Enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Christ the King, the antidote society needs
Christ is King, and the enthronement of the Sacred Heart promoted by Fr. Mateo Crawley-Boevey, is the anti-liberal and anti-modernist solution for our modern crisis - Cardinal Billot explains why.
Editor's Notes
My family recently carried out the ceremony of solemnly enthroning an image of the Sacred Heart, recognising and inviting him to be King of our home and family.
One of the duties one takes on in so doing is promoting the enthronement to others.
To this end, we are publishing the letter of praise and approbation which the great anti-liberal and anti-modernist Louis Cardinal Billot sent to to Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey, the priest responsible for popularising this practice in the twentieth century. This letter appeared in some older versions of Fr Mateo's book Jesus King of Love.
Fr Mateo was born in 1875 in Peru, to an English father (who was a member of an old aristocratic family) and a Peruvian mother. His mission was approved by Benedict XV and Pius XII.
It was (and is) staunchly anti-liberal and anti-modernist, very far from any sentimentalism, and rooted in the same doctrine embodied in Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quas Primas, on the Kingship of Christ.
One aspect of it is to make one's home into a little "Bethany", like the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus – in which our King may rest with friends "during the exile imposed on [him] by [his] enemies."[1]
His mission – along with that of Fr Vallet and his five-day Ignatian retreats – is held by some to have contributed to Spain's successful resistance to Communism. The Sacred Heart was solemnly enthroned as the King of Spain by King Alfonso XIII, with the prayers composed by Fr Mateo.[2]
We should also note, as does Cardinal Billot, that this practice of enthronement takes its origin with St Margeret-Mary Alacoque herself: it is mentioned in the promises delivered to her by the Sacred Heart, and she carried it out with the novices in the convent.
She was also instructed to make King Louis XIV of France aware of Heaven's wishes that he do the same. In fact, it was later revealed to Sister Lucie of Fatima that the failure of Louis XIV and his successors to comply with Heaven's wishes – that the King enthrone the Sacred Heart and and consecrate France to it – was what later resulted in Louis XVI losing his head.
The message to Sister Lucie may shed light on our own ecclesiastical situation today, given that it was given as an allusion to the consequences of the pope failing to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
But in brief, this enthronement is not a modern invention of Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey.
In our house
Personally, I only recently encountered the enthronement. I was dimly aware that people did it, but I thought that it was simply a pious act of hanging a picture on the wall and saying some prayers.
It soon became apparent that it involves more than that – as we can see in Cardinal Billot's letter below.
And, although Fr Mateo explicitly says that "it is not necessary to repaint your home, get new furniture or otherwise go to great expense" in the preparation, I am afraid that I did indeed repaint the wall and install a new shelf. Fr Mateo also recommended having friends and family join for the ceremony and celebration after.
There is much that could be said on it, more than I am able to at present. Instead, here is Cardinal Billot's letter, followed by some of the best parts of the act of the enthronement.
S.D. Wright
Letter of His Eminence Cardinal Billot, S.J.
to Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey
Rome, April 26, 1915
Very Reverend Father,
You asked me for a word of approval for the work of the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the Home, and though I would have given you such a word with every confidence upon the bare mention of so beautiful a title, I give it to you now with enthusiasm, since the documents you have sent me, have made me more amply acquainted with the object of the work, its conditions, its origin and the results already achieved.
The object of the Enthronement
The work fully comes up to that which its name would lead one to expect, and at the very outset, it becomes perfectly plain that it is not by any means a question of a new devotion, which by reason of its novelty, might arouse suspicions.
Much less is it a case of a distortion or modification introduced into an ancient devotion, to the detriment of its authentic form, that has been sanctioned and consecrated by the Church. No; what the work seeks to set up in every home is nothing but the pure, simple and frank devotion to the Sacred Heart, that has been handed down to us from the revelations of St. Margaret Mary and such as the Church has sealed with her supreme authority.
It [the enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the home according to Fr Crawley-Boevy’s outline] is nothing more, nothing less.
For what is the object of the work?
