The purpose of devotion to the Sacred Head

Our Lord asked Teresa that his Sacred Head be honoured as the seat of Divine Wisdom, of the Divine Memory, Understanding and Will, the shrine of the powers of his Holy Soul, most cruelly mocked, spat upon and crowned with thorns, as an antidote for the sins of intellectual pride and self will which so dominate our world.  We live in an age dominated by scepticism, scientific materialism, liberalism and militant secularism, under the conceit and illusion that it is more enlightened and wiser than any gone before. The myth of 'modern man' has developed, a superior class of human being that is emancipated from the yoke of moral conscience, natural law and any value or tradition: the Übermensch of Friedrich Nietzsche.

All these great evils were to be anticipated and atoned for in the Sacred Head in Our Lord's Sacred Passion.  The Divine Wisdom, infinitely greater than any human learning and the source of all creation far greater than any modern science, assumed our mortal human nature, a human mind, a human brain and a human soul.  Just as the Sacred Heart is the seat of Divine Love, the Sacred Head is the seat of Divine Wisdom.  God in his divine person understands us with a human mind, and loves us with a human heart.  O Wisdom of the Sacred Head, guide me in all thy ways!  O love of the Sacred Heart, consume me with thy fire!

For a militant secularism which denies Kingship of Christ and seeks to exclude the faith from public life, the Sacred Head was crowned with thorns.  For the existential angst, despair and horror that plagues modern art, literature and film, the Sacred Head was bathed with the sweat of blood in the garden of Gethsemane.  For a scepticism that denies and refuses truth with all its heart, the Sacred Head was blindfolded and asked to prophesy.  For those who consider themselves as 'modern men', superior to their forebears, emancipated from value and moral conscience and contemptuous of the Christian faithful as backward, regressive and ignorant, the Sacred Head was mocked, spat upon and struck with a reed.  For a self will that refuses to obey any higher authority or submit to any greater truth in the name of 'freedom', 'rights' and 'autonomy', the Sacred Head meekly bowed to the unjust judgement of Pontius Pilate.  For a scientific materialism that denies the creation of the world and any purpose or finality in it, the Sacred Head, seat of the Wisdom of God by which all things were made, was bowed to earth on the cross as he expired.