Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: Sacred Heart

  • The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    As we come up to the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation, the bishops of our nation yesterday, on the Eve of this Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, consecrated our nation to that Most Sacred Heart. They were going to do it today, but yesterday they were meeting in Florida for their spring convocation and wanted to do that consecration together. Today, we will join in that consecration after the Universal Prayers.

    We’ve all heard the teaching that God is love.  And that’s a good thing to remember: I tell school students they should always remember that, and if they do, they’ll know quite a bit about our God.  God is love in its purest form, so pure in fact that it burns away all our imperfections and makes us new people, washed clean in the Blood of Christ.  True love wills the good of the other for the sake of the other, and God models that best by having sent His only Son to live our life and die our death and raise us to new life with him forever.

    Today, the word “love” is tossed about in all sorts of ways.  Love can be construed as lust, or even affection, and real love isn’t any of that.  Real love isn’t bound by agendas, selfishness, or pride, and it is hard, no impossible, for us to avoid those things given our fallen human nature.  But, if we let Him, if we get out of his way, God will fill us with his grace, and give us love emanating from the Sacred Heart of Jesus that will fill our lives with love beyond measure.

    And let’s be clear: God loved us first and loves us best.  He loved us into existence and sustains us in his love.  Because God is love, he cannot not love.  But our agendas, selfishness, and pride can certainly get in the way, and now is the time to root all of that out because our world, our communities, our families, our churches, and certainly our nation need our love.  Everyone needs to see the Sacred Heart burning in us, because this world, left to its own crime, sin, death, and blasphemy, is way too sad without it.

    We are all broken and hurting and in pain, spiritually. We might ignore it, or offer it up, or worst of all, might try to mask it with alcohol or other addictions. But none of that really heals us. The only thing that really heals is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  The same is true for our broken world.

    We don’t trust God as much as we should; we don’t let God love us as much as we should. We want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, that’s such an American attitude: we want to take care of ourselves all by ourselves. Pope Francis said that God never gets tired of showing us mercy, it’s we who get tired of asking. And that’s so sad. We weren’t made for that. We were made to be cared for and to be loved so that we can take care of others and love them in the name of Christ.

    God’s love is awesome. It doesn’t just cover our sins, it wipes them out, obliterates them so that they aren’t who we are any more. In the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, we find a love that is so pure and so powerful that it cannot be overshadowed by any kind of darkness, nor be snuffed out even by the grave.

    But we absolutely have to let him love us, or we will miss it every time.

    Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

  • The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

    Today’s readings

    I remember when I was growing up, often visiting my dear grandmother.  I remember when we visited that she had a beautiful framed picture in the living room, given a spot of honor where everyone could see it, and that picture was of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Whenever I think of the Sacred Heart, I remember grandma, whose name was Margaret Mary, named after the saint who promoted veneration of the Sacred Heart in the first place.

    And so, today we celebrate, with incredible gratitude, the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  Through his most Sacred Heart, the love of God is made manifest among us.  This love is a pervasive love that burns in our hearts and changes our lives and leads us back to the God who made us for himself.  This love is irresistible if we give ourselves over to it.  It is a love that pursues us and a love that can go far beyond whatever distance we have fallen from grace.  It is a love that, as Moses tells us in the first reading, does not come to us because we are great, but because God has chosen us, and, as Saint John tells us in the second reading, must continue to be poured out by us onto the world around us.  We who have been loved into existence must love others as we have been loved.  The love of God pours forth from the heart of Christ just as the water and blood poured forth from his side as he hung dead on the cross.  Death could not stop the outpouring of grace that he came to bring.

    Today’s Gospel reading gives us a beautiful picture of God.  God is love, in fact God is a community of love.  We can recognize God’s presence as we experience love; that is how the Son reveals the Father to his people.  God is love and creates us in love and sustains us in love.  In love, we long to return to him one day.

    Today’s feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus finds us wholly consumed by grace.  We have been loved into existence by our God who made us like himself.  We have been loved into grace by Jesus who gave his life rather than live without us.  And we are being loved into heaven as we give ourselves over to the work of the Holy Spirit who is that love between the Father and the Son.  God is love and today we experience how powerful that love can be if we give ourselves over to it.