the two siblings...

For this reason, already at the threshold of the house, overwhelmed by an emotion never before felt, and as they bade Jesus farewell, both together said to Him, with trembling voices that betrayed a love already awakening: “Master, return to Bethany, do not forget us.”

And Jesus, with a smile that allowed them to glimpse a reflection of the heaven of His Heart, promised to return...

Behold Him in Bethany for the second time. It is almost a feast... There are flowers, there is expectation. Lazarus and Martha are moved when they feel that the adorable Nazarene is approaching Bethany. They are impatient, they go out to wait for Him, they truly rejoice on seeing Him... Their respect is much greater than at the first visit, for love is already beginning to dawn.

This time they are not content simply to listen to Him enraptured: there is enough trust to question Him... The conversation is almost familiar and has certain tones of openness and joy.

“Oh, how simple, how good this Master is,” they say to one another, “and how sweet and overwhelming His majesty! His gaze refreshes and enlightens, His words transform, His Heart drives one mad... Oh, all the loves of earth taste like gall once one has felt from close at hand His divine heartbeats!”

This time, when He departed, Lazarus and Martha could scarcely suppress the sob that tightened their throats. Both together, pleading, with their hearts on their lips, in simple humility, said to Him: “From today onward it will be difficult for us to become accustomed to living without You; return, Lord, consider this house Your own, consider us... Your friends!”

And Jesus, moved, said to them: “I will be your Friend, I will return, oh yes, and since you love Me, Bethany will be the oasis of My Heart.”

What an explosion of joy, what a feast of love it was when Jesus returned for the third time to Bethany! Let us call this the visit and welcome of the Enthronement.

With what impatience Lazarus and Martha had counted the days and the hours; what languor, what unbearable solitude there had been in Bethany since Jesus had said to them: “I will return, and as a Friend.” No one can give them peace now, no one has the gift of making them smile. The only golden dream—or better, the only reality—is Him... Since He departed, they have lived without living, without a heart... Jesus had carried it away!

At last, there He is, the Desired One arrives! They run breathlessly to meet Him, fall at His feet, and weep with joy as they kiss the divine hands... And amid a true ovation of affection and tenderness, calling Him with holy boldness “Friend,” they bring Him into that place where only the intimate friend of the household is received...

Then they draw near without any fear, speak to Him with the holy familiarity of His disciples, converse with blessed intimacy, with the freedom of those who feel themselves understood, comprehended, loved...

And Jesus listened, and with each response, each glance or smile, He penetrated to the depths of the souls of His friends...

Suddenly, at the warmest point of that dialogue of heavenly intimacy, silence falls... Jesus is silent; Lazarus presses even closer to the Master and, resting his face upon the knees of the Divine Friend, breaks into sobs...

“Why are you weeping?” Jesus asks him.

“You know everything,” Lazarus replies.

“Yes,” Jesus answers, “I know everything; but since we truly are friends, speak, entrust your whole soul to Me...”

And while Martha hides her blushing face in her hands and weeps in silence, Lazarus says: “Master, there are two of us, and once we were three in this home... Mary, our sister, covers us with grief and shame; they call her Magdalene!... We love her so much and today she is the dishonor of Bethany... Jesus, if You are our Friend, give her back to us healthy, saved and made beautiful!”

And Jesus, after weeping with His friends, His voice broken by sobs, declares: “Your sister will return, she will live, and Bethany will be happy!”

As He departed that evening, already beyond the threshold, blessing His two friends, Jesus repeated: “Mary will return to the fold, dear friends; she will return for the glory of My Father and Mine!”

The Gospel tells the rest: the resurrection of the sinner, the alabaster jar broken at the feet of Jesus, symbol of her repentant heart, whose precious perfumes anoint the feet and hair of her Redeemer.

And when the Lord returned for the fourth time to His friends, the first to go out to receive Him, singing Hosanna, was Mary Magdalene, the one raised up again at Bethany; and from then onward, in that happy home, despite its thorns, in that sanctuary rebuilt by the Prince of Peace and King of Love, the three were once again for many years the inseparable companions they had been.

