Novena to the Sacred Heart

Nine days that ask for almost nothing. This is the reparation posture: not hear me and not only thank you, but attention paid to something already finished, by someone who mostly hasn't been paying it.

What it's for

Noticing. If you believe the whole thing and have never let it land — which describes most people, including most devout people — this is the novena for that. It is also the entry point to the older practice of reparation, which used to be ordinary and has quietly dropped out of a lot of Catholic life.

What reparation is, and is not

It is not making up a shortfall. Nothing is owed and nothing is missing; the accounts were settled without us. It is closer to what you do when someone in your family has been slighted and you go out of your way to be present to them — nothing is fixed by it, and it changes the relationship.

If you are prone to scruples, read this twice. Reparation is a love response, not a scoreboard, and it is not a debt you are servicing. Any version of this that leaves you anxious about whether you have done enough has gone wrong, and you should put it down. That is not us being lenient; it is what the devotion actually is.

Where it came from

The revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial in the 1670s, and a good deal of magisterial weight since: Leo XIII consecrated the human race to the Sacred Heart in Annum Sacrum, 1899; Pius XI wrote on reparation in Miserentissimus Redemptor, 1928; she was canonized in 1920. For once on this site, the pedigree is documents and dates rather than tradition.

Structure

Nine consecutive days, about eight minutes each. A reflection, a short prayer said aloud, the same act of attention every day, an Our Father, a Hail Mary, a Glory Be, and a silence. Readings from John 19 on day one and Ephesians 3 on day seven.

When it's prayed

The feast is movable — the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, usually in June.

The text used here

Scripture is Douay-Rheims 1899. The reflections and prayers are written for praypoint. We do not quote St. Margaret Mary. Her writings are out of copyright, but the English renderings in circulation differ from one another, and offering one of them as a transcript would be the mistake this site avoids everywhere else. Where her revelations come up, they are described.