SOLEMNITY OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS


SOLELMNITY OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS CHRIST

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP

Hos 11:1,3-4,8-9; Isa 12; Eph 3:8-12,14-19; Jn 19:31-37

They will look on the One whom they have pierced

We celebrate the solemn feast of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. In this celebration, we come to the centre of the human consciousness of the Son of Man. Since consciousness belongs to a person, it is the human consciousness of the Person of the Son of God. So, we are immediately drawn into the mystery of the divinity of the Son, who is also the Sacrament of the Person of the Father. We are bewildered because what we thought was a shallow riverside opens immediately to the ocean of God’s unfathomable love. Who could describe for us the Heart of the Man Jesus Christ? After the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was so closely associated with Jesus Christ, Only John, the beloved apostle, could offer us a glimpse of the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. The Church puts before us his description of his death on the Cross and the piercing of the Sacred Heart that loved the Eternal Father and loved us his brethren with the same love proved by accepting death on the Cross. “When they came to Jesus Christ, they found he was already dead, and so instead of breaking his legs one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and immediately there came out blood and water. This is the evidence of one who saw it—trustworthy evidence, and he knows he speaks the truth—and he gives it so that you may believe as well.”

John, the beloved apostle of the Lamb, gives us what he witnessed when they pierced the Master's Heart. The heart which he knew was full of love for his people, whom he loved unto death on the Cross. This high point of demonstration of his love for us was prophesied to be the melting point of our hardened hearts. “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.” John rightly said that the issuance of blood and water from the pierced heart of Jesus Christ on the Cross is the most veritable witness of the Lamb of God. At the foot of the Cross, our hearts are pierced with the grace of repentance when we recognise that we pierced him with our sins, who is innocent of every crime, yet suffered for the atonement of our sins and our salvation. Hence, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ represents the infinite love of the Son for the Father and his love for us; these were the nails that held his right and left hands to the Cross. Thus, the Sacred Heart is the door opening into the deep abyss of the love of God that Paul prayed for us to gain access to. “Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.”

Note that St. Paul said the encounter with the love of God is through our hidden self. It is the spiritual self that is brought to life by his saving death on the Cross; the new self that came into being at the witness of the pierced Heart and subsequently generated through the water and the blood that issued forth from his Sacred Heart, and the life-giving power of Holy Spirit. So, the Holy Spirit generates the spiritual self since the new self is born of the love of God. The new self is born of love and feeds on love to grow and develop, as given in Paul’s prayer above. Here, we see the deep connection between the Sacred Heart and the Eucharist on which our spiritual life is sustained and nourished. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ is the sacrament of God’s infinite love that treats us with mercy. It is God’s loving device to draw us back to Himself with the rein of love and never with force or anger. “I led them with reins of kindness, with leading strings of love. I was like someone who lifts an infant close against his cheek; stooping down to him I gave him his food.” The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the expression of God’s unwillingness to destroy us in our sinfulness but to treat us with compassion. From the Sacred Heart, we draw water of love and salvation. 

Let us pray: Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who glory in the Heart of your beloved Son and recall the wonders of his love for us may be made worthy to receive an overflowing measure of grace from that fount of heavenly gifts.

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