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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2010 /  Men of the Sacred Heart plan for special feast day

by Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published May 28, 2010

DETROIT — An apostolate honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus will be holding a special Mass in honor of the feast day.

The Mass, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, June 11, is the 46th annual organized by the Men of the Sacred Hearts, a lay organization founded to build devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary in homes and in workplaces. David Tay, executive director of the Men of the Sacred Hearts, explained from his Sterling Heights office that they have their feature event at a different parish every year, for one reason to spread the word about what they're about.

"In doing these feast days and holy days, we're trying to expand our ministry to people we haven't touched yet or who don't know we are," he said.

A big part of the Men of the Sacred Heart is "enthroning" homes, businesses and schools to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which turns the focus to Jesus Christ as the leader of the home, Tay explained. A team visits a home for about 45 minutes to an hour for a rosary and prayers before leaving a statue of the Blessed Mother in the home for a week. The team returns a week later with a wall hanging of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary for the family to keep and hang in their home.

"We get the family to open up their hearts and prayers to Jesus, and His mother, so she can take it to Her son," he explained.

Sometimes children will pray for troubles in the home or in school to stop — many times things the parents didn't know about beforehand. "We try to get the children to open up their hearts," Tay said. "If you pray with your children, you'll hear these things first-hand. So often today, with so many electronics, getting the family to stop for half hour and do a rosary is unusual."

He points out that family prayer is a vehicle, albeit a difficult one, for families to come together; often, a family requesting an enthronement already has a strong Catholic faith and is looking for other reinforcements in their lives. "We're trying to promote that the family that prays together stays together," he said.

The all-men's group, with about 150 members, takes dozens of statues from home to home every week. The ministry is active in 14 states and 72 cities, he said. The biggest problem the apostolate has is getting people comfortable with the home enthronements, although the process was approved by Rome in 1907 and given the blessing of the archdiocese in 1964. The Rochester team has done some 250 homes, and most of the families gush about the process and regret they waited so long.

"People are embarrassed to have religious articles displayed in the home," he said, unlike what often happens in Orthodox or Eastern rite homes. "That's faith. And that's the kind of faith that we've lost."

Also on June 11, priests of the archdiocese will gather to mark the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Friday afternoon event will include "a Eucharistic Holy Hour, during which we can renew the consecration of our priesthood," Archbishop Allen Vigneron said in a Feb. 12 letter to priests.

"I have in mind that we should consider working together for a renewal of our practice of devoting the First Fridays especially to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with a particular emphasis on joining together," he wrote.