Catholic Caucus: Daily Mass Readings, 06-03-05, Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Homily of the Day

Title:	O Sacred Heart
Author:	Father William Saunders
Date:	Friday, June 3, 2005

The Catechism, quoting Pope Pius XII's beautiful encyclical Haurietis Aquas (1956), states, "[Jesus] 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" (no. 478).

To appreciate this rich symbolism of the heart, we must remember in Judaism that the word heart represented the core of the person. While recognized as the principle life organ, the heart was also considered the center of all spiritual activity. Here was the seat of all emotion, especially love. As the psalms express, God speaks to a person in his heart and there probes him. This notion of the heart is clear when we read the words of Deuteronomy 6:5-6: "Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today."

The heart has even greater depth when contemplated in light of the incarnation. We believe that Jesus Christ, second person of the Holy Trinity and consubstantial with the Father, entered this world taking on our human flesh — true God became also true man. While Jesus' heart obviously served a physiological function, spiritually His sacred heart also represents love: the divine love our Lord shares with the Father and Holy Spirit in the Trinity; the perfect, divine love which God has for us; and the genuine human love Christ felt in His human nature. I think one of the most beautiful passages of the Gospels is our Lord saying, "Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. Your souls will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light" (Mt 11:28-30). Therefore, while meditating on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we are called to share in the love of the Lord and strive to express our own genuine love for God, ourselves, and our neighbors.

Throughout the gospel, we see the outpouring of Jesus' love from His heart, whether in the miracle stories, the reconciliation of sinners, or the compassion for the grieving. Even on the cross, our Lord poured out His love for us: there the soldier's lance pierced His side and out flowed blood and water (Jn 19:34). St. Bonaventure said the Church was born from the wounded side of the Lord with the blood and water representing the Sacraments of the Holy Eucharist and Baptism.

The early Church Fathers clearly cherished this meaning of the Sacred Heart of our Lord. St. Justin Martyr (d. 165), in his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho said, "We Christians are the true Israel which springs from Christ, for we are carved out of His heart as from a rock." Likewise, St. Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202) said, "The Church is the fountain of the living water that flows to us from the Heart of Christ" (Adversus Haereses). Paulinus of Nola (d. 431) added, "John, who rested blissfully on the breast of our Lord, was inebriated with the Holy Spirit, from the Heart of all creating Wisdom he quaffed an understanding which transcends that of any creature." Although these are just a few brief examples from the times of the early Church, we find a profound respect for the Sacred Heart of our Lord as a font of His love which gave birth to the Church and continues to nourish its members.

The devotion continued to grow during the Middles Ages, and in 1353 Pope Innocent VI instituted a Mass honoring the mystery of the Sacred Heart. During the age of the Protestant movement, devotion to the Sacred Heart was practiced in hope of restoring peace to a world shattered by political and religious persecution.

Shortly thereafter, the devotion escalated due to the fervor surrounding the apparitions of Our Lord to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-90). For example, on December 27, 1673, Our Lord revealed, "My Divine Heart is so passionately inflamed with love ... that, not being able any longer to contain within Itself the flames of Its ardent charity, It must let them spread abroad through your means, and manifest Itself to man, that they may be enriched with Its precious treasures which I unfold to you, and which contain the sanctifying and salutary graces that are necessary to hold them back from the abyss of ruin." The four apparitions provided the catalyst for the promotion of the devotion to the Sacred Heart: a feast day in honor of the Sacred Heart and the offering of Our Lord's saving grace and friendship if the individual attended Mass and received Holy Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays of the month.

In 1899, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Since then, his successors have exhorted the faithful to turn to the Sacred Heart and make acts of personal consecration. They have also begged the faithful to offer prayers and penances to the Sacred Heart in reparation for the many sins of the world. Considering our present day and age, the temptations and sins of this world, the growing apathy and secularism and the awful scandal that has erupted in our Church, we too should turn again in loving devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and ask Him to pour forth His grace.

Let us pray during this month of June, honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus: First, let us continue to pray for the grace of healing for those who have been the victims of sexual abuse by bishops and priests as the Church expresses its sorrow and seeks forgiveness from these victims, and may they in turn have the grace to forgive. Second, let us pray for the grace of courage for our bishops to be true shepherds in caring for their flocks, to reform the seminaries and vocations offices under their care, to restore discipline in clerical and religious life and to end the dissent that has undermined the Magisterium. Third, let us pray for the grace of perseverance, that clergy and laity alike will keep the Faith and not lose hope in this difficult time of purification.

In all, we must strive to make our hearts like His own, for Christ said, "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8). May we remember the words of the Preface of the Mass in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: "Lifted high on the Cross, Christ gave His life for us, so much did He love us. From His wounded side flowed blood and water, the fountain of sacramental life in the Church. To His open heart the Savior invites all men, to draw water in joy from the springs of salvation."

(This homily courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)

A Voice in the Desert

Friday June 3, 2005 Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Reading I (Deuteronomy 7:6-11) Reading II (1 John 4:7-16)

Gospel (St. Matthew 11:25-30)

In the Gospel reading today, Our Lord tells His Father that what He has hidden from the learned and the clever He has revealed to the little ones. That is us. It is just like what we heard in the first reading today in the Book of Deuteronomy where Moses tells the people, It is not because you are the largest of all nations that God has placed His heart upon you, but because you are the smallest of all nations.

