The Heart Affire

Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

June 27, 2025: Ezekiel 34: 11-16; Romans 5: 5-11; Luke 15: 3-7

One of the striking elements of the image of the Sacred Heart is the flame that accompanies it. That is the only thing that this naive generation has left out, from the Sacred Heart, when they adapted its symbol to indicate the love between two people! The heart with an arrow piercing it... you have seen it for sure, haven't you!

But this flame is a special symbol of the Heart of Jesus and it has three significant messages and challenges to give us:

1. Sacrificing: the flame establishes that the sacred heart is a sacrificing heart, not an expecting heart! The flame burns and it consumes the heart...the love that Jesus has for us consumes Jesus...the sacrifice on the Cross, the giving of Jesus' body and blood -they are all clearly evidences of this quality of the heart of Jesus. How sacrificing is our love?

2. Seeking: the flame is also characteristically something that seeks to reach out. Look at a fire as it burns will it remain in just one spot and be satisfied? No. It seeks. Jesus seeks, seeks to reach out to us, seeks to warm our hearts, seeks to enlighten our paths, seeks to ease our troubles, seeks to meet our needs as a Shepherd seeks the troubled sheep.

3. Shining: the flame is radiant. It shines forth, it shines to invite us to follow the model. The shining flame is an open challenge - can you be like me, can you love like me, can you care for the others like me, can you be sacrificing like me, can you seek to serve others, can you be affire as I am, passionate about filling this world with true love and make it a better place, a heaven on earth, the Reign of God here and now!

Integral Choice for God

WORD 2day: Thursday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 26, 2025: Genesis 16:1-12, 15-16; Matthew 7: 21-29

Not everyone who says Lord! Lord!, really belongs to the Lord! There is an invitation today to check... between authenticity and duplicity.

Let's talk of three categories of persons - Pretenders, Performers and Professionals!

The Pretenders are those who try to be something that they really are not, but everyone can see it so obviously that they actually are pretending. These are amateur actors, but they can perfect themselves in the act.

The Performers are those who perform to the occasion, to the audience, to the moment. Though they are not actually what they act to be, their performance comes very close to reality.

The Professionals are those who live the character they want to be for the short moment to such a perfection that people begin to equate the character and the person!

We could be any of these three in our Spirituality - trying to pretend to be someone that people see so clearly that we are not; or performing at certain moments with perfection that comes with practice and repetition; or being professionals who can be taken so easily to be what they appear to be, though it may be solely for certain punctuated moments. None of the three is SUFFICIENT to be an authentic disciple of Christ... What he wants is an integrity where there is no pretension or performance or professional role playing.

Integrity that Christ demands, requires a ready acceptance of the crosses that come my way once I have chosen a definite way of walking with the Lord. Abraham is given as a model today, as one who struggled his way all through with contradictions, conflicts and difficult choices to make, but he remained faithful. The key is Integrity in the choice for God!