A Heart Like No Other
Happy Feast Day! This weekend, as we celebrate our parish’s patronal feast, we have great cause for celebration. We celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart as a Solemnity of the Catholic Church. We celebrate our Patronal feast because our parish bears the name of the Sacred Heart. We also celebrate the many ways we the people of Sacred Heart reflect the most profound and purest meaning of the feast of the Sacred Heart.
The feast itself is often misunderstood. Many people think that we are celebrating the heart of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, as the heart of God loving the world. Although that is a beautiful sentiment; it is not the meaning of the feast. The feast is about the human heart of Jesus. In many depictions, the heart itself is closer to the actual shape of the human heart rather than a symbol.
Just as our hearts can grow in their understanding and expression of love, so too did Jesus. Jesus was fully human. His ability to love grew as ours does. Jesus was a child born into a family who grew up into a man. He showed us what perfect love looks like. But He had to learn it first in His humanity.
No doubt, Jesus’ love was first fostered and developed in his human family. His family was unique. Jesus was conceived in love through the intercession of God within Mary. He was also protected, cared for and reared by Joseph, His earthly father.
These faith-filled loving parents began to tend and care for the seed of love that was planted in Jesus’ heart. The scriptures give us little about the early life of Jesus, but those years were the foundation on which His boundless love would grow. Jesus’ human life and ability to love was built on an unbreakable foundation, established in the family of Mary and Joseph.
There is no direct Scripture passage that tells us how Jesus’ love and His understanding of what that love would mean. But, there are clues.
Throughout His ministry, we see over and over again that Jesus went away to a quiet place to pray. From the desert where he was tempted to the Garden of Gethsemane, where he spent his last night in prayer before his death, Jesus prayed. At least 29 separate times in the Gospels, it mentions Jesus going apart to pray. Prayer is where Jesus developed His depth of love, and His love grew to embrace all humanity. It was prayer, being with, and listening to God that brought Jesus’ heart to the fullness of love. His prayerful oneness with God gave him the fullness of love, His Sacred Heart.
When we celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the Feast of the Human Heart of Jesus, we celebrate with gratitude. Gratitude that God gives us the same opportunities to develop a relationship with Him as he gave His Son, Jesus. Gratitude that we, too, are invited to go apart and pray. Gratitude that God craves a deep, personal, loving relationship with us.
As we celebrate this our parish feast day, The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, let us pray fervently for ourselves and our world. We pray we will all have the courage to listen to God and to develop hearts of love. Jesus showed us the way.
With unwavering faith, we too must go apart and pray. God is already there waiting for us.
In God’s Unending Love,
Gwen, Pastoral Associate
