The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus:II

Homily
THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS
15 JUNE 2007

Luke 15: 3 - 7

[Luke 15:3] So to them he addressed this parable.
[Luke 15:4] "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?
[Luke 15:5] And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
[Luke 15:6] and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.'
[Luke 15:7] I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.
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Today is the solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. In it, we celebrate the immensity of the infinite love of God for man. A descriptive summary of this feast is presented in the following quotation from the St Andrew Daily Missal:

(Protestant reformers) in the sixteenth century, and Jansenists in the seventeenth, ... sought to impose a distortion of one of the essential beliefs of Christianity, the love of God for all men. The Church reacted strongly and, guided by the Holy Spirit, instituted the feast of the Sacred Heart to enable all the faithful to celebrate in a special manner the immense love of our Savior for men.
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Coming after all the feasts of Christ, the solemnity of the Sacred Heart calls to mind all the phases of the life of Jesus which are commemorated in the liturgy from Advent to Corpus Christi.

The material object of the feast is Jesus' Heart of flesh, and its formal object is the unbounded charity symbolized by this Heart and made manifest by all the mysteries of our Savior's life, first and foremost by His Incarnation, His death on Calvary, and the institution of the Holy Eucharist.
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As these manifestations of Christ's love bring out more clearly the ingratitude of man who answers them with increasing coldness and indifference, this festival (also) exhibits characteristics of reparation.

Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, ordered that the faithful make reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At the end of the encyclical, he presented a prayer of reparation be recited by the faithful. It is one of the many jewels contained in the treasury of the Tradition of the Church, with language somewhat more forceful than some of us might be accustomed to.

This feast, then, celebrates the infinite love of God for man. We here use the word "infinite" to describe something beyond all human comprehension. Just what does "infinite" mean?

When each of us comes into being, a zygote first is formed from the gametes of the mother and father. At that moment, God creates a soul which is spirit, and consequently is immortal. This act of creation, repeated for each of us, occupies the full creative attention and power of God, just as much as He manifested when He created the cosmos itself. This is an infinite jump: from nothingness to existence. In fact, the word "existence" literally means "to stand out (from nothing). In that sense, it is closely related to the word "ecstasy". This infinite jump is the first manifestation of the infinite love of God in each of our lives.

Not only did He create us out of nothing, He maintains us in existence from moment to moment, and will do so throughout eternity.

The next infinite jump comes at Baptism. In our conception, God gives us our life. In Baptism, He gives us His life. This second infinite jump is a further manifestation of the infinite love of God. Our sharing in the divine life means that it is the will of God that we have not a natural, but a supernatural destiny.

After the fall of our first parents, God promised them a redeemer, a promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. After the incarnation of our Lord, infinite love itself was made manifest in matter. The fleshly symbol of this love is the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a spiritual lens through which the love of God is concentrated upon each of us. With what gratitude we should respond to this love--He asks us to do it in two simple ways: love of God and love of neighbor.

On this feast of the infinite love of God, we rejoice with gratitude for all that God has done for us, and at the same time we repent of how little we have returned to Him for the continuing intensity of His love.

Living in His will, by obeying His two precepts of love throughout our lives, we have nothing to fear when we stand before Him at our particular judgment.

[Rom 8:31] ...If God is for us, who can be against us?
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[Rom 8:33] ...It is God who acquits us.
[Rom 8:34] Who will condemn? It is Christ (Jesus) who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
[Rom 8:35] What will separate us from the love of Christ?
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[Rom 8:38] For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers,
[Rom 8:39] nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Praise, honor, and glory be to the Divine Heart which wrought our salvation, and prepared a place for each of us in His Father's heavenly mansions.

There was a great saint who was profoundly devoted to his mother. Nevertheless, that saint is reported to have said that when the time came for him to stand in judgment, he would rather be judged by Jesus Christ than by his mother.