To introduce, that is to say, to set up in the place of honor in each household a representation of the Sacred Heart, in recognition of the supreme rights of Jesus Christ over the family as a whole, and over each of its members;
To recite family prayers each evening before it, and to renew each night by the lips of the father or mother, the consecration made on the first day;
To be faithful in the practice of Holy Communion, and as far as possible, in that of the Holy Hour at the First Friday of the month;
To meditate upon the lessons and examples given us by the Sacred Heart;
To have recourse to this fount of all graces, in the family joys, as well as in its sorrows, in good as well as in evil days, in sufferings, in reverses, in partings, amid the tears shed at the graveside, and amid the smiles bestowed upon the cradle; in a word, amidst all the events which interrupt the normal and regular course of family life.
And what is there in all this that is not contained in the devotion in use in the Church? The work merely seeks to introduce it into family life; so that it may have the place it deserves and be a devotion not dead but alive and active, and communicating its quickening warmth to all the souls in the house, both parents and subjects, after the manner of the leaven which the woman of the Gospel mixed with the three measures of flour till the whole was leavened.
Far then from seeing in the work anything that could even in a dream resemble a dangerous novelty, I see in it on the contrary, all that is likely to arouse in the highest degree the zeal of such souls as are permeated with the love of our Lord.
The message to St Margaret Mary
I see in it, to begin with, a simple and practical method for realizing the desires expressed to St. Margaret Mary.
Our Lord, as you say, Reverend Father, asked of St. Margaret Mary that His Heart should be the object of a special worship. Who amongst us but recollect the two promises that He made to His servant:
“I will give peace to their families. I will bless the houses wherein the image of my Sacred Heart shall be exposed and honored”’?
This is the origin of the ceremony which you set as a head-line to your programme; and I have no doubt that you also drew it from the example of that first feast spontaneously organized in private by the novices of Paray-le-Monial, upon the feast day of their holy mistress, on July 20, 1685, in honor of the Sacred Heart.
One would have to read in the life of St. Margaret Mary the description of this, quite the first enthronement, that was carried out with closed doors in the part of the convent reserved for the novitiate. Above all, one would have to realize the joy that inundated the soul of Margaret Mary on that occasion.
Note - See below an explanation of this event in St Margaret Mary's life:
"In the above passage the cardinal is referring to an incident in the life of St Margaret Mary, when she was mistress of novices. On the occasion of her name-day, the Feast of St Margaret, she suggested to her novices that instead of honoring her, they honor the Sacred Heart.
“Accordingly, an altar was prepared in the novitiate, beautifully decorated with flowers. On it was enthroned a picture of the Sacred Heart, drawn by St Margaret Mary herself. Kneeling before the image of the Sacred Heart, she led her novices in an act of consecration which she herself had composed.
“This is exactly what takes place in the Enthronement ceremony, as the cardinal points out."[3]
Had she at that time a presentiment that in this small grain of mustard seed was the great tree, beneath whose branches for more than two centuries the birds of heaven have found shelter? I do not know; but what I do know is this: that if the book of the future had been opened to her at the page entitled the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the Home, she would have recognized in it the expansion of the act so delicately outlined by her little novices.
She would have seen in it nothing less than the accomplishment of the august desire of which she had been made the confidential recipient.
Sanctification of the Family and of Marriage
In the second place, I see in your work a means most suited for the sanctification of the family and consequently for that of society as a whole.
I say most suited, because it is the rule that things grow and develop in accordance with the principles from whence they are derived. And what do we see at the foundation of a family regenerated by the grace of Redemption? Do we not recognize there the mysterious union of Jesus Christ and His Church, of which union the Sacrament of Matrimony has been made by divine institution an inviolable and sacred sign?
And in what did that mysterious union consist, save the opening of the Sacred Heart upon the cross for the creation of that Church, even as in the earthly paradise the side of the first man was opened for the creation of the first Eve?
“For this reason was the first woman made from the side of a sleeping man and was called the life and the mother of the living. The event signified a great benefit in anticipation of the great evil of the fall.
“This second Adam, hanging on the cross, fell asleep when He bowed His head that thereby there should be formed for Him a spouse springing from His side while He slept.”
“Let us contemplate,” says Bossuet, “this mysterious spouse the holy Church, drawn from and as it were forcibly extracted from the sacred side of the new Adam during his ecstasy (the ecstasy of death), and formed, so to speak, from this wound.
“Her whole being consists of nought but the bone and flesh of Jesus Christ, Who incorporated her with Himself in the mystery of the Incarnation, and in that of the Eucharist, where the Incarnation finds an admirable extension.
“He left all to seek her; He left in some sense the Father Whom He had in Heaven; He left His mother, the Synagogue, from whom He had sprung according to the flesh, in order to unite to Himself a bride chosen among the Gentiles.
