The Thought of Their Heart

2

The Thought of Their Heart

by Solange Hertz

Reviewed by Paula Haigh

(Available from The Remnant Bookstore, 336 - 280th Street, Osceola WI 54020 $10.50, plus $1.00 P&H)

If ever the Church Militant needed living role models, it’s now, and God has given us such a one in Solange Hertz. Her pen is mightier far than any sword because it is the love of God that drives her. Although the compact energy of her style is but one of Mrs. Hertz’s virtues as a writer, by means of it, which in this book is especially keen and, as always, intensely practical, she has given us what is surely the most urgent appeal for true devotion to the Sacred Heart written at any time. And this because the Sacred Heart devotion is above all “For the Latter Times” in which we are living. Though written some twenty years ago, The Thought of Their Heart is more timely, more relevant, and more needed now than ever before.

Combined with the original version of The Thought of His Heart is Mrs. Hertz’s Big Rock paper on the Rosary, originally titled “The Holy Rosary: Opusculum Dei, the Ultimate Liturgy.”

After the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments, it is the most powerful weapon ever placed at the disposition of the faithful. Dare we say more powerful? Yes, in the sense that, somewhat like Baptism and Marriage, it does not depend on the clergy – or in fact on any human being. Although not actually a Sacrament, through Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces, it infallibly opens to us at any time or place the inexhaustible fountain of living water flowing from the Sacred Heart of the Savior. (pages 82-3)

And from the earlier version, “Where this stubborn link with her cannot be broken, the best laid plans of hell are doomed, as hell well knows.” What blessed hope is in those words!

The appropriateness of the new title is easily understood once Mary’s exalted relationship to the Blessed Trinity is realized. As Daughter of the Father, Mother of the Son, and Spouse of the Holy Ghost, her Immaculate Heart furnished the Blood that redeemed us. (page 64) So perfect was her union with Christ’s supreme sacrifice on Calvary that St. John Eudes was in the habit of invoking “the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary.”

As all this indicates, The Thought of Their Heart is all about loving God and Mary, our Lord and our Lady, and our neighbor. Mrs. Hertz sums up her theme this way:

Whoever says loving is easy either lies or hasn’t tried it, or both. It’s the most difficult achievement that man in his fallen state could possibly tackle, yet his life depends on it. It’s so difficult God Himself had to come down eventually and show us how, because we hadn’t the heart for it. As things developed, He had to give us that too. And that wasn’t easy for Him either. (page 2)

Loving is not only difficult, it’s absolutely necessary. So there’s no excuse:

To refuse to love is to disobey God. Thou shalt love or else. The crisis of faith in our thinking today manifests itself as a crisis of love in our wills. Not believing, we can’t love; not loving, we stop believing. All God’s lesser prescriptions depend on His command to love. To disobey it disqualifies us for all other tests, whereas obeying it automatically leads us to do everything God wants us to do and to avoid.

Furthermore, “That Benediction has all but disappeared from the liturgy, or that the Church doors are locked, or that the Sacrament Itself may no longer be reserved, can be seen to be no excuse at all when we look deeply into the matter.” (page 52) “With truly prophetic insight,” Fr. Mateo Crawley-Boevey “began preaching Eucharistic Adoration as a practice most proper to the home. Already in the late 1920’s, he was signing up families for one hour a month of night adoration, at a time when the Real Presence was taken for granted in every Catholic church and expected to continue there until the end of the world.” (page 53)

Father Mateo foresaw the social evils of our time and seems to have envisioned the Image of the Sacred Heart in the home as intended by our Lord to evoke in us the same Real Presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Such is Eucharistic Adoration in the home – a practice so far from being outmoded as to be yet hardly begun. (page 53)

Also included in the book is “Mary’s Remnant” (originally titled, if I recall correctly, “The Merry Remnant”) from a 1990 article:

A million or a handful, only they will ever be faithful to the end…

However their numbers swell, they are always our Lord’s “little flock,” to whom He attends, personally, whispering through His Holy Ghost, “Fear not, for it has pleased your Father to give you a kingdom” (Luke 12:32). Whoever they are, wherever they are, and whatever they may look like, the remnant has absolutely nothing to worry about. They know exactly where their leadership lies. Now, as at that first Christmas when angels sang on earth, it is where wise men always find Christ the King: “with Mary His mother” (Matt. 2:11). (page 97-98)

An Appendices furnishes the complete text of Haurietis Aguas the encyclical of Pius XII on Devotion to the Sacred Heart and Octobri Mense by Leo XIII on the Rosary. There is also “The Consecration of the Family to the Sacred Heart” on page 56 and the short act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Saint Margaret Mary on page 48.

What a treasure Mrs. Hertz has given us! Rather God has given it to us through her. Blessed be God in His Angels and in His Saints!

Such in brief is The Thought of Their Heart. But it is impossible to paraphrase Mrs. Hertz or do justice to the brilliant mosaic of her work. She must be read and pondered in her own incomparable words. She has been given a very special power to motivate her readers toward the goal of loving God and Mary in the uncompromising and all-consuming way of the Saints. Nothing else will do, especially in these times of suffocating mediocrity and deadly hedonism. We must either love totally or “abide in death.” (1 John 3:14) “Wanting to love, doing the works of love is to love.” (page 5) There is our hope.

Veritas Press of Santa Monica is to be congratulated for having the Catholic sense and courage to publish the works of Solange Hertz: The Star Spangled Heresy; Utopia: Nowhere Now Here to date, and now The Thought of Their Heart, with more to come, we hope. Worthy of special notice and praise, too, are the very attractive and colorfully illustrated covers of Mrs. Hertz’s books. They are all done by Larry Fisher of Los Angeles. Being done by the same artist, the books present a recognizable format that gives them the look of a set. The three books together would make a most timely and appropriate Christmas gift for any serious Catholic. For the revelation of the supernatural significance of all things is not to be found anywhere else with the clarity and passion so characteristic of Mrs. Hertz. In her there is no flight from the Cross down the broad smooth pathways of the dangerously free spirit of Vatican II. On the contrary! In her the Church Militant lives and speaks and loves fearlessly in truth.

______