Feast of the Sacred Heart 2027

The Feast of the Sacred Heart 2027 falls on Friday, June 4, 2027. On this day the Church honors the Heart of Jesus, pierced on the cross, as the sign of the love with which he loves the Father and every one of us. It is a solemnity, celebrated in white, and this year it falls on the First Friday of the month, the day many of us already give to the Sacred Heart.

Sacred Heart 2027 at a glance

• Pentecost: May 16, 2027
• Trinity Sunday: May 23
• Corpus Christi: Sunday, May 30, in the United States (Thursday, May 27, in the universal calendar)
• The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: Friday, June 4, 2027, also the First Friday of June
• The Immaculate Heart of Mary: Saturday, June 5, an optional memorial this year
• Readings (Year B): Hosea 11:1, 3-4, 8c-9; Ephesians 3:8-12, 14-19; John 19:31-37

How the date is set

The feast keeps the day Our Lord asked for. In June 1675, during the octave of Corpus Christi, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Visitation nun at Paray-le-Monial in France, received what the Catholic Encyclopedia calls the "great apparition." Christ showed her his Heart and said, "Behold the Heart that has so loved men," and asked for a feast of reparation on "the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi." The octave is gone from the calendar, but the day remains: the Friday after the second Sunday after Pentecost, which always falls nineteen days after Pentecost. With Pentecost on May 16, 2027, it is June 4.

Because it is a Friday solemnity, the usual Friday abstinence does not apply. Canon 1251 lifts it when "a solemnity should fall on a Friday."

How the feast came to the whole Church

St. Margaret Mary was not the first to keep it. The Catholic Encyclopedia credits St. John Eudes, "above all the apostle of the Heart of Mary," with giving the Heart of Jesus a public Office and feast: the first was celebrated at the seminary of Rennes on August 31, 1670. After St. Margaret Mary's visions, her confessor, St. Claude de la Colombière, spread her account, and the request reached Rome. Rome moved slowly. It refused a general feast in 1697 and again in 1729, then granted one in 1765. In 1856 Blessed Pius IX, at the request of the French bishops, extended the feast to the universal Church; Pius XII marked the centenary with his encyclical Haurietis aquas, recalling the decree of August 23, 1856. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII consecrated the whole human race to the Sacred Heart.

The Gospel: the pierced Heart

This year's Gospel is the piercing of Christ's side on the cross, in the Douay-Rheims translation:

But after they were come to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water.

And he that saw it, hath given testimony, and his testimony is true. (John 19:33-35)

The Fathers saw the sacraments of the Church, Baptism and the Eucharist, flowing from that wound. The first reading is one of the tenderest passages in the prophets, God speaking of Israel as a child he taught to walk: "I will draw them with the cords of Adam, with the bands of love" (Hosea 11:4).

Keeping the Feast of the Sacred Heart in 2027

Go to Mass on Friday, June 4, if you can; it is not a day of obligation, but it is the Lord's own feast. Because it is also the First Friday, those making the Nine First Fridays can receive Communion that day in reparation, as Our Lord asked of St. Margaret Mary; see the First Friday devotion for how the practice works and what the Great Promise does and does not mean. Many parishes hold Eucharistic adoration or a holy hour that evening.

At home, the feast is the traditional day to renew the consecration of the family, or to enthrone an image of the Sacred Heart for the first time. Leo XIII's Act of Consecration, the Litany of the Sacred Heart and shorter prayers are all on our Sacred Heart prayer page. Let us pray it together as a family on June 4, placing every member and every worry in the Heart that loved us first.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary, June 5

The next day the Church honors the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Heart that kept and pondered all these things. In 2027 it falls on Saturday, June 5, the same day as the memorial of St. Boniface. The US calendar explains that the Immaculate Heart "becomes an Optional Memorial in years when it conflicts with another Obligatory Memorial," so priests may choose either. It is also the First Saturday, a natural day for the First Saturday devotion.

For the feasts just before, see Trinity Sunday 2027 and Corpus Christi 2027; for the rest of the year, the Catholic calendar 2027.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, we place all our trust in you.