Few Catholic homes in decades past failed to have an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Years ago, I recall speaking with an experienced veteran of a local police force who told me that if was called to a domestic dispute in a home, and there he saw an image of the Sacred heart, he called in the parish priest. Gone are such alliances, but it did point to the reality of the image in the home. Interestingly, the same officer informed me that such disturbances in homes with religious imagery were in fact quite rare. Although the devotion to the Sacred heart of Jesus traces is ancestry to the Gospel of John through to the spiritual insights of Margaret Mary Alacoque and her spiritual guide Claude la Columbière. The devotion received its greatest push in the last third of the 19th century. It was at this time when materialism and evolutionary theory had established norms based on “survival of the fittest” and the subsequent aggression and dehumanization that followed as a consequence. The “clock winder” God of the Deists had run its course and the notion of any God at all as the author of the “iron laws of nature” was seen as a projected construct for the emotionally unstable or those with lesser intellects. Amidst this world view that saw racism and eugenics as logical consequences of social Darwinism, the Jesuits advanced the idea that a providential God continues to act, and this action is not seen in nature’s law of “red in tooth and claw,” but rather in a heart that yearns to hold every human person. Of the many lessons taught from school of the Sacred Heart, we may note that in the 19thcentury, the devotion stressed the communality of humanity, a humanity fallen but redeemed by Christ. How different was this message from the exclusionary views popularized by the eugenic and racist ideas taught in the “better schools” such as Harvard that looked with scorn at “religious education,” and its supposed “ghetto” mentality advanced in Catholic schools. If we want to look for a cause for aggression and violence, we need to look no further than those who rejected the providence of God. The policeman knew that a home that has religious values usually houses respect, charity, and love. The feast today recalls that bringing the heart of Christ into the home of hearts and the home of our family establishes a set of values that may merit our strongest consideration. Such a consideration may include a greater familiarity with the work of promoting the Sacred Heart which is a continued apostolate of the Society of Jesus. For a further information on this work please consult the following link: http://popesprayerusa.net/