SACRED HEART OF JESUS - 2

The Sacred Heart of Jesus 

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the tangible human symbol of the love of God for us. Jesus loves us with his human heart; love was the heart of his mission and redemption. Jesus loves every human person without exception, his heart extending love, mercy and compassion to everyone.

Jesus is inserted into humanity in order to build upon the human image of God’s self-giving – the image that was inserted into all men and women. Jesus thus complies with what is most deeply human and divine within us as the driving force of our creaturehood. In this way Jesus confirms and reinforces what we already know and do from natural thinking, and then goes on to enrich that insight by revealing the all pervading design of divine life and love. The Sacred Heart of Jesus ushers the evolving human species to a new level of existence and moral activity. The Heart of Jesus enhances the solidarity of the human race as individually and collectively created in the image of God and, as such, destined to share fully in the inner richness of the divine life of the Holy Trinity. The Sacred Heart of Jesus achieves the intent of God’s creation in the Incarnate Son and in us. Jesus Christ and Self-Sacrificing Love.      

In the midst of human life God reaches out to us in the person of Jesus Christ. In Jesus God and man gives themselves fully. This is the supreme norm of the moral life. Jesus’ person, words and actions are our guide. He is the standard by which our intents are judged. By recalling his words, parables, life and death, we are conformed to do what we discern about Jesus’ own attitude towards others, and his intentions which were shaped by his trust in God. His heart was set on his Father and his Kingdom. We must keep in mind that Jesus is one of us, knowing our pains and joys and also revealing our deepest possibilities. Jesus Christ fulfils what we recognise within us as true human personhood.

            Jesus Christ did not exhaust the several potentialities of human nature, taken discretely. This would have been impossible in one historical lifetime. For instance, he was not a great painter or a philosopher or a statesman or a great husband, though we must admit that he was a teacher par excellence, combining in that activity a great amount of true art and poetry.  Jesus concentrated in himself all the power and energy that human nature is capable of for activating any of the avocations that a man may choose, and he concentrated it to a degree that no man could muster, a degree so high as to make it fit to be used by God for something very great – the salvation of the world! This power was the power of his self-giving love at the service of the Word. Thus, in preference to all other possibilities, Jesus chose the essential and most distinctively human potentiality of all, the one that has the most radical claim on all men: self-surrendering love.

            Jesus was a man who tested life and was tested by it in turn, searching out life’s meaning by listening carefully to what makes life really valuable; and he lived and died trusting that life and death are not bad jokes. So also our discipleship is not without moral problems. Since we are wounded by sin, our capacity for commitment is limited. Yet the value of discipleship is that it inspires a vision that provides a context for moral analysis and choice. Imitating Christ is not a piece of mimicry, but a challenge to live out our human adventure as authentically as he did.

“...in Christ the very revolutionary ‘newness’ of the Gospel is completely revealed...the love that even now makes us live in the eternity of God” (Pope Benedict XVI).

A Prayer to the Sacred Heart

Hail! O Sacred Heart of Jesus, living and quickening source of eternal life, infinite treasure of the Divinity, and burning furnace of divine love. Thou art my refuge and my sanctuary, O my amiable Savior. Consume my heart with that burning fire with which Thine is ever inflamed. Pour down on my soul those graces which flow from Thy love, and let my heart be so united with Thine, that our wills may be one, and mine in all things, be conformed to Thine. May Thy divine will be equally the standard and rule of all my desires and of all my actions. Amen.