Heart of Jesus, house of God and gate of heaven.
Heart of Jesus, glowing furnace of charity.
Heart of Jesus, desire of the everlasting hills.
Heart of Jesus, patient and rich in mercy.
Heart of Jesus, rich to all who call upon Thee.
Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance.
Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation.
In this morning’s parable Jesus
compares the repentance of a sinner to the rescue of a lost sheep by a loving
shepherd. From Christ’s perspective God is always running after us, pursuing
the lost one, from our side this sense of the pursuit of a loving God who has
made the first move in our direction is expressed in our desire to repent. As
usual God makes the first move, we respond. And Jesus tells us that
consequently there is then very great joy
in heaven.
We celebrate today God’s tenderness, God’s loving pursuit. We celebrate the reality that
our God enfleshed in Jesus and his deeds and compassion will always, always be
the God with a broken, open, wounded heart. And
so the invitation is to honestly even joyfully take ownership of our lostness,
my very real need for mercy, my desperate need to be found and sought out by Jesus. My sinfulness, my apartness from God
can never estrange me from him, but instead, once I beg for his mercy, become a
very great, greasy shoot which will lead me right into his broken Heart.
Today
here and now the Sacred Heart of Jesus notices us, lost in our isolation and
confusion, all the stuff that does not fit, and he rushes toward us without
delay to take us to himself, even into his wounded side as refuge. God loses
himself in love over and over again. He is searching for
us relentlessly.
Excerpts from the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus precede
excerpts from this morning's homily.
excerpts from this morning's homily.
