How We Threw A Sacred Heart Party

The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart is one of my favorite feast days all year. I love celebrating Jesus' passionate love for us, His heart ablaze with His love and the signs of His Passion on display. The image of Christ holding or pointing to His Heart, showing us the mini Gospel - "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." - it is so perfectly quirky Catholic and I love it. 

This year our celebration lasted all day. The Solemnity is a Meat Friday so we ate bacon and then headed to noon Mass at the local, gorgeous, Sacred Heart Church, as is our custom. More bacon for lunch and then it was time for party prep - a group of friends were coming over for dinner!

We don't have an image of the Sacred Heart so I drew one on the chalkboard that hangs in a prominent spot in our home.

It's not bad.

Then I followed in Mary's footsteps and made fruit trays like the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, seen at her blog, Better Than Eden. I made mine a bit more simply because I didn't peel an orange, just opened a can of mandarin oranges, and I sprinkled chocolate chips on the strawberries instead of melting chocolate.

To keep things easy on everyone we made the night a potluck. Everyone brought their own meat, a dish to pass, and their own drink of choice. Travis manned the grill and the kids jumped on the trampoline, played on our swingset, and climbed our Maple tree.

As the sun was setting but before a single meltdown I called all the kids to the patio. Each parent got a prayer card and each person was given a glow stick. I stood in front of the kids and talked to them about the reason for our party, about God's great love for us, about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I invited them to snap their glow sticks and to wave them and wear them as a reminder of Jesus' Heart that burns for love of us.

Then as a group we all prayed the Prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. (If you ever have a Sacred Heart party please feel free to use the image! You can save it, insert it into a Word or Publisher Doc. Set the paper to Landscape and you can easily fit two per page.)

The kids ran off into the dusk, catching fireflies and we parents stayed in our comfy chairs, sipping rum or beer and chatting with one another. That sounds super saccharine-y so please know that about ten minutes later I spilled my drink on my lap. ha!

It was a great day, and I'm so grateful for my group of friends and for my husband who doesn't bat an eye when I say, "Let's have ten adults and twenty kids over and you can grill them all dinner!"