But this time the Heart of Jesus was the center and bond of the three siblings.

The Lord knew well the bitter sorrow devastating that household; nevertheless, He waited before remedying it until the afflicted had wept upon His Heart and entrusted their tribulation to Him. He waited until He was the King-Friend of Bethany, and only then, in return for love, friendship and trust, did He work the miracle.

I insist: these scenes are not found in the Gospel; but is it not true that something similar, and certainly even more beautiful, must have happened in that blessed home? Is it not true that this is how you conceive the beauty of the Enthronement?

What is strange, then, if the King of Bethany, unchanging in His tenderness, confirms every day with wonders and prodigies what we have just affirmed concerning the trust of the true lovers of the Heart of Jesus?

Happy the home that says to Him as it receives Him: Mane nobiscum, “stay with us,” and that, in saying so, seems to close the doors behind Jesus and chain Him forever with bonds of love.

The great modern undertaking is therefore the reconstruction of Nazareth or, if you prefer, the reproduction of the holy family of Bethany, the home of the true friends of Jesus.

I say Bethany because Nazareth, by its sublimity, will remain unique throughout the centuries, whereas Bethany is composed of creatures of our own stature, cast entirely in our mold of clay, and therefore that household is perfectly imitable in every way.

Ah! And how many homes contain, as Bethany did, what we could never conceive at Nazareth: Magdalene souls and Lazaruses who are corpses, unfortunate prodigals!...

Call the Friend, receive Him, treat Him as the intimate Friend, and you will see how His Heart will become a miraculous pool, and you will witness resurrections even more marvelous than that of Lazarus and sing of conversions as prodigious and moving as that of Magdalene.

Unfortunately, Jesus is very frequently treated, even in homes that boast of being Christian, like a beggar, like a destitute pauper. And there you have Him on the threshold of the house that needs Him so much, waiting for a lodging of love, begging for compassion. He, the King of kings!

And if from time to time He is received here or there, there is more formula than love in that reception...; He is not a friend, but a passing guest, a foreigner to whom certain courtesies of etiquette are owed. And in those homes, alas, so numerous, Jesus must be content with courtesies and crumbs. He who went mad with love for mortals!...

And yet the home needs Him so very much... And no better sanctuary than this can offer Him the adoration of the heart in lovable and simple intimacy, just as He asks.

Let us reckon, if not: only a few moments of the day can be consecrated to the Lord in churches, since by duty of state we must live our ordinary lives, like the divine Nazarene family, in the home; unfortunately, much of our Christianity is reduced to the few seconds we spend in church, and when we return to our homes we find them empty of Him who ought to be the Center and life, Master and Friend of our households.

A grave error, because we do not live, struggle, suffer, and probably will not die in church... We live, struggle, suffer and will most probably die in our homes...

There, then, we must live together with Him who wishes to be Simon of Cyrene and companion in exile, so as to be King of Love and faithful Friend, not an implacable Judge, at the final tribunal.

Even the pagans had glimpsed something of the need for a God in the home and invented their household gods for that purpose. A thousand times more provident, the Church for a long time, in the first age, permitted fervent Christians to preserve the Holy Eucharist within the home.

Well then, something—indeed much—of this beautiful and consoling idea we are reviving and realizing in these difficult times through the “Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the Home.”

Certainly we do not pretend to place on the same level the symbol of love and the substantial and living Love that is He Himself in the consecrated Host—no. But the Enthronement, in its true spirit, should in substance mean a Jesus who lives in the home, a Jesus with whom the entire family life is consulted and shared, a Jesus in whose presence one sings, suffers and dies, turning His love into a soul and His Heart into a tabernacle for parents and children.

On the other hand, great and intimate are the relations that must always exist between devotion to the Sacred Heart and devotion to the Eucharist. And especially in this Crusade of ours, intimate and close must be the bond between the two Tabernacles: that of the altar and that of the home, the Eucharistic and the family tabernacle; one living King and the same living Friend, the same Jesus, in one and the other, wherever the spirit of the Enthronement is lived and understood.

