Then she looked right at me and said, "I can tell: you like it too, don’t you?" I gave my fake smile and turned in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t help taking one final peek. Sure enough, the image moved again, and I could almost swear it had moved just for me!

"That’ll be two dollars and fifty cents, please." I couldn’t believe it: I was inside the store getting ready to hand over two and a half bucks for an awful picture I didn’t even like, and I couldn’t help myself.

"Nice picture, eh," the clerk said as he put it in the paper bag and handed it to me. "No," I said in a very normal tone of voice, "it’s actually an awful picture and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why I am buying it!"

I don’t know if he expected me to try and return it then and there but in any case he said, "Oh! It’s one of my favorites."

Two in a row! Maybe they’re both crazy? Or maybe I’m the one who needs professional help: after all, I’m the one who just paid $2.50 for one of those gaudy, tacky pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus! Arghhhhhhhhh!

The eminent Protestant theologian Karl Barth had a particular difficulty with this Catholic theology/devotion to Christ under the guise of the Sacred Heart. He felt that it overly glorified Christ’s humanity in such a way that the divine was evaded and camouflaged.

Well, for a long time I had a problem with devotion to the Sacred Heart too, but my reasons were not as "sophisticated" as his.

Mine were more like, "Given the astounding nature of this revelation about the Heart of the incarnate Son of God, how do we manage to have such gaudy, tacky art and music as that which has plagued us from its very conception? Why do we have such poor taste when it comes to making visible the great truths of our Faith?

What ever happened to the likes of Michelangelo, Bernini, Fra Angelico, and company? Is the best we can do a reflective paper image sold at a junk store in a mall?" Yes Mr. Barth, I was kinda with you, until….

I met another "little ol’ lady," Catherine Doherty—actually not so little and not so old at the time—who insisted, with a passion which I didn’t understand at the time, that nothing about the images of Christ, his Mother, the angels or saints was tacky or gaudy.

Everything, she said, was a blessed "sacrament" created by God to put flesh on the beautiful things of faith. If an image brought hope or joy into someone’s life who was bereft of it, then, for her, that image was holy no matter how gaudy or tacky it might seem to us.

She planted the seed but I was still too "refined," too "stylish," too "sophisticated," to let it grow.

Enter another "little ol’ lady" who finally jerked a knot in my tail and brought me to my knees.

Rose Mary was dying little by little and I visited her at least a couple of times every week. After bringing her Holy Communion one morning, I asked if there was anything special I could do for her. I could not believe her request.

It was OK that she wanted to hold her tacky, gaudy, statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—I could understand that. And it was OK that she loved hearing me sing at church and wanted me to sing her a song—I could understand that too.

But she requested the tackiest song ever: it was the one song that drove me up the wall at the Sacred Heart devotions on First Fridays in our parish and no matter what I did she managed to get it sung almost every single month against my wishes!

Oh well. She had been such a good friend and so powerful a figure of faith in the community. She was now 92 years of age; I couldn’t refuse her.

So out it came: "O Sacred Heart, O Love Divine, Come Listen to My Prayer." But I couldn’t finish it. Not primarily because it was so tacky but because all the while I was trying to sing she was huggin’ an’ kissin’ the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus like he was right there, just for her.

So me being Irish, what am I gonna do but shut up, fall down, and weep—and I haven’t learned how to sing and weep at the same time yet!

I think it was then and there I began to realize that in all those gaudy and tacky images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is hidden one of the loveliest truths of our Faith: Our God has a heart! Our God loves talking to us Heart to heart, weeping with us Heart to heart, hugging and holding us Heart to heart.

No matter how poorly we sing it or mold it into some visible image, that hymn is holy and there’s nothing tacky or gaudy about it at all.

And just in case you’re having trouble with all that Sacred Heart stuff yourself too, keep your eye pealed for those "little ol’ ladies" in your parish. They can teach you things your won’t ever learn from a book. (Sorry about that, Karl.)

And thanks to all the holy little ol’ ladies in my life, there it is, that gaudy, tacky "lovely" image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus hangin’ on the wall, as big as you please, right next to the altar in my poustinia.

And when I fire-up my candles for Mass, the light reflects on him just like in the mall that first time, and every now and then he moves—just for me.

P.S. Let’s keep that between ourselves for now. OK? I don’t particularly want to be "medically confined" just yet.

So, often during the week, in the late night, you can find this "tacky ol’ priest" movin’ back and forth in the candle light in front of his gaudy ol’ picture, praying for people everywhere—for you and you and you, Karl Barth. "Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us. Sacred Heart of Jesus…."

He moved! No, this time he really did!