“It is we who constitute that bride.
“It is we, who live by the flesh of Christ in the two great mysteries mentioned. It is we, who are, according to the words of St. Peter, a spiritual building, the living temple of the Lord, built in spirit from the time of the formation of Eve, our mother from the beginning of the world.”
Such, then, is the union between Jesus Christ and the Church sprung from His side pierced upon the cross, a union, I repeat, of which the Sacrament of Matrimony is by divine institution the august and inviolate representation.
“This is a great sacrament,” says the Apostle, “But I speak in Christ and in the Church.”
Yes, once again, the representation, but not a void and empty one, as were the figures of the Old Testament; but one ennobled now by all the prerogatives of the New Testament, rich with the richness of an already accomplished reality, and filled unto overflowing with the grace of the ineffable mystery which it represents.
Viewed in such a light, and by virtue of the Sacrament upon which it rests, the Christian family appears to strike its roots deep down into that Heart whence the Church herself sprang.
And if this is so, where is the devotion to the Sacred Heart more at home? Where shall it find a medium or, if one may say so, a soil more appropriate? Above all, where shall we discover a means more connatural for supernaturalizing (forgive the terms) the family and for raising it to the high ideal contemplated by Christ?
Let us read again what St. Paul said to the Ephesians:
“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church and delivered Himself up for it... so also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever hated his own flesh but nourisheth and cherisheth it, as also Christ doth the church: Because we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.
“For the same cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh.
“This is a great Sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the Church.
“Nevertheless let every one of you in particular love his wife as himself: and let the wife fear her husband. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is just... And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.
“Servants, be obedient to them that are your lords according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the simplicity of your heart, as to Christ: not serving to the eye, as it were pleasing men, but, as the servants of Christ doing the will of God from the heart... knowing that whatsoever good thing any man shall do, the same shall he receive from the Lord, whether he be bond or free.
“And you, masters, do the same things to them, forbearing threatening, knowing that the Lord both of them and of you is in Heaven; and there is no respect of persons with Him.”
What do you think, Reverend Father? Is this not a description of the interior of a household where the Sacred Heart would be enthroned?
As far as I am concerned, I will tell you in confidence that it appears to me that you have been forestalled by St. Paul. It even seems to me, and this is more serious, that there is in your work a feature which much resembles what in plain language is called plagiarism.
Reparation – and answering an objection
Finally your work, as its name implies, will be a homage of reparation paid to the sovereign rights of Our Lord which are on all sides overlooked.
I have said “as its name implies’’ though I am not unaware that an attempt has been made to turn this name into a weapon against you yourself.
But I also recognize in the clearest light that all the arguments advanced in this connection are absolutely devoid of worth.
There is only one of them which might perhaps afford some thin semblance of difficulty, and it is the one which claims that, as the Sacred Congregation of Rites has condemned the crowning of the image of the Sacred Heart, it has, by such a step alone, condemned also its enthronement.
But let us proceed less hastily. For that is not a fair way of putting the matter, since crowning and enthroning are not quite the same thing.
Even if it is not for us to crown Jesus Christ, Who is King after all not by our favor or will, but rather by right of birth, by the right of divine sonship and by the right also of conquest and purchase, nevertheless it is allowable for us, I imagine, to recognize His royalty and to proclaim it before mankind.
And this is nothing more or less than what is done by the enthronement which places His image in the place of honor, the place of sovereignty, the place of front rank.
For the rest, we see in the Gospel that after the multiplication of the loaves, when He knew they were coming to crown Him as King, Jesus hid Himself and fled to the mountain, whereas, on the other hand, on the day of palms, He allowed Himself to be enthroned.
The Gospels tell us they brought the ass and colt and laid their garments upon them and made Him sit thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way and others cut boughs of trees and strewed them in the way. And the multitude that went before and followed, cried:
“Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.”
Crowning Our Lady is different
Let there be no longer therefore any question of crowning the image of the Sacred Heart. That, in any case, we may remark in passing, would have nothing in common with the crownings which at times are made of Madonnas remarkable for the number and renown of their miracles, as at Lourdes, at Notre Dame des Victoires and in so many other sanctuaries.
For, in such cases, it is not the image of our Lady, as an image of our Lady, that it is intended to crown, but, what is very different, it is the image itself in as much as miraculous, in as much as distinguished from other images by a special manifestation of the power and goodness of her whom it represents.
