HEART OF JESUS, SOURCE OF THE GREATEST HEAVENLY GIFT.
June 16, 2023.
Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus – A.
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and
humble of heart…” Mt 11:29
A Sicilian proverb says: “Who loves with his heart sees from
a distance.” And a Japanese proverb adds: “The heart is the most essential
human quality.”
The heart, in many cultures, languages, and traditions, is
the symbol of love. And he who says love, speaks of the greatest gift, the gift
above any other. It has become a social and iconic language in many places
today. To express their love and pride for their city or subdivision, people
write, "I ❤️ ..." and the name of the
place. Social communication is filled with those iconic messages, mostly among
young people and lovers. Myself, on Social Media, I do speak of love every day.
At the center of what I call, a “Daily Love Story”, is something about the
heart. What my heart goes through and how it affects my life. For the heart is
central to any love story.
But, the pending question is why has the heart become so
famous for speaking of love, and how can we benefit from it in our journey of
faith?
We are celebrating today the Feast of the Sacred Heart of
Jesus, and special attention is to be put on the heart as a fountain of love
and of all heavenly gifts.
The Catechism, speaking of the heart of the Incarnate Word
says: "Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony and
his Passion, and gave himself up for each one of us: "The Son of God...
loved me and gave himself for me." He has loved us all with a human heart.
For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our
salvation, "is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of
that... love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal
Father and all human beings" without exception." CCC 478
To rightly appreciate this rich symbolism of the heart, we
must remember in Judaism, but also many other cultures, that the heart
represented the core of the person. It is said to be the center of the beings,
not because it is one of the most, to not say the most vital organ, but also
based on its anatomic position, in the center of the thorax. So, while it is
recognized as the principal life organ, the heart is also considered the center
of all spiritual activity. It is tagged to be the seat of all emotion,
especially love.
We can appreciate in many ways this rich symbolism of the
heart. And it has even greater depth when contemplated in light of all the
divine mysteries, from the incarnation to the redemption. The Word of God was
made flesh because of love. John 3:16 "For this is how God loved the
world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not
perish but may have eternal life." And he died on the Cross for that same
love. John 15:13: “There is no greater love than this: that a person would lay
down his life for the sake of his friends.”
Therefore, what we are celebrating today is God's love drank
to the end, to its full consummation: "Consummatum Est." The Heart of
Jesus is the symbol of a love that conquers sin, transcends death, and opens
mankind to new hope and life.
In the first reading, Moses reminds the children of Israel
about their election. He tells them: "If the Lord set his heart on you and
chose you, it was not because you outnumbered other peoples: you were the least
of all peoples. It was for love..." The choice of Israel as his people is
the work of God's heart eager to love and give itself. It is also a mark of his
faithfulness. In response to that love, the people were to set God as their
priority and their unique God. They were to love him with all their soul, all
their heart, all their strength. And somewhere, in the Gospel of Matthew, the
Lord Jesus added, and love their neighbor as themselves.
Love calls for love. That is what John says in his first
Apostolic Letter: "Let us love one another, since love comes from
God…" Love is God's gift to you and me. In return, not only must we love
God, the main call of the 'Shema Israel' the greatest divine commandment, but
we must also love our neighbor. Love is not an option, but a must. And the
Apostle John carries on saying: "Anyone who fails to love can never have
known God, because God is love." After the Sacraments of Baptism and
Eucharist, what makes us Christians, and so a member of the Body of Christ, is
our capacity to love. Without love, Christianism loses its specificity and
turns into a religion of violence.
Pope Benedict, started his Encyclical letter, "Deus
Caritas Est" by quoting St. John and said: “God is love, and he who abides
in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the
First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian
faith: the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its
destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the
Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for
us”.
We have come to believe in God's love: in these words, the
Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is
not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an
event, or a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.
Saint John's Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the
world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should ... have
eternal life” (Jn 3:16). DCE 1. For, as Christians, our best way to depict God
is through mercy and love. God for us is mercy, God is love. Our religion is
born from the Heart of Jesus, from his sacrificial love on the Cross. There, he
showed us the depths of God's love.
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