heart like to thee; that by thee, with thee, and in thee, it may eternally love the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
REPARATION OF HONOR TO THE SACRED HEART.
O MOST amiable and adorable Heart, centre of all hearts, glowing with charity, and inflamed with zeal for the interest of thy Father, and the salvation of mankind ! O Heart, ever sensible of our misery, and ever ready to redress our evils; the real victim of love in the holy Eucharist, and a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of men! Seeing that the generality of Christians make no other return for these thy mercies than contempt of thy favors, forgetfulness of their own obligation, and ingratitude to the best of benefactors, is it not just that we, thy servants, penetrated with the deepest sense of the like indignities, should enter upon a due and satisfactory reparation of honor to thy most sacred majesty? Prostrate, therefore, in body, and humbled in mind, before heaven and earth we solemnly declare our utter detestation and abhorrence of such a conduct. Inexpressible, we know, was the bitterness which the multitude of our sins brought on thy tender Heart; insufferable the weight of our inequities, which pressed thy face to the earth in the garden of Olives; and insurmountable thy anguish, when, expiring with love, grief and agony, on Mount Calvary, with thy last breath thou wouldst reclaim sinners to their duty and repentance. This we know, O dear Redeemer! and would most willingly redress these thy sufferings by our own, or share with thee in thine.
O merciful Jesus, ever present on our altars, and with a heart open to receive all who "labor and are burdened;" O adorable Heart, source of true contrition! impart to our hearts the true spirit of penance and to our eyes a fountain of tears, that we may bewail and cast off our sins, and those of the world.
