Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Fr H with a reflection on yet another evisceration of the doctrine of the Kingship of Christ, of which much more on the Feast next week.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

Mindful, as we presbyters dutifully are, of the approach in a week's time of the Feast of Christ the King, I looked out the Form of Consecration ordered by the dear old Sacred Congregation of Rites (28 April 1926) to be made on that Day.

I discovered a curiosity. On the Internet I found an English translation one paragraph longer than the Latin form printed in the current (editio quarta 1999) Enchiridion Indulgentiarum.

That missing paragraph prays for those still involved in the darkness of Idolatry or Islamism, and concludes "Turn thine eyes of mercy towards the children of the race once called thy chosen people: of old they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Saviour; may it now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life".

I'm not sure that the word "once" is necessary, and I do think that this form of words, to a pedantic or already prejudiced mind, might obscure the facts that it was only some  Jews in one particular place at one particular time who "called down the Blood of the Saviour" ... and by no means all the Jews of every time and place. How could it have been? Our blessed Lady, surely, did not join in that cry, and she is a Jewess, the Daughter of Sion. Similarly, it was not all the Romans, or all the soldiers, of all the times and places, who drove in the nails, but one particular infantry platoon. 

Yet some such prayer seems all the more appropriate as we approach the End Times, when all Israel will be brought in (Romans 11:13 to end, especially 26). We are all impoverished if we forget the eschatological dimensions of the Apostolic Preaching. (S Paul's teaching about the Faithful Remnant is also important.)

And our Faith risks being unbalanced if we forget the importance in Divine Providence of that remarkable People.