What this is
A guided path through the Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, organized as nine rings of practice from outer to inner.
The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the oldest and most loved in the Catholic Church. Its modern form takes shape in seventeenth-century France, in the revelations of the Lord to a Visitation nun named St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, and in the writings of her Jesuit spiritual director, St. Claude de la Colombière. A few decades later, another French Jesuit, Fr. John Croiset, gathered everything into a single book: The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, first published in 1691.
Croiset's book is still in print — it is the closest thing to a manual the devotion has. This site is built around its structure. Croiset urges a wealth of practices, ranging from the daily First Friday Mass to the most interior dispositions of meekness and humility. We have gathered forty of them and arranged them as nine concentric rings, ordered from outer (everyday foundations) to inner (mystical union).
How to use the site
If you are new to the devotion — begin in the outermost ring, First Steps. Pick one or two practices and live them for a few months before adding more. The Sacred Heart devotion is not a checklist; it is a friendship that deepens through repetition.
If you have practiced the devotion for years — use the "Where am I?" questions to find a ring that may suit your present life. The inner rings are where the work becomes interior and quiet, and where most spiritual writers locate the heart of the devotion's purpose.
If you are exploring — read the 12 Promises Christ made to St. Margaret Mary, and the page on First Fridays. These two together contain almost the whole devotion in seed.
What this site is not
It is not a substitute for a parish, a priest, or the sacraments. The Sacred Heart devotion lives in the sacramental life of the Church; everything here points back to that life.
It is also not a work of the magisterium of the Church. The content has been drawn carefully from Catholic devotional tradition — Croiset's book, the revelations to St. Margaret Mary, the encyclicals Miserentissimus Redemptor (Pius XI, 1928) and Haurietis Aquas (Pius XII, 1956), the writings of Fr. Mateo Crawley-Boevey on home enthronement, of St. Alphonsus Liguori on Eucharistic devotion, and of Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade on abandonment — but it is the work of a layperson, and should be read with the discernment proper to private devotional writing.
For matters of doctrine, the catechism, the writings of the saints, and your own pastor remain the proper guides. If you are uncertain about a practice, ask a priest.
Acknowledgements
This site exists because of the prayers of countless Catholics — known and unknown, living and dead — who have kept the devotion to the Sacred Heart alive across four centuries. Particular thanks to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, to St. Claude de la Colombière, to Fr. John Croiset, S.J., to Fr. Mateo Crawley-Boevey, and to all the priests who have, in their hidden labor, kept the Heart of Jesus enthroned in the world.
Behold the Heart which has so loved men, that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love.
— Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque