THE WORD AND THE FEAST
Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Hosea 11: 1,3-4,8-9; Ephesians 3: 8-12,14-19; John 19: 31-37
The Feast of the Sacred Heart is the feast of the very heart of Christian faith, that is Love; the feast of Love, the Love that God is. The feast invites us to meditate on the love that God has for each of us, to realise how unworthy we are at the same time as we are gifted and to make a choice to strive to become bearers of the same love to everyone around us. The Word and the feast, offer us a reflection on three important faces of this Sacred heart which inspire and challenge us at the same time!
The Parent-Heart
The Sacred heart comes across to us as a parent heart, the heart of a Father who longs to hold us close, guide us by our hand, lead us on the path of righteousness, as Hosea speaks of. It is presented as the heart of a mother who longs to nuture her child and see the child grow safe and sound right in her arms. It reflects the heart of the creator who made the creature and owns every bit of it and rejoices in its life and well being.
The Parent-heart loves us every moment, however we are and whatever we are upto. As we reflect in the words of Hosea, the Lord draws close to us and longs to draw closer - depends on us to really receive that love and be filled with it. The sad fact is that majority of us reject that love - some knowingly and others unknowingly. The grades of this rejection ranges from an absolute disregard for the love of God which consists of speaking against God and demeaning the image of God, to an insensible choice for ungodly ways of life being taken up by the immediate pleasure and ephemeral excitement. But the Lord never rejects us - as the imagery that Jesus gives us in his famous parable, the Parent-heart awaits with arms wide open for the return of the prodigal children.
The call that we have here is to GRATITUDE... to thank the Love of God, so caring, so warm and so unassuming! To thank the Love of God shared through persons so close and so far - those who are in the family and those who are friends; those who are unknown but still do so much good and those who come by in such miraculous ways to share this love with us! All these are ways in which the Parent-heart reaches out to us and should we not be grateful for it?
The Powerful Heart
The Sacred heart is certainly meek and humble, but definitely not weak nor little! It is the heart that reveals the mightiness of God in its simplicity and humanness. As St. Paul indicates, all sovereignties and powers are subject to it, and they learn from this heart the comprehensive Wisdom of God, a wisdom that is planted in love and built on love - not in haughtiness and cruel arrogance. We do not possess the capacity to grasp the breadth or the length, the height or the depth of this love, a love beyond all our knowledge.
The Powerful heart, is large and powerful, mighty and all-embracing. It is a heart that loves without measure and boundaries, loves all and everyone. It knows every move that we make and every choice that we pick, and even the motives and the intentions, however hidden they might be! How powerful and awesome it is. The awesomeness does not consist merely in knowing everything, but in the fact that despite knowing it continues to love and embrace us, in genuine and sincere care!
The call that we have here is to AWE at the immensity of this love. At times, it is so unfortunate that persons and groups are prone to presenting God as avenging, retaliating, self-protective, ego-conscious and even arrogant! Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart; come to me and I shall give you rest... this is the type of heart we are reflecting on today: this is the true power to be celebrated, to be awed at. It is important to unlearn the terror-instilling images of God and learn to stand in awe at the unfathomable love and the incredible mercy that God is. The power of the Sacred heart is its meekness and mercy! Should we not truly recognise and realise with awe the fullness of God that we are surrounded by, in and through this heart?
The Pierced Heart
The Sacred heart is the pierced heart, the heart to which we look up for grace and mercy, for forgiveness and acceptance into the life-giving embrace of God. As the Gospel points to, the Sacred heart is a giving heart, a heart that gave of itself until the last drop of blood and water. The water that flowed washes us and the blood that oozed gives us life - a washing away of the past and a promise towards a future, which is the crux of the hope that Christ our Lord promises us, as children of God.
The Pierced heart, is broken, torn, hurt, injured, battered...all because of our insensitivities and our narcissistic tendencies. The heart bleeds due to our rejection and refusal to understand the obvious facts. The heart remains hurt by our self-centred choices and egoistic tendencies, considering ourselves the most important in the entire universe, expecting everything and everyone to serve our needs and our pleasures, and never opening our eyes to the needs of the other, even after it is brought to our notice in varieties of ways!
The call that we have here is to develop a DETERMINATION to reach out, to go out of ourselves, to feel for the other, to understand and empathise with the other and never take the other for granted. For God so loved us, that God gave us the Son who would die to save us, to make us children of God. The pierced heart commissions us to flow out, to stop looking at ourselves and our own private lives and needs and to take the love of God to the others, to our brothers and sisters, to our friends and neighbours, to the so-called strangers and every one who stands in any need! It is this determination that will make us and our faith truly Christ-ian. It has to be seen in our choices and priorities, in our decision making and daily lives, in terms of the heart of Christain Faith - love!
The Sacred Heart, which is a Parent-heart, a Powerful heart and the Pierced heart, invites us to celebrate love, in our daily lives, in our personal faith and Christian community living. Let us realise that today in celebrating the Sacred Heart, we celebrate the heart of Christian faith: Love!