Our purpose, then, is to form thousands and thousands of Eucharistic families through this Crusade. Then indeed we may speak of the Master; then He will truly be a King!

You already know what this Sovereign of love does in a home where He truly finds Himself in His own house, as at Nazareth and Bethany. What does He do?...

Paraphrasing the phrase of St. John, I could say that if I were to write what I have seen and touched of the mercy and fidelity of His Heart, the volumes would not fit in the entire world...

If anything leaves me perplexed in the pulpit, it is choosing the prodigies I wish to relate, since it is impossible even to enumerate them all.

The facts! There are no arguments against them! My only eloquence is to be able to say in all truth: I have seen mountains walk, I have heard stones sing; that is, I have seen so many Sauls cast to the ground, on their knees, weeping with love, on the road to Damascus!

For this reason I once said to His Holiness Pope Benedict XV: “Most Holy Father, I am losing faith in miracles, because in order to believe one must not see..., and I am seeing and touching miracles every day.”

The ordinary case is that of a mother, a daughter, a wife who, by making the Enthronement fervently and in its true spirit, have done violence to the Lord and wrested from Him a miracle of His mercy: the astonishing conversion, which had seemed impossible, of someone very dear.

Among my archives I have, among a thousand trophies—to speak of only one—a parchment diploma of a great Freemason, a head of a Lodge; and like him and after him, You alone, Lord, know how many have been caught in the nets of this work!...

Would you like one more exceedingly moving example? It concerns a father of a family; his wife prays and suffers in the hope of seeing him converted... One day she hears a sermon on the Enthronement and says inwardly: “This is my plank of salvation!” But how can it be done in the home, when he is what he is, a sectarian?

Suddenly a happy idea crosses her mind. His birthday will soon arrive, and he and the two girls are preparing to celebrate it affectionately. Then let this opportunity be used with unlimited confidence in the Sacred Heart.

After preparing her husband's soul with fervent prayers and sacrifices, the wife approaches him and asks, as a proof of affection for her birthday gift, that on that very day the Heart of Jesus be solemnly Enthroned in the home.

To her great surprise, he consents in order to please them, but warns that he will not attend... The first part of the miracle is already accomplished; but Jesus does not work miracles by halves.

The day arrives, the Enthronement takes place with much love and many tears; the mother and her little daughters claim the soul of the head of the household and promise in exchange to love, very much, the faithful Friend of Bethany.

After a long while, when everything has ended, the husband enters the drawing room out of curiosity, raises his eyes, seeks the picture that intrigues him: there He is, radiant with love, Jesus, the King of his home!

He lowers his eyes as if dazzled, takes a few steps and raises them again... He feels wounded by an arrow, emotion overwhelms him... He wishes to master what he considers a nervous impression, leaves the room, takes the air; but drawn by an irresistible magnet, he returns to the room and, despite himself, raises his eyes once again: there He is, gentle and conquering, offering him His Heart!...

Tears spring from his eyes, he is entirely moved, he runs to his wife and, stumbling over his words, says to her: “Whom have you brought into this house?... Because for some hours now there is someone in the house, I assure you... I do not see Him, but I feel Him... there is someone in the house.”

The mother calls the two little girls, the great prayer begins again, and when they finish, father is on his knees. And in the afternoon, returning from confession, Lazarus, risen again, sings with all Bethany the mercy of the King of Love.

These facts surprise us, attract our attention and, in a certain sense, should not do so, because however extraordinary they may appear to us, they are nothing other than the most faithful fulfillment of the Promises Jesus made for the benefit of the friends and apostles of His Divine Heart.

He Himself had said: “I will move the most hardened hearts. I will establish peace in their families. I will bless all their undertakings. I will grant them all the graces proper to their state. I will reign through My Sacred Heart.”

If, then, with these and other magnificent Promises there were no miracles in the homes of the Heart of Jesus, in those truly His own, that would be for me the disappointment of disappointments. But this will never embitter me, never, because God is faithful, most faithful, and Jesus is God!

Receive Jesus, then, as a King and as a Friend in your homes. He is King; He Himself said so in a tone of sublime majesty before cowardly Pilate, and He desires that all families and afterward all nations recognize and proclaim His Social Kingship.

He asks and demands this because Jesus is King by right of creation and redemption, an absolute right: Jesus Nazarenus, Rex.

He asks it of you as reparation, as consolation for His Heart. Behold Him: at the doors of so many houses, rich or poor, stands Jesus crowned with thorns, with a diadem of blood and ignominy, His hair wet with the dew of night, and He begs you, He implores you to open to Him, to offer Him a refuge of love and a throne of glory amid the storm unleashed against Him...

Behold Him cast out of parliaments and courts, expelled from laws and schools, banished from so many homes and even, at times, from His own temples...

Behold Him as a wandering Pilgrim, dusty, sad and helpless on deserted roads, sated with reproaches, embittered by the outrage of perfidious ingrates.

Hear Him: He knocks with His wounded hand and says: “Open to Me, I am Jesus, do not fear, I am the King of Love, open to Me!...”

Poor Jesus Christ! St. Francis de Sales used to say: “Have compassion on Him, at least you who call yourselves His friends; give Him lodging, for the furious crowd pursues Him with stones, crying at the top of their voices: ‘Away with Him, He is guilty of death, crucify Him!... We will not have this Man reign over us!’”

Open the doors wide to Him, saying: “We, on the contrary, desire and implore You to reign in this house; be its King!”

And know this: this hospitality which He asks of you with divine insistence will be the blessing of blessings for you; He wishes to enter for your good...

He who knocks at the door is the great Consoler, the only one. And do you not perhaps have tears to sweeten, sorrows to soften? Why ask you, when the question alone reopens, does it not, so many wounds?

Who will bind them? Do you still believe in the balm of creatures? You know that He reserved to Himself the gift of consolation, the Man-God of all sorrows.

No one will ever be able to pour sweetness into that open wound in the heart of that mother, that widow, that young woman who weeps over a most cruel bereavement. No one but You, Jesus.

How many works of compassion exist to bind and heal the wounds of the body. And what, shall there not also be a sublime, divine Red Cross for souls torn to pieces?

Oh yes! The Kingship of love of the Heart of Jesus in the home!

He knocks with repeated blows, He insists: “Do not delay,” He says, “because I know that there are hearts in agony and desolation; open quickly, I am Jesus.”

Out of compassion for yourselves, open to Him, and let the Simon of Cyrene of all your crosses enter. Open to the Friend of man, the only Friend always disinterested and faithful, the Friend who neither changes, betrays nor dies. Open your Bethany to Him, for it is never too late for Jesus the Friend.

What a pity that so many weep and agonize far from this Friend!... because tears without Him poison the soul, and anguish without Him already tastes of approaching death...

If He had been there, as Martha said, in the hours of bitterness, we would have found honeycombs in the middle of the desert and flowers among the pruning.

Unfortunately, many Christians imagine that this language and this doctrine are not for them, that this blessed intimacy with the Master is not the inheritance of all His children...

And that is because we have been educated in a false school: that of adoring without great love, and from a distance, a God always remote... And in such a case—unfortunately very frequent—what happened to the Apostles in the vision on the lake happens to us: we take Jesus for a ghost.

See how on that occasion John alone, the intimate friend alone, is capable of seeing clearly and exclaiming: “It is the Lord.”

It is necessary that in every truly Christian family Jesus should always be seen as only a step away, and that the family may thus contemplate and savor Him in all His beauty. Is this not how souls come to know and penetrate one another in the family?

This contact, this nearness produces intimacy of hearts, and from it comes the strong bond of the home. The same should occur with this Father and this Divine Brother.

All the more because He does not come only or principally to soothe wounds by consoling; He brings you salvation and life.

And even if you were very good, even holy, you all need the fountain that is His Heart. When you have enthroned Him in spirit and truth, you will see by sweet experience how His Divine Heart overflows and fills you.

All this doctrine of life has a visible prelude, a solemn and poetic portal; let us therefore say a few words about the simple and beautiful ceremony.