And in such circumstances the act of crowning of the Sacred Heart was quite beyond the bounds of such cases as I have mentioned. Little wonder therefore, that it was set aside or, if you prefer it, condemned.
Final hearty endorsement
Once again then, let us not speak of it any more; but let us speak, aye, let us speak of the enthronement, of which, Reverend Father, you have made yourself the Founder and Apostle.
Let us oppose it to those who say: “We will not have this Man to reign over us.” It is in the home first of all that there must be pronounced the vigorous and energetic Volumus (“We will”), which is to be a reply to the cry of hellish hatred, today more loudly than ever uttered against Jesus Christ.
It only remains, Reverend Father, for me to express to you, with my warmest congratulations and good wishes for the success of your work, the homage of profound and religious respect in which I desire to sign myself
Your humble and devoted servant,
L. Billot, S. J.
N.B.— The words emphasized were underlined by His Eminence Cardinal Billot.
If you’re interested in doing this enthronement, then speak to a traditional Catholic priest in real life, and purchase the following book for more information:
Jesus King of Love – Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey
You will also find the ceremony and other information in the book Christian Warfare.
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Extracts from the Act of Enthronement
Deign, O Divine Heart, * to preside over our meetings, * to bless our undertakings, both spiritual and temporal, * to banish all worry and care, * to sanctify our joys * and soothe our sorrows. * If any of us * should ever have the misfortune to grieve thy Sacred Heart, * remind him of thy goodness and mercy * toward the repentant sinner.
Lastly * when the hour of separation will sound * and death will plunge our home into mourning, * then shall we all and everyone of us * be resigned to thy eternal decrees, * and seek consolation in the thought * that we shall one day be reunited in Heaven, * where we shall sing the praises and blessings of thy Sacred Heart * for all eternity. [...]
Glory be to thee, * O Sacred Heart of Jesus, * for the infinite mercy thou hast bestowed * upon the privileged members of this family. * Thou hast chosen it from thousands of others, * as a recipient of thy love * and a sanctuary of reparation * wherein thy most loving Heart shall find consolation * for the ingratitude of men. * How great, O Lord Jesus, * is the confusion of this portion of thy faithful flock * as we accept the unmerited honor * of seeing thee preside over our family! * Silently we adore thee, * overjoyed to see thee sharing * under the same roof * the toils, cares and joys of thy children!
It is true, we are not worthy * that thou shouldst enter our humble abode, * but thou hast already reassured us, * when thou didst reveal thy Sacred Heart to us, * teaching us to find in the wound of thy Sacred Side * the source of grace and life everlasting. * In this loving and trusting spirit * we give ourselves to thee, * thou who art unchanging Life. * Remain with us, Most Sacred Heart, * for we feel an irresistible desire * to love thee and make thee loved.
May our home be for thee * a haven as sweet as that of Bethany, * where thou canst find rest * in the midst of loving friends, * who like Mary * have chosen the better part * in the loving intimacy of thy Heart! * May this home be for thee, * O beloved Savior, * a humble but hospitable refuge * during the exile imposed on thee by thine enemies.
Come, then, Lord Jesus, come, * for here as at Nazareth, * we have a tender love for the Virgin Mary, thy sweet Mother * whom thou hast given us to be our Mother. * Come, * to fill with thy sweet presence the vacancies * which misfortune and death have wrought in our midst.
O most faithful Friend, * hadst thou been here * in the midst of sorrow, * our tears would have been less bitter; * the comforting balm of peace * would then have soothed these hidden wounds, * which are known to thee alone. * Come, for even now perhaps, * there is drawing near for us * the twilight of tribulation, * and the decline of the passing days * of our youth and our illusions.
Stay with us, * for already it is late, * and a perverted world seeks to envelop us * in the darkness of its denials * while we wish to adhere to thee * who alone art the Way * the Truth * and the Life. * Repeat for us those words * thou didst utter of old: * "This day I must abide in this home."
Further Reading:
[1] From the Act of Enthronement
[2] 'Adventures of a Missionary, Priest, and Tireless Promoter of the Sacred Heart', published by the SSPX District of the USA, June 23, 2017. Accessed 22 Jan 2023 at https://sspx.org/en/news/adventures-missionary-priest-and-tireless-promoter-sacred-heart-16892
[3] Ibid.