We have a heart problem.
Pope Francis named it plainly in Dilexit Nos, his 2024 encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus: many of the imbalances of our world are symptoms of a deeper crisis rooted in the human heart.
Yet for many Catholics, the Sacred Heart remains familiar but mysterious. We've seen the image. We've heard the words. Perhaps we've even prayed the prayers. But we may still wonder:
What exactly is the Sacred Heart - and what does it have to do with my life?
If you've ever asked that question, Cut to Shine - In the Hands of the Master Cutter is for you.
You don't need to know the history of the devotion. You don't need to already pray the Litany. You simply need a heart of your own - and the willingness to wonder what God may be doing with it.
A diamond does not create its own brilliance. It forms in darkness, under pressure, in hiddenness. Its beauty is revealed when a master cutter who understands the stone knows precisely where to cut. Each cut opens a new facet. Each facet allows more light to enter - and more light to shine out.
Cut to Shine approaches the thirty-three invocations of the Litany of the Sacred Heart as thirty-three facets through which we can encounter the Heart of Christ - and begin to understand our own.
Two questions guide the journey:
What does this invocation reveal about the Heart of Christ?
And what does it ask of mine?
Each answer moves into personal life, the home, and work, because the Sacred Heart was never meant to remain a private devotion.
Along the way, Scripture becomes startlingly alive. Rahab lowers a crimson cord from a window in a city about to fall. Joseph is thrown into a pit, formed in hiddenness for a moment he cannot yet see. Hosea buys back the wife who betrayed him. Esther walks unsummoned into the throne room. Gideon's men break their clay jars so the fire hidden inside can finally shine.
Their stories reveal a pattern: God has always worked through unlikely people, hidden seasons, wounds, waiting, pressure, and surrender to accomplish what human strategy alone could never produce.
And perhaps He is still doing it.
The journey traces a historical signal from Leo XIII's 1899 consecration of the world to the Sacred Heart, through Pope Francis's Dilexit Nos in 2024 and the election of Pope Leo XIV in 2025. It then journeys through the thirty-three facets before concluding with prayers of consecration for your heart, your home, and your work - and Waypoints of the Heart, a guide for returning when life's questions become your own.
Questions about longing. Mercy. Trust. Waiting. Suffering. Relationships. Becoming. Hope.
Cut to Shine is not written only for people who already understand devotion to the Sacred Heart. It is for anyone trying to understand what God may be doing with the unfinished, wounded, beautiful pieces of a human life.
It is an invitation to discover the Heart behind the devotion - and to look more closely at what the Master Cutter may already be doing in yours.
You are not creating the diamond. You are placing it in the hands of the One who already knows what it can become.
Deacon Jim Mullin was ordained a permanent deacon in 2020 and serves at Nativity Parish in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. He founded The Dew-Lit Way, a ministry of spiritual reflection, and teaches marriage preparation drawing on the Theology of the Body. He has been married to Dana for over forty-eight years.