Let an image be chosen, as rich and artistic as possible; let it be placed in the place of honor in the home, because behind that standard the Divine King comes hidden to take possession of the household and to remain there definitively as the adorable Friend.

Here I must say that living faith and the love of souls will give this Enthronement the spontaneity that belongs to it, since it is certainly not a matter of cold and ceremonious etiquette.

Let parents and children gather at that solemn hour; let no one be absent from the beloved home; and, if desired, let intimate friends and relatives be invited to form the court and learn a lesson of social adoration.

Then, there before the image adorned with flowers and lights, a friendly priest, preferably the parish priest, will say a few words explaining the act and will bless the image according to the Ritual.

Then all together recite the Creed, an expression of the faith of the home, which is Christian and promises to preserve alive the Catholic traditions of its ancestors. Still kneeling, all recite together the prayers of the Ceremonial, then the prayer dedicated to the absent and deceased members of the family, and finally the Act of Consecration.

But observe that, if I speak of Consecration, we do not limit the pious ceremony to that alone, because the Enthronement also contains the recognition and social acclamation of the Divine Kingship of Our Lord; there is the hosanna of love and reparation, the Ave Rex of the family, of the little Fatherland, in the name of the greater Fatherland, the nation.

That is why we say “enthrone.”

And precisely because in “enthroning” you receive the King of kings, display all the solemnity you can, so that Jesus may not make to you the reproach He made to Simon when He said: “I entered your house and you offered Me no water for My feet... You gave Me no kiss of peace... You did not anoint My head with oil...”

Take care not to deserve such a sad reproach! A curious, inexplicable thing: you would not receive a distinguished person, a victorious general, a papal legate, except with great honor and display of solemnity; but Jesus will arrive... and because He is silent and is humility itself, you receive Him in a second-rate little room and with a coldness that surely wounds His Heart.

Receive Him royally, as the King He is, as though you saw Him descending from Tabor. For Him, for Him alone, the place of honor!

Languid faith and lack of love know how to invent strange arguments about the inconvenience of receiving this Sovereign where one would receive... the Bishop, the King; and deep down, of course, there is no argument other than timidity and... the just fear of what this Lord demands, in Christian decorum, by His presence.

He can and must preside over everything..., and whatever cannot be said or done in His presence, then do not say or do it behind His back, either in the home or in the street...

Give Him the seat of honor, the first place, the most honorable place in the house; if there is a large drawing room, place Him there. Thus make reparation for the outrage of Herod, and of so many great and powerful people who relegate Him to the shadows, to the back room, and worse...

Listen on this subject to St. Margaret Mary: “He desires to enter with pomp and magnificence into the dwelling of princes and kings, so that there He may receive as much honor as He was outraged and humiliated in His Passion.”

But Jesus also wishes to reign among the little ones, the poor and the simple.

Behold Him returning among His favorite friends, the humble, Himself most humble, stripped of all apparatus of greatness and majesty, with no power except that of His wounds, no treasure except His Heart.

Behold Him knocking at the door of a hut, of a worker’s little house. He, the working Nazarene, son of the people, born in a stable.

“Open to Me,” He says, “open quickly, for I have known, as you have, dearest brothers, the dark uncertainty of tomorrow, the anxieties and harshness of the poor, I who wished to be born and live poor out of love.”

Hence His vehement longing that the simple, the workers, the poor enthrone Him as Sovereign of love and tenderness in their little homes, where everything reminds Him of the thirty happy years of Nazareth.

No one ever loved the people as Jesus, the adopted son of Joseph the carpenter; hence His longing to conquer them through His Heart in order to make them happy in His charity.

He wishes that the multitude upon which He had compassion and for whom He multiplied the loaves and fishes should know how different it is to suffer, work and endure hardship when one has Him as the recompense of justice in one's privations and as the consoling God in one's sorrows.

Oh! Enthrone Him among the poor, His friends, Him, the poor Man of Nazareth!

What sweetness Jesus must often savor in a humble little house, seated at the very frugal table of simple workers, surrounded, as in ancient times, by children who are hungry, by parents who need work and consolation...

