The New Heart Prepared for Us, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart (C), June 11, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA
Solemnity of the Sacred Heart 2010 — End of the Year for Priests
June 11, 2010

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• When Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque to reveal the mystery of the meaning of his Sacred Heart that he wished for her to bring to the world, he revealed essentially five things:
•  First, his heart burns with a desire to share the full depth of his love with us and is wounded when we fail to allow him to do so.
  • On Dec 27, 1673, Jesus said to Margaret Mary: “My divine heart is so passionately fond of the human race, and of you in particular, that It cannot keep back the pent-up flames of its burning charity any longer. They must burst out through you and reveal my heart to the world, so as to enrich mankind with my precious treasures.”
  • This is the first point. Jesus loves us. He said in the Last Supper, “Just as the Father loves me, I love you.” Without getting sentimental, if he had a wallet, our picture would be in it; if he had a refrigerator, our accomplishments would plaster it.
  • But at the same time, most of us don’t allow him to love us.
    • Behold the heart which has so much loved men that it has spared nothing, even exhausting and consuming itself in testimony of its love. Instead of gratitude I receive from most only indifference, by irreverence and sacrilege and the coldness and scorn that men have for me in the sacrament of love.
  • The first reason for this feast is to be grateful.
• Second, Christ wants to transform our heart to be like his so that we might love like he does. This involves conversion.
  • Through the prophet Ezekiel, God had prophesied, “I will give you a new heart.”
  • Pope John Paul II, when he celebrated Mass in Paray-le-Monial on Oct 5, 1986, focused on how we need to have our heart purified. He focused on the phrase:
    • “Le cœur, créé pour être le foyer de l’amour, est devenu le foyer central du refus de Dieu, du péché de l’homme qui se détourne de Dieu pour s’attacher à toutes sortes d’“idoles”. C’est alors que le cœur est “impur”. Mais quand le même lieu intérieur de l’homme s’ouvre à Dieu, il retrouve la “pureté” de l’image et de la ressemblance imprimées en lui par le Créateur depuis le commencement.
  • He continued by saying that what we need is conversion of heart
    • Le cœur, c’est aussi le foyer central de la conversion que Dieu désire de la part de l’homme et pour l’homme, pour entrer dans son intimité, dans son amour.
  • St. Margaret Mary had this type of heart. Great scene of the heart transplant when Jesus mystically took her heart out of her body, placed it in the furnace of his own, and returned it to her. She always bore the wound.
• Third, there’s no way to have our heart transformed without suffering and the desire to suffer with Christ out of love.
  • Margaret Mary’s sufferings —Death of her father; Bedridden with leg wounds for five years; Mistreatment of her and her mother; Her family’s opposition to her vocation; Her suffering because of her being chosen despite her humble shyness; Suffering through theologians who thought she was nuts; Various mortifications, rejections, and daily contradictions in religious life; She desired to suffer with Christ.
  • Need to do reparation
    • She was well chosen.
    • Jesus wanted reparation done. Reparation is a sign not just of justice but of love toward one wounded and offended. There were so many who treated him with coldness, indifference, even with scorn. She was to make up for that with the heat of a heart on fire, with making him truly God, acts of love.
    • The reparation also moves us to have even greater mercy toward those who are wayward.
  • We, too, need to be willing to suffer to extend God’s merciful love.
  • We, too, are all called to live lives of reparation.
    • Rom. 12:1   I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
• Fourth, our reparative devotion is meant to have a particularly Eucharistic Character:
  • Jesus asked for specific acts of reparation on Corpus Christi 1675.
  • He wanted the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart to be celebrated relative to Corpus Christi, on Friday of the Octave.
  • He calls the Eucharist the “Sacrament of Love,” almost the continual instantiation of his sacred heart, “Behold the heart which has so much loved men that it has spared nothing, even exhausting and consuming itself in testimony of its love. Instead of gratitude I receive from most only indifference, by irreverence and sacrilege and the coldness and scorn that men have for me in the sacrament of love.”
  • He wanted communions of reparation and consolation on First Fridays and a Holy Hour of Reparation on Thursday evening, in memory of the events of Holy Thursday.
• One of the greatest means by which he instituted to continue his love in the world, this work of conversion and reparation, is the priesthood.
  • It’s the priesthood that makes possible the full sharing of Christ himself through the sacrament of his love, the Eucharist. It makes possible not only the call to conversion of heart but its achievement through Christ’s working through the priest in the sacrament of penance. It’s the priesthood that is meant to lead all of God’s people, personally and ministerially, in reparation, to teach everyone how to offer one’s life to God as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, their spiritual worship. And it’s the priesthood that gives this reparation a Eucharistic character.
  • For all of these reasons and more, St. John Vianney, the 150^th anniversary of whose birth into eternal life the whole Church has been recalling throughout this Year for Priests, called the priesthood, the “love of the heart of Jesus.”
    • The priesthood is a sacrament of the love of Jesus’ sacred heart.
    • It was instituted to continue Jesus’ love for us in concrete ways throughout time.
    • It’s through the priesthood that Jesus, the Good Shepherd, cares for each of us and heals us one lost sheep at a time in confession, makes our cup overflow with his body and blood, accompanies us through the dark valley of death through the anointing of the sick, and leads us ultimately to the eternally green pastures where he seeks to rest with us for joy.

• • Pope Benedict said last year on this feast that the priesthood “springs directly” from Jesus’ heart.
    • This feast marks “the mystery of the heart of a God who is moved and pours out his love on all humanity…He does not give up in the face of ingratitude and not even in the face of rejection by the people He has chosen.”
    • Priests are part of God’s persevering love for the world.

• • • He said that “in the heart of Christ, the essential nucleus of Christianity is expressed… and given to us: The love that has saved us helps us to live already in the eternity of God.” The whole essence of Christianity is summarized both in this feast and therefore in the priesthood, which is the expression of this feast in time.
    • For this to occur, we need priests who aspire to live up to their identity as the love of Christ’s sacred heart. Pope Benedict made the appeal clear: Jesus’ “divine heart calls to our hearts: it invites us to come out of ourselves, to abandon our human securities to trust ourselves in Him and following his example, make of ourselves a gift of unrestrained love.”
    • This is a big challenge. The priest is called, the Pope said, “to be completely conquered by Christ” in order to “make Christ the heart of the world.” This is one of the reasons why we’ve been praying so much for priests over the past year, so that they may live up to this summons and allow God’s grace to sanctify them to carry it out. Once that happens, they’re able to be ministers of that holiness more easily to others.
    • Benedict summarized the entire Church’s pastoral plan in saying, “Christ slowly becomes the Heart of human hearts beginning with those who are called to be closest to him, beginning with the priests.”
  • To become the heart of human hearts. That is what God seeks to do in the world. That’s the mission of the Church. That’s the point of the ministry of the men Christ has called to serve as priests.
  • Tonight, we turn to the Lord, thank him for the gift of his love shown to us in his dying for us, shown to us in his giving us his body and blood in the sacrament of his love, given to us in the sacrament of confession, given to us in the priesthood that makes both sacraments possible. We ask his forgiveness for all the times that we have taken any of his gifts for granted and ask him for the grace that we might do reparation for all those who continue to take these gifts for granted. And we ask him to become the heart of our heart.

“O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto thine!” Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were: