SOLEMNITY OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS – Year II
Revealing Our God Who is Love, Mercy and Compassion
(Dt 7:6-11; Ps 103; 1Jn 4:7-16; Mt 11:25-30)
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What word resonates in your heart more deeply – loyalty or love?
Today’s solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus invites us into a paradigm shift from an Old Testament worldview of law and loyalty, to a New Testament worldview of love and compassion.
The first reading and the psalm articulate clearly the beauty and depth of that first worldview. The Israelites were chosen by God to be God’s special people not because of any merit of theirs, but simply out of the magnanimous love of God for them. God redeemed them out of slavery and wanted to make them holy through covenant loyalty. Their responsibility was to keep the commandments, to live the law they were given on Mt. Sinai that was to be their way of life as God’s chosen people. Actually, they were called to be icons of God here on this earth, attracting all the other nations to the one true God.
The psalmist profusely spells out this covenant relationship. God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and full of steadfast love, has redeemed and vindicated them, wanted to heal them, crown them with steadfast love and work justice among them. All they had to do was believe in this goodness of God, listen to God’s word, and live out that covenant as individuals, families and as a nation.
The problem is the temptations of possession and pleasure, prestige and fame, power and control were too seductive and claimed their hearts and minds, over and over again throughout their history as a people. Despite all the warnings of the prophets who tried to call them back to their covenant relationship with a loving God who only wanted obedient love and justice from them, they were disloyal and unfaithful to the law. The situation became so bad that before the first exile and the destruction of the temple, the shekinah or glory of God lifted up and left the temple, and did not return to the second temple.
The second reading and gospel take us into the paradigm shift from law and loyalty, to love and compassion. For the first time in the history of humanity, we can know who our God and Father is, because the only one who knows the Father and sees the Father, has come to reveal the Father to us. The moment that Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom. That curtain, symbol of the old paradigm of earning God’s love, was there to separate people from the Holy of Holies. There is now no separation between God and us.
Jesus, on the cross, took us right into the heart of God, and revealed the true identity of the Father as mercy, compassion, humility, forgiveness, unconditional love and especially, total non-violence. All he asks of us is to believe in him as the Messiah, Son of God, redeemer and savior, and follow him by taking up our cross with faith, a cross that by the gift of his Spirit, he makes light and not burdensome. We can now accept some inconvenience and suffering in our lives without resentment or bitterness, knowing it has kingdom value and the power to be a blessing to us and other people who may be also suffering.
St. John in the second reading drives that point home. God is love and has loved us unconditionally in Christ, so now we are to love one another as Jesus has loved us. St. Augustine caught the spirit of this new paradigm that is all about intimate relationship and agape love, not demanding loyalty and rigid laws, with his statement, “Love and do what you will.” He could say that because those who truly believe and love God will want only to do what God wills for them.
Todays’ solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a celebration of that unconditional love of God for God’s people. The heart of Jesus is adored as a symbol of his threefold love: human, spiritual and divine. In the New Testament, the promise of living water is fulfilled in the pierced heart of the Messiah. According to The Word Among Us, devotion to the Sacred Heart goes back as early as the eleventh century. By the sixteenth century the image of Jesus’ heart, pierced by a lance and surrounded by a crown of thorns, was gaining in popularity, largely due to its promotion by the Franciscan and Jesuit orders.
But the most dramatic source of the devotion came from a humble Visitation Sister in France – St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690). In a series of visions, Jesus asked her to help establish a special feast day devoted to his heart. She spoke of Jesus’ Sacred Heart as “an abyss of love to meet our every need.” In 1856, Pope Pius IX established this day – the Friday after the feast of Corpus Christi – as a feast for the universal church. Today, the image of the Sacred Heart in the home has become a sign that the love of Jesus dwells in that family. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Today’s feast is an invitation as much as it is a commemoration. Jesus is inviting us to enter into his heart. He is inviting us to lose ourselves in his love and discover the power of that love to heal our hurts, enliven our hopes, and protect us from fear. He is inviting us to discover all over again how strong his love is for us. Nothing can ever quench it – not even our sins or unworthiness.
So, take up the invitation today. Fix your eyes on Jesus’ heart. Let his love flow over you and lift you up to heaven, and live out that love through an intimate relationship with him and agape love for all others.
