By Bishop Joseph M. Siegel, The Bishop’s Corner
On Friday, June 27, we will celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. This solemnity draws us as individuals and as the Church closer and closer to the person of Christ by acknowledging that His natural heart is itself intertwined with the supernatural reality of His divine and all-consuming love for us.
In 1677, Jesus appeared in a vision to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and revealed his Sacred Heart. She wrote: “I could plainly see His heart, pierced and bleeding, yet there were flames, too, coming from it and a crown of thorns around it. He told me to behold His heart which so loved humanity.”
The biblical meaning of the heart is the whole interior life of a person: his or her sentiments, memories, thoughts, reasoning and planning. By venerating sacred images of His wounded and flaming heart, we are presented with the opportunity to become more perfectly conformed to the Lord. By our own desire to become one with the perfect fire of His charity which such images represent, we are united to His eternal sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving in the presence of His everlasting Father.
This essential conformity to the heart of Christ is perhaps most clearly understood through the depiction of His heart burning with flames of fire. Far from being some overly-pious icon of sentimentality, such an image is a true sign of Christ’s all-consuming love. It is a love that invites us to join ourselves to those very flames in order that, one with His own offering of self-sacrifice, we may be entirely consumed in Him. Christ’s love for us—and indeed the love that is thus demanded of us for Him—is that perfect sacrificial gift of the self for the other. So it is in the sacrifice of the person of Christ on the cross of Calvary that we catch the fullest glimpse of His supernatural love—of His Sacred Heart—a glimpse which is re-presented for us on the altar in the offering of the Eucharist.
Last Saturday, during the ordination of Father Nick, Father Keith, Father Aaron and Father Clint, I was reminded that devotion to the Most Sacred Heart has something of a priestly sense. The heart of Christ and the love which radiates from it embodies in a particular way the nature of the ministerial priesthood. In this life, the person of the priest is to be utterly consumed in an offering to the Father that Christ alone may dwell within him. The life of sacrifice undertaken by the priest, especially in the gift of celibacy, shows forth in a unique way the all-consuming nature of the offering which is embodied in Christ’s perfect sacrifice. The man who serves his people “with an undivided heart”, is consumed not by his own desires but in service to his people and in offering to the Father by his very his life.
Of course, the priest cannot bear this burden without the grace of the sacraments he celebrates and receives, nor without the fervent and assured prayers of the Christian faithful. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart affords us the opportunity to plead with God not only for more vocations to the priesthood, but also for the needs of those priests we know, both those who inspire us as well as those who frustrate us, all of whom rely so greatly on our prayerful support.
Especially in this Jubilee Year, may the focus of our hope be the love that flows from the heart of Jesus. Let us humbly unite ourselves with Christ in this offering of Himself to the Father in the Mass so that we are consumed by His love. Let us take with us into this refining fire of Divine love those who serve us as priests, particularly our newly ordained. Conformed to the heart of Christ, may they become more clearly icons of the One whom they serve. And may all people come to the knowledge of the truth and themselves receive the redeeming grace which the Lord offers to all in His Most Sacred Heart
Jesus gentle and humble of heart – Touch our hearts and make them like your own.