Happy little house, because transformed into the palace of the King of Paradise: He will make those simple souls understand why He said: “Blessed are the poor and those who mourn.” He will make them understand that the one ineffable treasure is He Himself, in His Heart.

The Enthronement preaches, as we have seen, a true homage of social adoration, of family vassalage to Christ the King. Such homage has, today more than ever, capital importance, since the modern crime is social and national apostasy.

We cannot, therefore, exaggerate the Christian importance of faith and reparation contained in the suggestive title and in the whole work of the “Enthronement.”

But let us understand one another: this homage, however beautiful and eloquent it may be, constitutes neither the whole spirit nor the only program of our Crusade. This “enthroning” must be the initial gesture of a new life, much more intimate in faith and much more ardent in charity, in the home that acclaims the Heart of Jesus as its King of Love.

Hence we suppose above all that the consecration made must be a lived consecration and not a formula.

Lived means that, through the force of a great supernatural and Christian spirit, the happy home gradually comes to make the Heart of Jesus the divine soul of the family, whose only law is that of the Gospel and whose only happiness is to do the will of the Master of the house.

This implies a “shared life,” that is, sharing family life with that Jesus to whom a throne has been offered precisely so that He may remain and dwell with His friends, blessing everything in the home, everything, from the dawn rising over the cradles to the twilight surrounding those who are descending the slope of life...

Oh, how well one lives and struggles; how well one sings while weeping, when at the center of the beloved home Jesus presides over everything, gives life to everything, beautifies everything as Friend, Confidant, King...

In that blessed home there is no right to rejoice or suffer without Jesus having His share, the share He Himself claimed when He asked, not for an hour, but for life, the hospitality of Bethany...

Since He entered, everything is noble, everything holy in that enviable Bethany; sorrows, because He sanctified them by nesting them in His Heart, and joys, because He purified and divinized them in His own smiles.

In a word: Jesus truly lives in that home, and the family lives from Him and with Him; they could not rejoice if He were absent, nor would He permit them to weep without Himself drinking the bitterest part of their chalice.

Unfortunately, the Christian life of a home is not ordinarily conceived in this way. Formulas have invaded everything, alas!... they substitute for everything.

There is no shortage of homes that are more or less devout, but loving families are rare, families in which a living and lived Jesus truly resides. There is no shortage of certain prayers, but the heart is lacking; divine life is lacking.

This is precisely what the Enthronement, rightly understood, wishes to give to many homes of good will.

This reminds me of a scene in the episcopal palace of Bologna. I had just preached on the Enthronement and its spirit to a large and distinguished group of ladies; I was about to step down from the platform when the Archbishop said to me:

“Father, wait a moment; listen to me, the Preacher. You have just preached to us a great truth; allow me, then, to put the final word, the amen. On great feasts, my cathedral and the churches are filled with enormous crowds, and nevertheless I do not see my people improve and become more sincerely Christian.

“And this is due to precisely what you have just said: many people make of their Christianity a church formula, a religious etiquette, such as attendance at certain acts of worship may be. But upon returning home, they do not find Jesus there; this Lord does not shape the life of the family, the house is far from being a Tabernacle, and this is the capital sin of the Catholic element: many religious formulas and little intensely Christian life in the family. The Bethany-Home is missing.”

And now allow me to develop this same idea and confirm it graphically in a series of beautiful facts which, while interesting, will explain to you better than dissertations what I mean by the Heart of Jesus as King and center, divine soul, living Friend of the home.

The event I am going to relate occurred in the midst of war.

One day the mother, a woman admirable for her faith, receives an official telegram informing her of the death of her eldest son on the battlefield. Her heart turns over within her breast; but controlling her sobs, she runs into the drawing room and places the telegram at the feet of the King of Love..., and then, calmly, she calls her little ones and the servants and has the throne of the Divine Heart prepared.

She herself helps arrange bouquets of flowers, candlesticks... When the altar is already radiant, she asks everyone to sing with her, and she begins.

After the hymn: “With me,” she says, “let us all recite the Creed.” And immediately afterward the solemn Act of Consecration.

