Open Wide Your Heart to Christ

Emily Jaminet discusses how opening our hearts to the love of Christ can help us love and serve our families better.

As a mom with experience in parenting for more than twenty-two years, I was recently asked, "what is the best advice you would give to a new Catholic mom?"

I would say, OPEN WIDE YOUR HEART to Christ. Jesus is the way, the truth, and life, and without His love, we cannot be fully alive and love with a mother’s heart. When we open our hearts to His Heart, we will never burn out and grow cold or lukewarm, for the source of all love feeds our own heart and thus flows to our family.

Jesus desires to offer each of us His joy, peace, comfort, strength, and consolation in our daily trials and throughout the ordinary moments of life. When we open our hearts wide to the love of Christ, we are better able to serve Jesus and be overwhelmed with gratitude for all that He offers us.

mom hugging little girl

Genuine gratitude comes from appreciating the gifts provided for us by God. It might be the simple blessing of a hot cup of coffee in the morning or running into a friend at the store. Since the Kingdom of God is not of this world, we need to tune in and use our hearts to encounter it, and growing in the virtue of gratitude is a powerful way to do that. If you are in the “thick” of motherhood feeling burned out, list your gratitudes on paper each day. When we take the time to write them out, it is a great way to build up your ability to notice the little things so that you can always praise and thank God for the gifts He lavishes upon you. The greatest gift we can thank God for as mothers is providing us a clear path to holiness, our vocation as wives and mothers. When we take time to train our hearts, we learn to receive the love of Christ so that we can hold that love in our hearts and share it with others is a great way to grow closer to Jesus.

heart with word "love" hanging against a blue wooden fence

Another powerful way to grow closer to Jesus is to encounter His heart and ask Him to heal our hearts. Have you experienced wounds that seem to keep aching throughout your motherhood? It might be a wound from your childhood, from your parents' marriage, or even from past relationships or a very situation impacting you now in your marriage. Jesus wants to offer us healing through His heart. Just spend some time focusing on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and come to appreciate that His Heart is the most wounded of all hearts; He was not only physically beaten and killed on a cross, but betrayed, mocked, denied, and left abandoned by his company and closest of friends. I often pray, asking that Jesus allows His Heart to transform my heart and help me to be grounded in this powerful devotion to the Sacred Heart. Don’t allow the wounds from your past to keep you hurting today. Jesus wants to help us experience His love and freedom, which heals and helps us.

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Jesus wants to help us experience His love and freedom, which heals and helps us. #catholicmom

Statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Finally, welcome the Kingdom of God into your heart and home. One of the most spiritually impactful experiences you can have is enthroning the Sacred Heart in your home. When we welcome the Kingdom of God into our hearts and home, we are better able to navigate our day-to-day life. St. John Paul II once said,

Welcome the presence of the Heart of Jesus, entrusting your home to him. Seek to draw from His open heart the saving, healing love that is so necessary for families today in order to build a civilization of love.

The enthronement of the Sacred Heart began in 1907 to help strengthen Catholic families from the growing impact of the movements of Materialism and Secularism; think how much more we need these graces today. The Catholic Church approved the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart and was encouraged by the Popes. It is a way to help the family experience Christ in a new way. When we enthrone the Sacred Heart, we are welcoming Him into our lives in a new way and asking Jesus to be present in the messiness of life.

Open wide your heart to Christ and allow Him to transform you from the inside out! To learn more about the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart, visit WelcomeHisHeart.com.