“God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.
In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.”
– 1 John 4: 9-11
WINFIELD – At the invitation of the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, churches throughout the country hosted prayer services on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, celebrated each year by the Catholic Church to honor Jesus' divine love for humanity, as “an act of reparation for the blasphemies against our Lord (that) we see in our culture today.”
Holy Spirit became one of the Holy Hour sites on June 16 after Knights of Columbus Council 7473 offered to host a prayer service, said Father Thomas Mischler, pastor, who led the service.
“The Knights wanted to ask the Lord for forgiveness for those who blaspheme against God and the Blessed Mother,” Father Mischler noted. “We come together because, while Christ poured out his heart for us for the expiation of our sins, we realize that in our culture today, sin still abounds.”
Worshippers prayed the Litany of the Sacred Heart together and offered silent petitions during a period of Eucharistic Adoration.
In his comments, Father Mischler recalled receiving a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at his First Communion from his grandparents’ neighbors. “I was always mesmerized by the gaze of the eyes of Jesus in the statue, the open stance of his arms and his heart pierced by a lance.
“The loving heart of Jesus was crowned with thorns” on the statue, he added. “If God so loved us that he sent his son for the expiation of our sins, we all must love one another. It reminds us to be a light to the world, because God sent his son, we should love one another and respect one another and make sacrifices for one another.
“Yet we live in a world that does not fully understand that and is fixated on themselves, not others,” Father Mischler said. “So we pray for that world, that it will realize we all have something to offer.”
Charlotte Bennett, a Holy Spirit parishioner, said she came to the Holy Hour “because it is the feast day of the Sacred Heart and I feel so bad about (the blasphemy), with emphasis on the Sacred Heart.”
Bruce Spindler, wore a bright red Knights of Columbus shirt to the June 16 service, calling it “unbelievable that the world has things happening in it that are so disrespectful of Christian life. There is no other day more fitting to honor our Lord than the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.”