Only then, when the household has presented arms to the King, who has just made His presence sensibly felt in that great sorrow, does the lady take the telegram and read it to the little brothers and sisters:

“Your brother,” she says sobbing, “has gone to heaven in the arms of this King... His will be done. Long live His Sacred Heart! Thy Kingdom come!”

Then indeed they all sob, but in peace, in the arms of Jesus, upon His Heart...

This is not grief of flesh and blood; this is glorious and meritorious grief, this is suffering while loving; thus Bethany groaned with Jesus, thus Jesus wept with Bethany!

A very different scene now, yet the same idea at bottom: on the day of the distribution of prizes, the six boys return home like so many warriors, loaded with laurels, medals, books, diplomas...

They enter proudly and immediately go to their father's room, from whom they rightly expect congratulations and... gifts.

“No,” he says as he sees them enter, “do not come here first, follow me.”

They arrive in the drawing room; they are already before the image of the Enthroned King...

“Now,” he says, “one by one you will place your prizes before that Divine Master and, kissing His feet, you will say to Him: ‘We love You; Thy Kingdom come!’”

The six children obeyed, and gladly; afterward they recited with their father an Act of Consecration.

When it was finished: “Now yes,” he says, “come for an embrace, and then let us go to your mother so that she too may rejoice; but do not forget that in this home the only One who commands and who must never be forgotten, either in sorrow or in joy, is the Heart of Jesus.”

Something even more moving.

One day I blessed the marriage of two poor people, and they asked me to enthrone that same day the King of Love in... their hovel:

“Promise me,” I said to them, “that you will treat Jesus as a Friend, as though you saw Him... His Heart will make you happy, despite the sorrows, which will not be lacking.”

A few years later the poor young man came to call me: “My little wife is dying,” he tells me.

Indeed, she is already gravely ill, but peacefully breathes an immense and delightful calm. And like her, he too. And they loved one another so much!

The only rich thing in that miserable little house was the picture of the Heart of Jesus that I had given them and enthroned on their wedding day.

After hearing her confession, astonished to breathe in so bitter an hour a peace from heaven, I wish to discover what is happening there and, approaching the sick woman, who is dying on a miserable pallet placed upon the ground, I say to her:

“Tell me, my daughter, tell me the complete truth before going to heaven, answer me: Have you been unhappy since your marriage?”

Opening her eyes wide with great surprise and raising herself a little, she says to me:

“What! You who blessed our marriage and entrusted us that day to King Jesus, you who brought Him to us as a Friend in this little house, you ask me whether I have been unhappy with Him?... Unhappy? Father..., not for a single second! We have suffered, yes; we have struggled, yes; that is another thing, unavoidable...; but unhappy with Jesus, King and Friend of these poor people, of this little house? Never, never!”

And then, taking the young husband by the hand, she says to him: “And you, what do you say? Have you been unhappy?”

And he, sobbing, but in a voice that is almost a song of the soul, replies:

“Father, we have struggled much, that is life; but as she says, with Jesus our Friend we have been so happy, so very happy! He is the Master, He comes to take her; but soon He will come down for me as well, and then, up there in heaven, together and happy with Him, just as we were happy with Him in this little house!...”

This sublimity of ideas and even of expression needs no commentary. Those two poor people had understood and lived wonderfully the idea and spirit of the Enthronement.

They made Jesus, in that corner of misery, their King and inseparable Friend, their God and their all. Those two simple and uneducated people knew more of the Gospel than many learned devotees... In that hovel there were always three who lived: Jesus and His two intimate friends.

Savor now a little letter from a poor peasant woman:

“Father, since I made the Enthronement in this poor hut, I consider myself Jesus' ‘tenant,’ since that day I gave Him everything, everything: my flowers, my birds, my old man, everything is His. Since then I live as a guest in the Palace of the King... His Heart has accepted my offering, for from that day He has completely changed my life... We no longer live ourselves, but all of us in Him and for Him.”

