Friday, May 30, 2008

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus


Additional Information about the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart[1]

Readings for the Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus[2]
Readings from the Jerusalem Bible

Commentary:

Reading 1 Deuteronomy 7:6-11

This passage is taken from Moses second address to the people of Israel. He has just explained that the people of the lands which they occupy (Canaan in this case) must be held at arms length and they must not intermingle their cultures or relationships. The selection presented is the rationale for that injunction; the members of God’s covenant are sacred to the Lord and the precepts of that covenant are not to be threatened by people not bound by it.

The intense love of God for his people is made clear in this reading with specific mention made to the Heart of God “…the Lord set his heart on you and chose you”. This directly supports devotion to the Sacred Heart of His only Son especially: “It was because the Lord loved you”.

Responsorial Psalm Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 10.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.

Psalm 103 is a song of praise to God for his mercy. It recognizes both God’s mercy and our need, as sinners, for it.

Reading II 1 John 4:7-16

Love as we share in it testifies to the nature of God and to his presence in our lives. One who loves shows that one is a child of God and knows God, for God's very being is love; one without love is without God. The revelation of the nature of God's love is found in the free gift of his Son to us, so that we may share life with God and be delivered from our sins. The love we have for one another must be of the same sort: authentic, merciful; this unique Christian love is our proof that we know God and can "see" the invisible God.
[3]

Gospel Matthew 11:25-30

In this chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel Jesus has been challenged by the scribes and Pharisees about the need to follow the Law of Moses scrupulously. In response Jesus tells them that rather than being guided by those who consider themselves “learned” and “scholars of the law”, God has revealed himself most clearly to those who are innocent (“childlike”). He then proceeds to reveal himself as God’s Son, to whom all power and authority has been given.

The passage concludes with an invitation “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” While popular interpretation perceives this as and invitation to the promise of eternal life, in the context of this monologue it was an invitation to throw off the heavy yoke of the Pharisees interpretation of the Law, coming instead to Jesus whose burden is light.

Reflection:

We being our thoughts of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in an odd place, remembering our first days in college (in ancient times). Anxious to start on our curriculum of studies in biochemistry, we went to the advisor for the department, a brilliant young doctor of chemistry. He immediately reviewed the options for first year students and said “You don’t need freshman biology, let’s sign you up for zoology, and you certainly don’t need plain geometry and trigonometry – you should take calculus, and by all means we should skip freshman inorganic chemistry and go straight to organic chemistry.” Not knowing any better we did as instructed and it almost killed us. Study should be fun, not terrifying.

What does this have to do with the intense love of God expressed by our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus? In our Gospel reading today we are invited by the Lord to accept his yoke; “For my yoke is easy, and my burden light." He was contrasting his simple commandment to “Love one another as I have loved you” to the complex and difficult rules the Pharisees applied to authentic worship as defined by Mosaic Law.

Here is the ironic part; Jesus the Christ; the Only Son of God, is love personified. He comes, one might say, “hard wired” to react out of love of others in all situations. What he does instinctively requires of us who struggle valiantly to follow him, tremendous discipline and faith. It is like the brilliant young advisor who looked at difficult courses and thought them too easy for his new charge.

Our comfort is this, that this day we contemplate not so much how we have failed to love as Christ loved us, but rather his unfathomable love for us. If we think about how intensely our parents love us, and then understand that the Lord loves us even more completely, we begin to get an understating of that blessing that engulfs us. So beyond our comprehension is this immeasurable gift that we look to the Saints to describe their God-given visions of the warmth that comes from that ultimate source.

Today we pray once more that the Lord will help us love as he does, without judgment, without reserve in perfect acceptance of all we meet. We thank him for his example and ask for the strength for follow it, especially with those who most need to feel its warmth.

Pax

[1] The picture used today is “St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Contemplating the Sacred Heart of Jesus” by Corrado Giaquinto, 1765
[2] After Links to Readings Expire
[3] NAB footnote

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