Consecration of the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Eve of Its 250th Anniversary
USCCB Spring General Assembly, Our Lady of the Universe, Orlando, Florida
June 11, 2026<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Why We Consecrate<\/p>\n
My brother bishops, dear priests & deacons, women & men in consecrated life, and faithful lay men and women, dear friends in Christ all:
What a remarkable moment of grace we are privileged to share.\u00a0On the threshold of our nation\u2019s 250th anniversary,\u00a0we gather, not first to celebrate ourselves, but to consecrate. To entrust.\u00a0To place the Church in the United States, and indeed the whole nation,\u00a0into the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
Why do we do this? Because consecration is an act of faith.\u00a0It is an acknowledgment\u00a0that history is not simply the story of what human beings accomplish;\u00a0it is the story of God\u2019s faithful love at work in the world.\u00a0We give thanks for the blessings of these past 250 years,\u00a0but we do so with humility, recognizing in faith\u00a0that every nation stands in need of God\u2019s mercy, wisdom, and guidance.\u00a0We consecrate our nation,\u00a0not because it is perfect, but because it is beloved by God.\u00a0We entrust to the Heart of Christ our achievements and failures,\u00a0our hopes and anxiety, our present challenges and our future aspirations.\u00a0We ask him to heal what is wounded, strengthen what is good,\u00a0and guide us towards a future marked by justice, peace, freedom,\u00a0and respect for the dignity of every human person.<\/p>\n
Consecration is also an act of hope.\u00a0It is a declaration that the future does not belong\u00a0merely to political movements, economic forces, or human plans.\u00a0The future belongs to God.\u00a0And so we place into His Heart, not only ourselves but generations yet unborn,\u00a0and all those who will inherit the Church and the nation we leave behind.<\/p>\n
Remaining in the Love of Christ<\/p>\n
In a culture that prizes independence and self-reliance,\u00a0we gather publicly to acknowledge\u00a0that our deepest identity and our truest hope come,\u00a0not from ourselves but from the Lord.\u00a0That is why today\u2019s Gospel is so fitting. Jesus says:\u00a0\u201cAs the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.\u201d\u00a0The Sacred Heart is the visible sign of that love. It is not an abstract devotion.\u00a0It is the revelation of God\u2019s love made flesh\u2014a heart that has known\u00a0joy and sorrow, friendship and betrayal, suffering and sacrifice.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s Gospel, Jesus tells us something else that is extraordinary.\u00a0He says, \u201cI have called you friends.\u201d\u00a0The Sacred Heart reveals a Savior who desires\u00a0not merely our obedience, but our friendship;\u00a0not simply our service, but our communion with Him.\u00a0To consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart is ultimately\u00a0to accept Christ\u2019s invitation to remain in His love\u00a0and to allow that love to shape every aspect of our lives, public and private.<\/p>\n
Consecration Requires Humility<\/p>\n
In my recent pastoral, In Charity & Truth: Towards a Renewed Political Culture,\u00a0I reflected on the certainty that love and truth are never opposed.\u00a0They meet perfectly in the Heart of Christ.\u00a0Jesus tells us: \u201cThis is my commandment: love one another as I love you.\u201d\u00a0To love as Christ loves is the true measure of Christian discipleship\u00a0and the true measure of our humanity.\u00a0Yet if we are honest, we must acknowledge\u00a0that neither our nation nor the Church has always clearly reflected that love\u2014\u00a0indeed, it is sometimes obscured almost beyond recognition.\u00a0To be sure, there have been moments of extraordinary witness and holiness.\u00a0But there have also been moments of failure, division, and sin.\u00a0Consecration requires the humility to acknowledge both.\u00a0We cannot come to the Heart of Christ\u00a0while pretending we have no need of His mercy.\u00a0To consecrate ourselves and our nation is\u00a0to place our wounds, our shortcomings, and our sins\u00a0before the One whose love is greater than all of them.<\/p>\n
Consecration Sends Us Forth<\/p>\n
Jesus also says in today\u2019s Gospel: \u201cIt was not you who chose me,\u00a0but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.\u201d\u00a0Those words describe the Church\u2019s mission throughout our nation\u2019s history. Catholics have contributed immeasurably to the life of this country\u00a0through faith, sacrifice, education, charity, and service.\u00a0We give God heartfelt thanks for that legacy\u00a0and commend to the love of his heart those who gone before us in faith.<\/p>\n
Yet consecration is not merely about remembering the past.\u00a0It is about accepting responsibility for the future.\u00a0To consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart means\u00a0remaining in Christ\u2019s love and carrying that love into the world.\u00a0It means building communities \u2013 ecclesial and civil \u2013\u00a0where truth is proclaimed clearly and charity is practiced generously.\u00a0It means resisting the temptation\u00a0to define ourselves by division, ideology, or resentment.\u00a0The Sacred Heart does not divide; it reconciles.\u00a0It does not harden hearts; it transforms them.\u00a0It does not simply invite us to receive love; it sends us forth to share it.<\/p>\n
My brother bishops, this Gospel speaks to us in a particular way.\u00a0\u201cI chose you.\u201d Those words should fill us with humility and gratitude.\u00a0Our ministry is not something we have earned;\u00a0it is a gift entrusted to us for the service of God\u2019s people & the wider community.\u00a0And to all the faithful: this consecration is not\u00a0something the bishops do for you. It is something we do together.\u00a0The renewal of the Church and our nation will not come thru declarations alone.\u00a0It will come through disciples who remain in Christ\u2019s love\u00a0and bear the good fruit of holiness\u00a0in families, parishes, communities and in their daily lives.<\/p>\n
As we approach this great anniversary of our nation,\u00a0we may be tempted towards nostalgia for the past or anxiety about the future. Today we choose something better: trust.\u00a0Today we place the Church in the United States, and this nation we love,\u00a0into the Sacred Heart of Jesus.\u00a0Not because we have everything figured out,\u00a0but because we know the One whose love endures forever.\u00a0In his Heart, we find\u00a0gratitude for the past, strength for the present, and hope for the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consecration of the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Eve of Its 250th AnniversaryUSCCB…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-698543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}