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Oct. 19, 2006
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New market for Sacred Heart devotion |
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National director targeting another generation of Catholics |
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MILWAUKEE — For decades it was a staple of daily prayer. Stuck to bathroom mirrors in Catholic homes and posted in classrooms of Catholic schools, the Morning Offering was the prayer with which several generations of Catholics began their day – prayer that included the intentions of the pope.
That prayer remains at the core of the Apostleship of Prayer, promoters of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. With the resurgence in popularity of eucharistic adoration, devotion to the Sacred Heart is being marketed to generations of Catholics who never saw the Morning Offering stuck to a mirror or posted on a classroom wall.
“We’re definitely making a specific effort to reach a younger group,” said Jesuit Fr. James Kubicki, national director for the Apostleship of Prayer. “One, they’re open. They’re not carrying the baggage that said, ‘Oh, Sacred Heart devotion is sentimentality.’ Two, they wonder about these devotions they hear about and they’re curious.”
While devotion to the Sacred Heart is “very counter-cultural to the younger market,” according to the 54-year-old priest, he cites as evidence for its attractiveness some of the reflections 2005 World Youth Day participants wrote:
“I was shown that I need to make every day a pilgrimage right where I am. I was shown that THIS is what it means to really live the morning offering prayer and to be devoted to Jesus’ Sacred Heart – it’s not just mumbling a few words, half asleep, every morning…”
“Paradoxically, Jesus drew me closer to his Sacred Heart through the ‘suffering’ I encountered through lack of daily conveniences, comforts and luxuries of my upper-middle class existence. Surprisingly, I have never felt so free or so full of joy! Released from the materialism, isolation induced by technology, and sense of personal control that pollutes my everyday life allowed me to encounter Christ in a much deeper way…”
Fr. Kubicki, who grew up at St. Paul Parish, Milwaukee and attended Marquette University High School, credits Pope John Paul II with instilling this interest in youth.
“He tapped into idealism of young people. While there is always the temptation toward selfishness and pleasure, especially in a world that promotes consumerism and hedonism, there is also a desire in young people a desire for heroic and an idealism and John Paul II tapped into that,” the priest said.
History of apostleship
The Apostleship of Prayer dates to 1844 France and Jesuit Fr. François Xavier Gautrelet who linked prayer and studies with missionary work. This bond, expressed in the Morning Offering, was refined by Jesuit Fr. Henri Ramiere, who promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and who made that devotion part of the daily offering with the words “…for all the intentions of your Sacred Heart…”
The movement continued well into the 20th century but, following the Second Vatican Council, devotion to the Sacred Heart, as did other Catholic devotions, experienced less popularity.
According to Fr. Kubicki, this decline may have been the result of several things converging.
“There might have been a time when devotions became the focus rather than the Eucharist itself. The problem went to an extreme then,” he said. “Rather than devotional life feeding people’s Eucharistic lives, we threw out devotions completely. And in that sense the Eucharist became a matter of community gathering, which is one aspect of Eucharist, but without that personal dimension to it that can be fostered by devotions, and it loses its prayerful quality.”
‘Offer it up’
It wasn’t so much what Catholics did, but what they didn’t do that also had an impact, according to Fr. Kubicki.
“The other thing that contributed to the decline of the Apostleship of Prayer and maybe to Sacred Heart devotion was the emphasis on combination of ‘feel good Christianity,’ rejection of the idea of penance and reparation, and a loss of sense of the sacrificial nature of the Mass,” he said.
While it may have lost its appeal to a generation or two of Catholics, today Fr. Kubicki promotes “the old notion of what we were taught in grade school – ‘offer it up.’”
He explained, “We don’t see significance in suffering. Suffering is simply bad and it’s to be avoided. When it comes your way you run from it versus accepting the fact that suffering is inevitable.”
Noting that “the worst thing is suffering without meaning,” Fr. Kubicki said one of the things the Apostleship of Prayer and devotion to the Sacred Heart try to do is help people find sense, meaning and purpose in their sufferings.
“When I talk about the Morning Offering and the ‘prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day,’ sufferings is the one I gag on,” the priest said. “My tendency is, ‘Lord, why me? Take this away, make it disappear.’ But to take those sufferings and say OK, being reminded of that doesn’t take away the pain, but it helps me get through it, which makes me convinced that this has some real importance for people.”
Fr. Kubicki used the final years of Pope John Paul II’s life as an example.
“People said he should step down. He didn’t hide his suffering. He was there for everyone to see. So he showed us something about suffering,” he said. “That’s not pleasant to look at. That’s why our culture wants to put older people, people with disabilities, people who are suffering, out of sight so I don’t have to be reminded of my own mortality and weakness and the possibility that someday I will end up drooling and with Parkinson’s.”
Local presence
One of Fr. Kubicki’s goals for the apostolate is to have Apostleship of Prayer directors in half of the U.S. dioceses within three years, and that every diocese have one within five years.
Fr. Michael Lightner, associate pastor of St. Francis Borgia Parish, Cedarburg, has been the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s Apostleship of Prayer director since July 1. The archdiocese is one of approximately 30 U.S. dioceses with a director.
Fr. Lightner, who has prayed the Morning Offering since “my mom taught it to me years ago,” said he is working on building an infrastructure for the Apostleship of Prayer in the archdiocese.
He is also linking devotion to the Sacred Heart and the growing demand for eucharistic adoration he has seen at his parish, where exposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place all day Monday, and for a half hour on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
“That time is very important to them,” he said of participants in Eucharistic adoration. “They want more of it.”
Fr. Lightner has assembled teams of three people who will go to parishes to talk about how the Apostleship of Prayer and Eucharistic adoration are connected.
“It doesn’t have to be a huge change in the parish,” he said.
The priest noted that the connection is part of “faith building.”
“It is where we are coming from as Catholics, with the Eucharist as the source and summit of our faith,” he said.
Fr. Kubicki likes the approach that Fr. Lightner is taking.
“Eucharistic adoration is the particular emphasis he’s bringing to (the Apostleship of Prayer), he said. “Ultimately, it’s at the heart of what we’re trying to do.”
Beyond adoration
Fr. Kubicki noted that there is a “danger in adoration and in this devotion to encourage a ‘Jesus and me relationship.’” That is why he emphasizes that what occurs in eucharistic adoration is a beginning that has to be translated into actions.
“What we try to do as you grow in a personal relationship with Jesus is take on the mind, thoughts, heart and affections of Jesus,” he said. “As you do that, you can’t leave his presence and then go into world and look at people same way. You begin to see other people as Jesus sees them…love shows itself in deeds.”
While Fr. Kubicki’s assignment as national director, which was approved by the 10 Jesuit provincials in the U.S. and by the order’s father general in Rome, is open-ended, he wants to move quickly. Already the apostolate’s materials are published in Spanish and English. A Web site in Spanish is in the discussion stage, as are plans to develop catechetical materials that can be used by families at home and in Catholic schools and faith formation programs.
Fr. Kubicki and two staff people in the Apostleship of Prayer national offices work on the second floor of the Marian Center in the space that once housed the St. Mary’s Academy library.
“I hope we’re going to need more office space, that this is going to take off,” Fr. Kubicki said, anticipating the development of more materials and the hiring of additional staff. “This (the apostolate) is going to meet a need that is out there.” |
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