A JESUIT & THE SACRED HEART

When I was in college I was fortunate to have a wonderful academic counselor (mandatory for all students in my era) who later became my spiritual advisor.  It was he who really brought me to a love of the SACRED HEART of JESUS.  Little did I know at the time that he had just written and published a book  (1959) on the encyclical "Haurietis Aquas”  (You Will Draw Waters"),  the landmark encyclical of Pope Pius XII on devotion to the Sacred Heart written on May 15, 1956.

Father Dachauer, who himself had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart, gave a simple and clear commentary in order “to help the reader better understand the significance of the Holy Father’s message, and to appreciate the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

One is struck by the beautiful insight of Father Dachauer into the threefold love of the Heart of Christ. This book gives a little more of the scriptural, traditional, theological, ascetical and historical background of this most important document on the Sacred Heart.

I know very little about Father Alban J. Dachauer, SJ, except he was from Milwaukee and entered the Society of Jesus in 1931. He received his BA from St. Louis University in 1936 and his MA in German three years later. He was ordained in 1944 and began teaching at Marquette in 1946.

In March, 1956, he was named assistant to the director general of the Apostleship of Prayer in Rome. He retired from that post and returned from Rome in 1958. He had a gift for modern languages, a talent that earned him a post at Creighton University in the language department.

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When I lived in Europe in the late 60s, Father had moved back to Rome, so I would visit him.

Being a true German, he was at times stern, but always had a twinkle in his eye, as if he had some  marvelous secret waiting to be told.

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In 1956  he was recruited to organize a prayer book published under the title  "With the Blessings of the Church" (later updated & titled  "The Rural Prayer Book" ) - literally, a book granted special permissions by Pope Pius XII to translate the published collection of prayers and blessings from their original Latin to English.

The prayer book written in cooperation with the National Rural Life Conference, included a plethora of blessings, prayers and devotions to mark specific seasons, feast days, holidays and holy days along with events of significance in the lives of simple country people.

The book includes prayers for blessing everything from houses to bacon.  “Even in a world where farmers are fewer and those still in the profession are guided more by computers than tradition we can gather for ourselves a simple guide to what Jesus knew when he commended his spirit into the hands of his Father.”                                                                                               Bishop Thomas G. Doran, Rockford, Ill.