The biblical readings from the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus have a common theme: the love of Jesus Christ for people. Not the love of God in general that we find in the prophets, but the love of God made flesh. The heart of Jesus is the deepest place in His humanity, the place where all His humanity is concentrated and meets the Divinity, thus realizing the great mystery of God who became man; it is the wedding room where the betrothal of the king’s son takes place with the body born of the Virgin Mary and, thanks to her, with the whole Church (cf. Mt 22:2; Eph 5:32). If the entire humanity of Jesus is the source of the sacrament of salvation, then His heart is it specially.
The image of Jesus Christ with the heart on the palm or the outside of the chest did not help us to the piety of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, because we carry the Heart in the chest, and not outside or on the hand. His characteristic is that he moves everything, although he remains hidden and humble. Having already built the feast of the Sacred Heart on the solid rock of the mystery of the Incarnate Word, let us discard the doubts and restlessness that have kept some of us from drawing water from this source of salvation for a long time. The Sacred Heart is our cradle, we were all born there! One of the Psalms says the same about Zion: Everyone was born on it… This one and that one were born on it (Ps 87, 4-6); but our true Zion, that in which “all our springs are,” is the Heart of Jesus. We emerged from Him together with water and blood, that is, through Baptism and the Eucharist. Another psalm adds: The intentions of His heart – through the generations (Ps 33, 11); now we know what they are, or rather what the thoughts of His Heart are. We are the thoughts of His Heart! The thoughts of the Divine Heart are not abstract and fleeting like ours (my thoughts are not your thoughts – Is 55:8), they are always a reality; God thinks and everything exists. We are God’s thoughts that clothed themselves with flesh during birth and became sons in the Heart of Jesus; sons in the Son. Now these ideas are said to “endure from generation to generation,” that is, always; God does not abandon those whom He has begotten. which clothed themselves with flesh during birth and became sons in the Heart of Jesus; sons in the Son. Now these ideas are said to “endure from generation to generation,” that is, always; God does not abandon those whom He has begotten. which clothed themselves with flesh during birth and became sons in the Heart of Jesus; sons in the Son. Now these ideas are said to “endure from generation to generation,” that is, always; God does not abandon those whom He has begotten.
There must be a reason why the Church recommends the Heart of Jesus to us, and not some other organ of His humanity, as a concrete sign of the mystery of His Divine-human love. So let’s look for this reason in the Holy Scriptures and human experience. For the Bible, the heart is the noblest and most important part of a person; it is an essential part of a person, the seat of spiritual life, and a privileged place of meeting with God. From the heart comes what pollutes, but also what sanctifies a person. True purity (cf. Mt 5:8) and true humility (cf. Mt 11:29) come from the heart. The heart embodies what we now refer to as our innermost self. With the cult of the Sacred Heart, we include the whole person of the Savior and are led to the source of His feelings and saving actions: You will draw water from the springs of salvation with joy (Is 12, 3). This special interest in the Heart of Jesus has its genesis in the New Testament at the moment of Christ’s death. The evangelist John, by assigning extraordinary and seemingly exaggerated importance to the piercing of Jesus’ side on the cross, broke the way that leads to the celebration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus;
Today, the heart does not represent in man all that it represented for the Holy Scriptures; indeed, its importance in everyday speech and the general feeling of men has remained unaltered, but all the rest, its noblest functions, which were at one time ascribed to it, have at the same time been transferred to the intelligence, the will, or even the brain. However, in our current way of showing the heart, there is a thing that helps us understand by analogy the meaning of the heart of Jesus. The heart is the engine of the whole body; life and death depend on him; it is present in the whole organism and causes it to vibrate according to its movements; blood from the whole body full of toxic waste flows into it and it cleans, oxygenates and distributes it to the most distant cells of the body. The same is performed on the spiritual plane by the Heart of Jesus in the wonderful, immense body that is the Church! In this Heart, for the first time, the cleansing from all sins took place, and the birth of hope and human love took place; there, too, in a mysterious way every day, during the Holy Mass, the corrupted and infected blood of the world flows in, and from there, a mysterious wave comes out, which comes from the Holy Spirit, which purifies, renews and strengthens all the members of the Church. Every forgiveness, every grace, every inspiration, every ray of hope and joy, every encouragement to unity that we experience in our Christian life, has its beginning in the Heart of Jesus. Such was the Father’s plan, so that all fullness dwells in Him and that we receive grace after grace from this fullness (cf. Col 2:9; Jn 1:16). And this is because in this Heart on the cross was fulfilled the act of complete and perfect obedience, which was the fulfillment of the entire will of God; therefore God exalted Him and entrusted the salvation of all people into His hands.
The greatest hope that fills us on this day is that the Heart of Jesus is not something that passed away, that stopped beating on this Friday afternoon, shortly before the mercenary pierced it with a spear. The heart of Jesus lives on because Jesus rose from the dead and lives, and when he rose from the dead and lives, so also His Heart rose from the dead and lives. He lives in the Spirit like the whole Christ, and living in the Spirit means that this heart continues to beat, that it dwells in some place, or rather in every place. After disposing of his mortal body, he called someone close to the whole world, “he is closer to me than I am to me”; he stands at the door of every heart and knocks, if someone opens to him, he will enter: He who loves me… my Father loves him and we will come to him and make our abode with him (Jn 14, 23).
If we conclude from this, we can say that the Heart of Jesus is a new heart that was promised to us by the prophet Ezekiel (11, 19) and was given to us at Holy Baptism. it also happened through our sins. To forgive as Jesus forgave, to obey as Jesus was obedient, to suffer as Jesus suffered, and to love as Jesus loved means to forgive, to be obedient, to suffer, and to love with the Heart of Jesus. Paul says: Let this desire quicken you; she was also in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5); but to manifest the same desires is to have the same heart! The true love for our neighbor, which the Gospel speaks about, does not consist in loving our brothers, giving them something of ours, but in allowing Jesus to love our brothers in us when we allow His love to flow through us.
One more thing. We long to be one heart again, like the original Christian community (cf. 4, 32); we strive for the unity of all believers in Christ; this is what ecumenism consists of. But what is this one heart? Or maybe a heart that was created from the union of all hearts, and thus something abstract and exclusively metaphorical? It is the Heart of Jesus that is “the king and unifier of all hearts”. Unity, fortunately for us, is already there, and at least it has begun, and we already have the germ of it; we only have to complete it and show it to the world by tearing down the walls we have built around this one Heart. In the Heart of Jesus, not only is the unity of all believers with each other realized, but also the unity of all believers with the Father: I am in them and You in me! That they may all be one (Jn 17, 23).
Let us now look in prayerful contemplation at the One whom we have pierced. This wound has always been a favorite refuge of souls thirsty for salvation. Through this narrow gate, they established close contact with Jesus and found pasture. This gate is open to all, both saints and sinners; it is open above all to those who labor and are burdened, to those who seek rest for their souls. “Whosoever thou art, run to this fountain of life and light, with fervent desire and inward strength of heart cry unto it: eternal and impenetrable, sublime and full of sweetness, the fountain hidden from the eyes of all mortals!” Your depth is infinite, your height is without end, your breadth is boundless, your purity is perfect! A river flows from you that “makes the city of God hap
