On January 1st, 1872, Father General Pieter Jan Beckx SJ consecrated the Jesuit Order to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. One hundred years later, on June 9th, 1972, Father General Pedro Arrupe SJ renewed this consecration.

July 31st is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola the Founder of the Jesuit. It also marks the closing of the ‘Ignatian Year,’ celebrating 500 years since the conversion of St Ignatius. To commemorate this occasion, on July 31 Superior General Arturo Sosa SJ will renew this consecration to the Sacred Heart.

We would like to invite you, as members of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network [Apostleship of Prayer], to join in this celebration. We invite you to join in a 9-Day Novena leading up to the consecration on July 31. In the novena, we will be calling upon the intercession of saints who had a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Please join us, with the Jesuits and members of the Prayer Network in this novena, and by making a personal consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on July 31.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, As Ignatius prayed in the small chapel of La Storta, you willed by a singular grace to grant the petition which he had been begging of you for a long time through the intercession of Our Lady: to be placed with your Son. In your words to him you assured him of your support: “I shall be with you.” You asked Jesus carrying his cross to take him as your servant, and this he did in turning to Ignatius with those unforgettable words: “It is my will that you serve us.” As the followers of the handful of men who were the first “companions of Jesus,” we in our turn address to you the same prayer, asking to be placed with your Son and to serve “under the banner of the Cross” where Jesus is nailed out of obedience, with his side pierced and his heart opened as a sign of his love for you and for all men. We renew today the consecration of the Society to the Heart of Jesus, we promise you all our fidelity and we ask for your grace to continue to serve you and to serve your Son with the same spirit and the same intensity as Ignatius and his companions. Through the intercession of the Virgin Mary who received the prayer of Ignatius, and before the Cross where Jesus Christ gives to us the treasures of his open heart, through Him and in Him, we say from the very depths of our being: “Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. Whatever I have or hold, you have given me; I restore it all to you and surrender it wholly to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace, and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.”

Consecration Prayer

Sacred Heart of Jesus, we entrust ourselves to you. We surrender to you our day, hopes, dreams, prayers, conversations, and work. As we join Father Arturo Sosa in the consecration of the Jesuit Order to the Sacred Heart we ask for the intercession of St. Ignatius Loyola to pray for the Jesuits and my own special intentions.