Having a heart to (Sacred) Heart.

In this week’s Pearls we’re looking at Sunday’s Gospel message of the Apostles being “called and sent” – as are we (Mt 9:36-10:8).

As it happens, today is also the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (we have a bit more on that in the postscript).

It turns out there is no small amount in common between today’s solemnity of the Sacred Heart and Sunday’s Gospel reading of being “called and sent.”

What do we call it when we have a deep, meaningful conversation with someone?  A “heart-to-heart.”

When we pray to God to reveal His will to us – how He calls and sends us – we are having a “heart-to-heart” with Him.

So, what exactly is the nature of this “Sacred Heart” that speaks to ours?  Sunday’s Gospel sheds brilliant light on this.  Just before Jesus sends the Apostles on their mission, He is traveling from town to town.  At one point the Gospel tells us He looks out at the crowds, and “His heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.”

Mind you, Christ sees all and in His divine intellect He would have known that some of the people He was looking upon would one day:

• mock Him for being the “carpenter’s son”
• attempt to cast Him from a cliff
• abandon Him when his teachings became too difficult
• maybe even cry out, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”

And yet despite all of that, perhaps because of that, His heart was moved with pity for each of them...

… Just so, Jesus sees every bit of us – warts and all. 

But especially what He sees, when we come to Him for a “heart-to-heart” is a beloved daughter or beloved son, to whom He wants nothing more than to be our Shepherd.

Blessings on your journey with Christ –

Steve and Karen Smith

Interior Life

Postscript:  The month of June is the devoted the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

“There are two essential elements in the devotion to the Sacred Heart:  the one sensible, the heart of flesh hypostatically united to the person of the Word; the other spiritual, symbolized by the physical heart, which is nothing else but the love of the incarnate Word for God and for men.  Now, the love symbolized by the Herat of Jesus is, not doubt, His human love, but it is also His divine love, since in Jesus the divine and the human operations are indissolubly united.  We can, then consider the Heart of Jesus as the most perfect model of love toward God and, of love toward our neighbor and even as the model of all virtues, for charity contains and perfects them all.”  (Fr. Adolfe Tanquery, The Spiritual Life)

Thus the Sacred Heart represents:

1. Christ’s human heart and His spiritual heart (his capacity to love)
2. Christ’s love in His human nature and in His divine nature
3. Christ’s love for God and humanity

Devotion to the Sacred Heart is most notably founded in the mystical revelations to Margaret Mary Alacoque.  But centuries before St. Gertrude was gifted with similar revelations.  Jesus told her “Thus My Divine Heart, understanding human inconstancy, desires with incredible ardor to be continually invited, either by words or signs, to operate and accomplish in thee what thou art unable to accomplish thyself.”  And to make known to all that “They may draw forth all they need from My Divine Heart."