Like that other poor servant girl whose story I have often told from the pulpit. She writes to me:

“Fifteen days after your Conferences on the Enthronement, I married. I write these lines to you on my wedding day, at the end of the meal, which rich people call the wedding banquet... We, poor people, have invited the Divine Friend of whom you spoke to us so much, the One whom they invited at Cana, and with my husband we have made, at this solemn hour, the Enthronement, asking Him, as you said, to be the Master and Friend, not for one hour, but for all of life... Father, bless us and confirm our consecration. The Sacred Heart will be, oh yes!, our only King and Friend in sorrows and joys; our little house will be His and He will be ours.”

I could not reproduce here the whole letter, written in pencil and with many spelling mistakes, but marvelous in doctrine.

Do you know what I did with it? I sent it to His Holiness Benedict XV, telling him: “See, Your Holiness, how a poor servant girl is capable of understanding and realizing the whole Gospel that Your Holiness has entrusted me to preach.”

And I am certain that the great Pope, on reading that scrap of paper, smiled with joy and probably wept with emotion.

One final, moving and most eloquent trait. Let Jesus Himself comment on it for you.

The head of a noble Christian family resolved to make the Enthronement on a Friday. But the Lord disposed matters very differently: he suddenly fell gravely ill and by Wednesday he was already dead.

But before dying he declared to his wife that he did not want to leave his house for the cemetery before the emptiness he was leaving behind had been filled by the Heart of Jesus:

“He must be, more than ever,” he says, “from this bereavement onward, the Master and the all of my home.”

The cruel moment of the final farewell has arrived; the intimate friends filling the drawing room are already about to lift the coffin and carry it out of the house when, to everyone's surprise, the widow appears surrounded by her children:

“One moment, gentlemen,” she says with trembling voice. “Do not take him away yet...”

She advances, carrying in a precious frame an image of the King of Love. She places it upon the coffin and then, sobbing, says:

“His final wish was that he not be taken to the cemetery without the Enthronement having first been made... Gentlemen, and you, my children, pray with me.”

And saying this, she recites the Creed and the prayers of the Ceremonial with all her family.

When the sublime prayer is finished, she says amid sobs:

“Gentlemen, now you may take the body away, for he remains among us; in the Heart of Jesus!”

How well one suffers, how holily and peacefully one weeps with Him in the home!

One fateful night I arrive, moments after a terrible earthquake, before the ruins of a house I knew very well.

Calm in the midst of the shipwreck, surrounded by rubble and smoking ruins, while the earth is still trembling, there they are, the friends of the King...

“Father,” the mother says to me, “everything has perished in the catastrophe, everything except Bethany and the peace and happiness of which you spoke to us when making the Enthronement... Bethany does not die, because its soul, its peace and its happiness is Jesus.”

It scarcely needs to be added that if you have made the Enthronement in your homes with this spirit, you must not forget the various and beautiful requests of the Lord made to the friends of His Heart, requests to which He wished to attach magnificent promises.

Among others, do not forget the loving and solemn celebration of the First Fridays, the practice of very frequent Communion in a spirit of full reparation, and the Holy Hour.

And finally, the feast, beautiful beyond all others, of the Heart of Jesus; a feast which you will celebrate on that Friday with a very fervent Communion in the morning. And in the afternoon celebrate it as an intimate feast of the home.

Above all, if there are children, oh!, let the importance and beauty of this feast of love enter through their eyes by means of sweets and gifts.

It is necessary that by this means the Heart of Jesus become, among fervent Catholics, a true family tradition; unite altar and home in holy rejoicing on this Friday, the holiest and most beautiful of the year.

And at an appropriate hour, with the whole family gathered together, renew before the image of the Sacred Heart the homage of the Enthronement.

I conclude by reminding you that the Pope desires this Work, which he calls providential, to live, to organize itself and to develop. The Vicar of Christ considers it urgent and of transcendent importance, because the Enthronement must unite in one single fountain the source of natural life, the home, with the Heart of Christ, inexhaustible source of grace and divine life.

Let us generously carry out the requests of the Master formulated at Paray, and He will fulfill, with superabundant mercy, His divine and ineffable promises.

Extracts and summaries from publications appearing in the booklets of Orléans, Poitiers, Sept-Pons, Lyon, Perpignan, Le Puy, and from several manuscripts.