My dear friends, in today’s feast, we celebrate that one Heart which has beat for us with divine love from all eternity and which will continue to do so - the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In the earlier days of the Church, especially during the Middle Ages, devotion was given more to the wound in Christ’s side, created by the centurion on guard at the crucifixion as we saw illustrated in today’s gospel. In more recent times, however, especially with the mystical blessings received by Saint Margaret Mary the focus shifted to the Heart of Jesus and the unfathomable love Almighty God has demonstrated for us therein.
And then we come, in our modern day, through the likes of Blessed Carlos Acutis, to a greater awareness of the Eucharistic Miracles which have happened and are happening all around the world, which when examined scientifically and forensically, always reveal that the flesh and blood into which the consecrated host visibly transforms into, is always human, always has a male origin, with an AB blood type, and always, always… human flesh that you only find in the heart—endocardium. In the miracle reported in Argentina in 1985, when they finally tested and examined closely beneath a microscope, after two years, the miraculous host, the heart-tissue was observed as palpitating. It was as if they were examining the heart of a living man during a surgery.
In other words, God has been pleased to reveal to us his loving heart, so humble and meek, gentle and pure and holy, in the Eucharist we receive at every mass when in a state of grace.The tender Heart of Jesus, who is Almighty God, with the Father and the Spirit, desires to draw close to us and give us his everything by becoming one with us.
It is not without reason that the Church raises up its praises or thanksgiving with joyful melody and royal instruments, in jubilation that God thought it fitting that he should not only create all things, but that he should reveal himself to his creatures, love them, and wish to become one with them.
This is divine love. This is the love with which you are eternally, infinitely, unequivocally and unconditionally loved by God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This is a love which has been and will always be attentive to our needs. As we see in today’s first reading through Hosea, when the Israelites were being imprisoned and abused in Egypt for over 400 years, God was there in the Jewish camps, somehow giving them the drive and inspiration to continue believing and looking forward to their eternal destination with him. Though they didn’t have a very articulated theology of what was to come, God had put it in their hearts, that he is not the God of the dead, but of the living and that all flesh continues to live in his sight, so that they had something to look forward to after a life of “sweating at the brow” to put heavy labour in biblical language. What we know so clearly today, that God receives not only our immortal soul at death but will also on the Last Day raise up our bodies and glorify them, they knew by divine illumination and spiritual instinct. Yet all the while, even there, while they laboured in the heat of the day, God was applying his healing love upon them and consoling them, until the allotted time when he would send them his liberator, Moses. Listen to God’s words through the prophet Hosea today:
“When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.”
Obviously, the Israelites (which in this passage fall under the umbrella of “Israel” as God’s son) were undergoing great hardships in Egypt as slaves of Pharaoh, and they prayed, but they thought God had forsaken them and that he wasn’t hearing their prayers. All the while he was healing them. Healing them of mistaken notions of him, of their purpose, of their destinies.
It is most often the case that when God seems hidden, his heart beats all the more powerfully for us. Jesus, in capturing this human emotion when suffering on the cross, and crying out to the Father who seemed distant, was actually being sustained by Him who was suffering right alongside with him, and in fact, we can say ‘in’ him… for as Saint Paul puts it, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” Imagine the heart of the Father enduring his Eternal Son’s passion with him, being always present with him through his brutal ordeal.
In Christ’s Heart therefore, we see the Heart of the Father as well. “Philip, you see me, you see the Father.” God spends himself, holds nothing back, so as to love us into a paradise with him. A lot of people have asked throughout the generations, “If God is love, why this, and why that?” The truth is, we have only the faintest idea of how much he truly loves us, and what we should really be concerned about is our love for him. His love never dwindles, or fades away—while ours does and so it needs to be enkindled continually, just as in the second reading, Saint Paul prayed that the Father, “Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to
grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.” Paul speaks about the “hidden self” indicating how this is a deep and personal work in progress, which we work out in quiet and prayer, while allowing the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts from stone to flesh, full of love so as to be utterly full of God.
We could say that some people for whom Saint Paul’s prayer “worked” were all the Saints, now in heaven. One of these was Saint Francis of Assisi. While our Seraphic Father, Saint Francis, is not traditionally associated with the devotion to the Heart of Jesus, his spiritual life and teachings were deeply rooted in the mysteries of Christ's love and passion.
In fact, Francis's devotion to the Passion of Christ was a central aspect of his spirituality. He believed that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was the ultimate expression of God's love for humanity, and he sought to emulate Christ's humility, poverty, and charity in his own life in such an intense and perfect way that God even adorned his body with the five wounds, which included of course the wound in our Lord’s side, pierced with a lance, so as to get to his heart to make sure he was dead on the cross as we read in today’s gospel.
My dear brothers and sisters, may we have the same blessing and grace to experience Christ’s love in such a tangible way in our lives, by meditating more on his loving passion for us, truly the pinnacle of the masterpiece of his love for us, which he has woven through the fabric of salvation history, and which continues to transform our own hearts today. Amen.
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