We have to realize that it does not matter how intelligent we are, what kind of position we hold, the reality of the matter is that in God’s eyes we are the most helpless, the least, the smallest, and so on. Thanks be to God for that, because if we were not He would not have chosen us. He will use the gifts that He has given to us. For instance, if He has given you profound intellectual ability then He will use that for His glory, but He is not going to give that to you simply so you can get caught up in your own arrogance because that would violate everything He is about. He Who is God came into this world as a slave, taking our nature and being born as a helpless little baby. He is not going to expect that we are going to be pounding our chests and thinking that somehow we are great, because that is not what He did. He has given us the example, Saint Peter said, to follow in His footsteps.

If that is the case, then we have to learn to love because that is what the whole thing is about. To love is to serve. That is what Jesus did and that is exactly what He calls each one of us to do. And love, Saint John tells us in the second reading, is not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and He sent His Son as the expiation for our sins. So recognizing this and having our sins forgiven, the potential to love is fully present within us. All we have to be willing to do is humble ourselves and allow God to work in us, to give us His Spirit so that we can love, because God is love and love has to come from Him. It cannot come from us; it has to come from Him. All we can do is receive His love and then act upon it, but we can never be the ones to initiate it. Again, we see the humility that must be there on our part. We must come before Him, we must receive from Him, and in receiving then we will be able to give.

So we have to be little, we have to be humble, and we have to allow ourselves to be loved. That is a very, very difficult thing for some of us to do because we do not believe that we are lovable or we think we have to prove ourselves or we have to earn it or whatever it might be. When you are dealing with God, the more you try to prove how good and lovable you are, the worse it gets, because you cannot. All you can do is accept that God loves you because He created you to be loved. He loves you infinitely, and therefore we simply need to accept. It is not because we have done anything. It is not because we are so great. It is just because God is our heavenly Father Who created us and loves us. That is hard. It is so simple that it is hard for us, but it is the reality.

So we need to place ourselves before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, His Sacred Heart there wide open to us, pouring out the love that He has for us, and we simply need to receive, to allow ourselves to be loved. In that experience of being loved, then we in turn will be able to love. But that requires first that we recognize our littleness because the only way these mysteries are going to be revealed is when we are little – not because we are wise and clever, but because we are small. When we come before the Lord in humility, then and only then will we be able to accept the love that He has for us; not accept it intellectually (that we already know), but accept it in our hearts. Then it will be exactly what Our Lord came into this world to do. It will be Heart speaking to heart. It will be Love speaking to love. It will be the two, Jesus and His beloved – your soul, united to be one reality.

* This text was transcribed from the audio recording with minimal editing.

FEAST OF THE DAY

The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is celebrated on the
Friday after the feast of Corpus Christi. This feast has been
celebrated by the Church since its earliest times. The devotion to the
Sacred Heart that modern Catholics are familiar with finds its roots in
the seventeenth century, where St. John Eudes and St. Margaret
Mary Alacoque encouraged and spread the devotion.

This day calls us to special devotion and worship of Jesus. Our
worship is directed to his heart of flesh, united to his divinity, as the
symbol of his love for us in dying for our redemption. This worship is
not directed specifically to the physical heart of Jesus from when he
lived on Earth, but to his whole being, the heart signifying the
essence of his being and his love for us.

This worship of Jesus directs our attention to his love for us, and his
willingness to be sacrificed for our sins. It calls us to prayer and
encourages us to make up for the times when we, or others, have
taken Jesus' love for granted.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

O Sacred Heart of Jesus! I fly to Thee, I unite myself with Thee, I
enclose myself to Thee! Receive this, my call for help, O my Saviour,
as a sign of my horror of all within me contrary to Thy Holy Love. Let
me rather die a thousand times than consent! Be Thou my Strength,
O God: defend me, protect me. I am thine, and desire forever to be
Thine! -St. Margaret Mary Alocoque

TODAY IN HISTORY

545 Death of St. Clotilda
618 Death of St. Kevin

TODAY'S TIDBIT

During most of the Liturgical Year, the first Friday of each month is
traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This devotion
consists of receiving Holy Communion on the first Friday of nine
consecutive months in honor of the Sacred Heart for and in reparation
for Sin. This devotion has its roots in the late seventeenth century
in the revelations of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

INTENTION FOR THE DAY

Please pray for all couples preparing for marriage.

Mt 11:25-30
#	Douay-Rheims	Vulgate
25	At that time Jesus answered and said: I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones.	in illo tempore respondens Iesus dixit confiteor tibi Pater Domine caeli et terrae quia abscondisti haec a sapientibus et prudentibus et revelasti ea parvulis
26	Yea, Father: for so hath it seemed good in thy sight.	ita Pater quoniam sic fuit placitum ante te
27	All things are delivered to me by my Father. And no one knoweth the Son but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him.	omnia mihi tradita sunt a Patre meo et nemo novit Filium nisi Pater neque Patrem quis novit nisi Filius et cui voluerit Filius revelare
28	Come to me all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.	venite ad me omnes qui laboratis et onerati estis et ego reficiam vos
29	Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: And you shall find rest to your souls.	tollite iugum meum super vos et discite a me quia mitis sum et humilis corde et invenietis requiem animabus vestris
30	For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.	iugum enim meum suave est et onus meum leve est

The Altar of the Sacred Heart

St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican
Carlo Muccioli, 1923

That is absolutely beautiful!

