SACRED HEART OF JESUS

June 11, Friday

 

Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

 

No Greater Love

      Because our vision is narrow and limited, people pictured the great and unnamable God as inaccessible in a distant, fortified palace, wherein he withdrew after creating the world and people and where people’s sins could not harm him. Yet even in the Old Testament God made himself known as a God who loves and cares and who is deeply involved in human history. He fell in love with people, chose himself a nation and made a covenant with them. When his people became unfaithful as they could not really understand that God loved them, he showed himself with a human face and a heart that could be wounded and bleed in his Son Jesus Christ, to tell us: See how far love can go. Can you now believe in my love, accept it, and love me in return? It is the loving heart of God we celebrate today as we honor the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

 

First Reading: Hosea 11:1-9

 “When Israel was only a child, I loved him.
    I called out, ‘My son!’—called him out of Egypt.
But when others called him,
    he ran off and left me.
He worshiped the popular sex gods,
    he played at religion with toy gods.
Still, I stuck with him. I led Ephraim.
    I rescued him from human bondage,
But he never acknowledged my help,
    never admitted that I was the one pulling his wagon,
That I lifted him, like a baby, to my cheek,
    that I bent down to feed him.
Now he wants to go back to Egypt or go over to Assyria—
    anything but return to me!
That’s why his cities are unsafe—the murder rate skyrockets
    and every plan to improve things falls to pieces.
My people are hell-bent on leaving me.
    They pray to god Baal for help.
    He doesn’t lift a finger to help them.
But how can I give up on you, Ephraim?
    How can I turn you loose, Israel?
How can I leave you to be ruined like Admah,
    devastated like luckless Zeboim?
I can’t bear to even think such thoughts.
    My insides churn in protest.
And so I’m not going to act on my anger.
    I’m not going to destroy Ephraim.
And why? Because I am God and not a human.
    I’m The Holy One and I’m here—in your very midst.

 

Second Reading: Ephesians 3:8-13

This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.

And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!

All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!

My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

 

Gospel: John 19:31-37

Then the Jews, since it was the day of Sabbath preparation, and so the bodies wouldn’t stay on the crosses over the Sabbath (it was a high holy day that year), petitioned Pilate that their legs be broken to speed death, and the bodies taken down. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man crucified with Jesus, and then the other. When they got to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so they didn’t break his legs. One of the soldiers stabbed him in the side with his spear. Blood and water gushed out.

 The eyewitness to these things has presented an accurate report. He saw it himself and is telling the truth so that you, also, will believe.

These things that happened confirmed the Scripture, “Not a bone in his body was broken,” and the other Scripture that reads, “They will stare at the one they pierced.”

 

Prayer

God our Father,
in your Son Jesus Christ you have shown us
that love is not just an empty word.
Here in this Eucharist you tell us again
how he placed himself into the hands of people
and shed his blood for us on the cross.
What more could he do?
Help us to see fully with eyes of faith
how much more he did for us
by rising again from the dead
and giving us life and hope and joy.
Let us never be separated from his love,
let it grow in us day after day
and overflow on our brothers and sisters.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. R/ Amen.

 

Reflection

THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS

On the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus we celebrate the love of God for all humanity. Day before yesterday on June 9, during his general audience, Pope Francis recommended all the faithful “to look with trust to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to repeat often, especially during this month of June: Jesus meek and humble of heart, transform our hearts and teach us to love God and neighbour with generosity.” Addressing elderly, young people, the sick and newlyweds, he prayed: “May the Heart of Christ, the source of the love that redeemed the world, always accompany and sustain you.”

Jesus has brought the unconditional love of God our Father closer and accessible to us, through his heart of flesh, the heart of God. He is not a distant and terrible God, before whom we should feel fearful and unworthy, but a Father who cares for us, and who arouses trust and love in us. This is what we experience as we approach Jesus in humility.

In today’s Gospel John the evangelist continues his reflection on the meaning and impact of the saving death of Jesus. There is some gruesome detail here. In crucifixion a person dies primarily of inability to breath. Crucified person breathes by pushing himself up on his legs, although the legs too are nailed to the cross. breathe. Clearly, by breaking the legs of the two thieves, the soldiers were hastening their deaths as they no longer have the strength to breath. When they found Jesus already dead they thrust a spear into his heart, just to make sure.

John was writing for disciples who had never known the historical person of Christ. He was concerned that they do not forget this most important event in the life of Jesus – and that they believe. The blood and water that poured from the pierced side of Christ referred them to their experience of Baptism and Eucharist celebrated within the believing community. Here, through sacrament of the Eucharist, we continue to participate personally in the mystery enacted historically on Calvary.

In chapter 7 of John we are told of Jesus at the temple during the Feast of Tabernacles. Standing there he cried out, “Let anyone who thirsts, come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him.” On the Cross, Jesus gave up his Spirit and that Spirit is poured forth as the “rivers of living water” to give life and refreshment to the thirsty world.

As we raise our minds and hearts to God in prayer on this feast of the Most Sacred Heart, Let us unite our hearts with the heart of Jesus, so that the deepest longings of Christ’s Sacred Heart may become the deepest longings of our own.

Video available on Youtube:  THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS