(Sacred Heart statue in the Basilica of St. Ignatius of Loyola, Spain)

(Photo courtesy of Ron McGuire)

St. Ignatius, of course, founded the Jesuit Order. Hundreds of years later, Fr. Almire Pichon, a Jesuit, was the spiritual director of St. Therese, as we talked about on Wednesday. He had been raised with Jansenist tendencies...thinking that God was a frightening and threatening God, Who didn't love His people, and wished to keep them in distanced subjection. When he learned the truth through holy Jesuits, he couldn't wait to spread the news. He made it his mission in life. 

Here is a quote from this holy priest, suitable for this First Friday of March. He quotes one of the twelve promises Our Lord made to St. Margaret Mary for those who make the nine First Fridays:

"'Sinners will find in My Heart an infinite source of mercy.' At the moment that I am most culpable, even before repentance has touched my heart, You, even then, invite me to have recourse to You. Does it require an ocean to wash away my sins? Your Heart is that boundless ocean, without shores, without limits. As a spark thrown into the waves of the sea disappears without leaving a trace, so it is with the transgressions of the most culpable soul, once embraced within that Divine Heart."

~ Almire Pichon, S.J., Seeds of the Kingdom, imprimatur 1961.