The Word Among Us

Friday, June 03, 2005

Meditation
Matthew 11:25-30

Father, you have loved us as your own children. From age to age you have shown us compassion and mercy, and in the fullness of time you acted to take away our burdens and meet all our needs. All praise to you, Father, that from your heart of love, you give us the sacred heart of your Son Jesus.

From all eternity, your heart beat with love for each one of us. Though we have sinned against you again and again, you would not treat us as our sins deserved. All praise to you, Father, that you allowed the heart of your precious Son to be pierced for us. Because of him, we are free!

Jesus, your sacred heart is the source and ocean of infinite mercy. All praise to you, Lord, that even in our sinfulness, we can be washed clean in this limitless ocean. Because you were obedient, even unto death, your heart was bruised for our offenses and pierced for our iniquities. All praise to you, Lord, for your heart is the salvation of all who trust in you.

Jesus, your heart burns with charity and generosity. It is full of goodness and kindness; infinitely patient with our weaknesses. All praise to you, Lord, for you will never turn us away.

Jesus, in your heart we find all wisdom and knowledge. We find all peace, compassion, and consolation. All praise to you, Lord, that every moment of every day, we can turn to your heart and find our refuge.

Jesus, you love us so deeply that after you died for us, you did not leave us abandoned. You sent your Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts and promised that you will come back to us, to take us to be with you forever. Thank you, Lord, for being so deeply in love with us that you never want to be separated from us.

“Holy Spirit, you are the comforter of all people. In your mercy, call us back to the heart of our Lord, the source of all comfort. Lead us today and every day into the sacred heart of Jesus, where we can find rest from all our weariness and burdens. May we lose ourselves in the endless mercy of his heart!”

Deuteronomy 7:6-11; Psalm 103:1-4,6-8,10; 1 John 4:7-16

One Bread, One Body

All Issues > Volume 21, Number 4

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Sacred Heart of Jesus

Deuteronomy 7:6-11
1 John 4:7-16

Psalm 103
Matthew 11:25-30

View Readings

LET LOVE LOVE YOU OR BE LOVELESS

“We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is Love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” —1 John 4:16

Jesus invites us to come to Him (Mt 11:28). He is the most attractive Person ever to walk the earth. He draws all people to Himself (see Jn 12:32). Jesus is not merely loving; He is Love (1 Jn 4:8, 16). We are drawn to let ourselves be loved by Love — by Jesus, God Who is Love. How unimaginable and mysterious to be loved by Love Himself!

Though we are attracted to the God-Man Who is Love, we are naturally afraid. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb 10:31). He loved us by being crowned with thorns, shedding His blood, and hanging on the cross. We are naturally afraid to be loved by crucified Love. If we accept His love, this will necessarily change everything in our lives, and we will live in Love and Love in us (see 1 Jn 4:16). What will we do?

We hesitate to let Love love us. Yet this is the opportunity of a lifetime. This is all that we have ever hoped for — and more, much more. We want to run to Jesus; we want to run away from Him. Love draws us; selfishness paralyzes us. What will we decide? Some walk away sad into a comfortable, loveless life (see Mt 19:22). Others plunge into the ocean of God’s love. What will you do with Love today and forever?

Prayer: Sacred Heart of Jesus, I put my trust in You.

Promise: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you.” —Mt 11:28

Praise: All praise to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Love Himself!

Sacred Heart Of Jesus

Sacred Heart Of Jesus image

Immaculate Heart of Mary

Immaculate Heart of Mary image

Blessed be the Most Loving Heart and Sweet Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the most glorious Virgin Mary, His Mother, in eternity and forever. Amen.

....Only the Heart of Christ who knows the depths of his Father's love could reveal to us the abyss of his mercy in so simple and beautiful a way ----From the Catechism. P:1439

From the depth of my nothingness, I prostrate myself before Thee, O Most Sacred, Divine and Adorable Heart of Jesus, to pay Thee all the homage of love, praise and adoration in my power.
Amen. - - St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

The prayer of the Church venerates and honors the Heart of Jesus just as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins. Christian prayer loves to follow the way of the cross in the Savior's steps.-- From the Catechism. P: 2669

The Salutation to the Heart of Jesus and Mary

An Offering of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary

Novena Prayer to Sacred Heart of Jesus

Prayer to the Wounded Heart of Jesus

Act of Consecration to the Sacred Heart

Meditation & Novena Prayer on the Sacred Heart

Beads to the Sacred Heart

Novena Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

A Solemn Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Daily Offering to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Exaltation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin

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Many of the prayers and devotions can be found in the book
"Devotion To The Sacred Heart of Jesus"