In the space of a single week the Church and her devotions set three hearts before us: on Friday the Sacred Heart of Jesus, on Saturday the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and on Wednesday the Most Chaste Heart of St Joseph. They are not three rival devotions. They are one — the love of the Holy Family of Nazareth, the household where God chose to be loved by human hearts. This is a meditation on all three together, with a consecration prayer and the words of the saints.
One love, three hearts
There is an order here, and it matters. The Heart of Jesus is the source — the human Heart of God, the furnace from which all charity flows. The Heart of Mary is the perfect response — the one creature who loved God back without reserve. And the Heart of Joseph is the faithful guardian — the one who sheltered the other two and asked nothing for himself. St John Eudes, centuries ago, already taught that the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are so united that they are almost a single Heart; the Church’s long love of St Joseph simply completes the family portrait.
The Sacred Heart
The human Heart of God, pierced and burning with love for us.“Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.” — Mt 11:29
The Immaculate Heart
The heart that believed, treasured the Word, and was pierced beside her Son.“Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” — Lk 2:19
The Most Chaste Heart
The silent, watchful love that guarded the Redeemer and his Mother.“Joseph her husband, being a just man…” — Mt 1:19
A consecration to the Three Hearts
If you wish to make this week bear fruit, give the three Hearts what they ask for — not admiration, but your own heart. This prayer may be prayed all at once, or a paragraph a day across three days:
O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, furnace of living charity, I give you my heart: be its King, its refuge, and its rest.
O Immaculate Heart of Mary, full of grace, receive me as your child: keep me close to your Son, and teach me your fiat.
O most Chaste Heart of Joseph, guardian of the Redeemer, take me under your fatherly care: defend my soul as you defended the Holy Family.
Three Hearts of the Holy Family, one in love, make my home and my heart your Nazareth. To you I consecrate my body and my soul, my work and my rest, my living and my dying.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I am yours now and for ever. Amen.
What the saints and the Church say
“With a father’s heart: that is how Joseph loved Jesus.”— Pope Francis, Patris Corde (2020)
“In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.”— Our Lady of Fatima (1917)
“The Heart of the Word made flesh is the chief sign and symbol of that threefold love with which he loves the eternal Father and all mankind.”— Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas (1956)
“I do not remember up to this day ever having asked anything of St Joseph which he failed to grant.”— St Teresa of Ávila, Life, ch. 6
The Hearts of Jesus and Mary are so closely joined that together they form, as it were, but one Heart.— after St John Eudes, apostle of the Holy Hearts
Three feasts, three hearts, one love. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” has long been the prayer Christians whisper for a holy death — because the family of Nazareth is the refuge of every family, and the home where every heart is meant to rest. Consecrate yours to them, and let your house become, in its own small way, another Nazareth.
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