Dear brothers and sisters, may the love of Jesus shine on you this day and remain with you always. In today’s Solemnity of His Most Sacred Heart, we will celebrate his love for us throughout the years, rejoicing in the fact that this love will never end.
In the first reading, we hear through His prophet Ezekiel; “I myself will look after and tend my sheep.” Already, even before the Incarnation of our Lord among us, he is indicating his consistent attention to us, caring for us and giving us daily signs of his care.
He goes on to say; “I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered when it was cloudy and dark.” In other words, when we lose our way and in our confusion find ourselves in trouble, he is there to rescue us. What tender mercy the Lord has always shown us? Saint Paul, in the second reading puts it this way; “For Christ, while we were still helpless, died at the appointed time for the ungodly.” In other words, the good Shepherd laid down His life for his sheep. He didn’t just give us a grace, or win for us an extraordinary blessing. He did something even more profound than that – He gave us His very life, He sacrificed Himself.
He did this two-thousand years ago, but he does this every day, through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, when he becomes present within the host which the validly ordained priest consecrates and then distributes to the faithful during Holy Communion.
It has always astonished me, how every time a Eucharistic Miracle, i.e., a host which has visibly and miraculously transformed into flesh and blood through God’s power… every time one of these miraculous hosts has been analyzed and tested in the laboratory, they always discover the same conclusions. Some of these include the blood type AB. It is never the case for example that they find an O blood type, but always AB. They conclude that the flesh and blood is human, and that it comes from a man, for example, but the greatest discovery of all, in my estimation, has always been that they find it to be endocardium – flesh you only find in the human heart of a man.
This means, my brothers and sisters, that every time we go up to receive our Lord… by giving us his living and most Sacred Heart, he is trying to tell us something very important. When we say to someone, “I gave you my heart,” what are we actually saying to that person? Or, “I give you my heart.” What are we saying? We are saying, “To you, my precious and beloved, I give my everything!” Because, a man can live without a limb, or without an eye, but without a heart? The heart is the steam engine of the rest of the body. The heart is where love is nurtured or destroyed. Notice the spiritual insight our Lord gave us about what can flow from the heart; in Luke (6:45), he says, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.” And he continues the latter thought with this insight from the gospel of Matthew (15:19): “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.”
Therefore, we wish to be the good man, who has many good things stored up in his heart, so that when it comes to distributing and sharing and putting out into the world what is stored up in our hearts, we may be like the Sacred Heart of Jesus who has always loved.
For there He always is, in the tabernacle, night and day – silent, consistent, reassuring, ever-present and ever-loving in his accompaniment of we who still make our journey through this life. One day, may he embrace you and me to His Most Sacred Heart, and may He speak those beautiful words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come be with me now, forever.” Amen.
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