Spiritual Life
Have you ever noticed that strawberries look like hearts? A strawberry starts as a golden berry in the center of a snowy white flower, which eventually grows larger and reddens into a sweet ripe fruit. It’s probably a God-incidence that fresh strawberries appear in the month of June, the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart. If you’ve ever picked a strawberry warmed by the sun and popped it into your mouth, you know how delicious the warm goodness tastes!
So this is just one way to teach your children about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Heart so aflame with love for us all. We believe very much in teaching opportunities, and this strikes us as a good one.
June is also the month in which we issue our annual Play + Pray Challenge to all families with children, and we want to encourage you to take up this challenge! Because if you want to pray with your children, you need to play with them first. To recap, the Challenge consists of three things:
This is a personal challenge to us as Catholics! We are different from the world. Most people know they have to work to connect with their kids. Many also know they have to work on their marriage. But what they don’t know is that families need Jesus! The fact is that the three things are connected, and that connection is crucial! Even we Catholics can forget this at times!
This is because sometimes we talk as though everything needed to make a good marriage depends on us: that we just have to hold on tight and power through virtue to create a Catholic family. But that’s so backwards! We do NOT get to heaven by our own efforts! The key to marriage and family is SURRENDER. We surrender ourselves and our own wills to the Sacred Heart of Christ. We acknowledge Him as the King and Friend of our family and we ask Him to guide us and we promise to obey Him. HE is the one who makes all things possible!
It’s worthwhile to review the 12 promises that Christ made to St. Mary Alacoque about the blessings that follow when we consecrate ourselves to His loving Heart: they are incredible promises not only for us parents but for our family members! It’s worthwhile reading over them slowly and thinking about them and explaining them to our children.
12 Promises of the Sacred Heart
1. I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life.
This means that married people will have the grace to pursue their spouse and love them and be faithful to them: parents will have the grace to parents well, and children will have the grace they need to honor and obey their parents.
2. I will establish peace in their families.
Wow! Can you imagine this? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all spoke kindly to each other, acted more generously, and just enjoyed being together as a family?
3. I will bless every home in which an image of My Heart is exposed and honored.
This is why we enthrone the Sacred Heart with a beautiful image in a prominent place in our home, where we can see it daily and surround it with prayer.
4. I will console them in all their difficulties.
Can you imagine how much Christ wants to comfort you when you’re sad? He knows how to comfort us and how to speak to us – in our hearts or through others.
5. I will be their refuge during life and especially at the hour of death.
Death is scary, and sometimes life is scary! Wouldn’t it be great to have the sense that Christ is present to you, no matter what happens?
6. I will shed abundant blessing upon all their undertakings.
This means that Christ will be with us in our different projects or efforts, whether that’s getting a good grade in school or starting a business or trying to become a great baseball player!
7. Sinners shall find in My Heart a fountain and boundless ocean of mercy.
We all need God’s mercy! We all need second chances, and third chances, and… this is why God promises us His mercy. He will always be there to welcome us home.
8. Tepid souls shall become fervent.
We become tepid when we take God and our Catholic faith for granted and care so little about Him that we don’t even try. But in this promise, Christ says He will pursue us and set us on fire again, so we can return to Him full of love!
9. Fervent souls shall rise speedily to great perfection.
If we give ourselves to God daily and try to really love Him more and more, Christ will super-charge our actions to help us get close to Him as fast as possible!
10. I will give to priests the power of touching the hardest hearts.
Priests are our shepherds. Sometimes they struggle to be the best preachers, the gentlest confessors, the most available friends to those in need. Christ promises to help those priests so that they can reach those who are unreachable and most distant from God.
Aren’t those ten promises just amazing? If that was all there was, we would be blessed indeed. But let’s think about strawberries again for a moment. There’s yet another lesson here!
You might know that strawberry plants are perennials: they come back year after year if they have good soil, good sun, and lots of water, but they need renewal to keep on growing, just like us. But the true sign of a healthy strawberry plant is that it sends out runners. Once a strawberry plant puts out white blossoms and starts bearing fruit, its next step is to grow more stems that travel above the soil to find another good place to dive down and grow another plant!
The lesson here is that we need to spread the devotion to Christ’s Sacred Heart. That’s why we made the Play + Pray Challenge: not just to challenge ourselves but to challenge others. We want to dare other families to surrender to the most Loving Heart of Christ and make Him King! That way, the Kingship of Christ can spread all over the world!
Listen to the final two promises of the Sacred Heart:
11. Those who propagate this devotion shall have their names written in My Heart never to be blotted out.
Because spreading devotion to the Heart of the Redeemer is so important to Him, Christ will bless in a special way those who dedicate themselves to spreading the kingship of His Most Sacred Heart!
Lastly Christ promised St. Margaret:
12. I promise you, in the excessive mercy of My Heart that My all-powerful love will grant to all who communicate on the First Friday of the month for nine consecutive months the grace of final penitence; they shall not die in My displeasure nor without their last Sacraments: “My Divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.”
If you think that once a year isn’t enough to get your “strawberry plants” of devotion to Christ growing and spreading, consider making it part of your family culture to go to confession and Mass on the first Friday of every month. (The devotion says nine, but we know, things come up, and if your family aims for 12, you’re probably certain to make nine!)
So those are twelve great reasons to take the Play & Pray Challenge this year, and to encourage EVERYONE YOU KNOW to do it as well!
What if we could nudge even ten other families closer to Christ? Can you imagine how fast that would begin to affect the world? Let’s do it!
To take the Play + Pray Challenge this June, click the link below, then share the link with your family and friends! Talk with your spouse to prep the three elements of the challenge: a date night, a family fun day, and a time and place to enthrone Christ as King of your home. Put it on the calendar, pray for God’s grace, and make it happen!
And hey, don’t forget the lessons of the strawberry plant! Feast your family with a strawberry-themed dessert after you make the enthronement! You can slide strawberries onto a stick with chocolate covered marshmallows or other berries to make sweet kabobs, make a strawberry shortcake, or use these other fun ideas!
This June, let’s rededicate ourselves to the Heart of our loving Lord Jesus, and start sending out runners!
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© Messy Family Project 2026
