In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, St. Joseph,
our patron saints and guardian angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
and it is interesting that the love, the most perfect love for mankind,
the heart that's most perfect, is in one sense broken,
and that it is a wounded heart, the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
because, of course, our Lord, in that wounded heart,
shows us the extent and the perfection of love.
Because it is on Calvary where we see that heart exhibited for us to see.
You know, St. Longinus, the Roman centurion,
when he struck our Lord in the heart with his lance,
opened his, pierced his heart,
and opened it out so that the whole world could look in and see this heart
that has loved men so much,
and no other love can compare.
And really, if it is true love, it has in some way
some reflection of that love.
And yesterday in the Divine Office for Evening Prayer 1
for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, it had this as the reading.
You know, it said,
and it happens to be the reading that is from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians.
He says,
Christ loved the Church.
He gave himself up for her to make her holy,
purifying her in the bath of water by the power of the Word
to present to himself a glorious Church,
holy and immaculate,
without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort.
And previous to that, in that same passage,
he says, you know,
Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved,
the Church.
You know, he gave his very life for her.
And, you know, we don't probably think of it that very often, maybe.
Maybe those who are married do,
but maybe they don't.
If they really understood it,
they would understand what a great sacrament matrimony is.
It really reflects the love of the Sacred Heart,
or ought to,
since Christ said to, or St. Paul said to,
Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved,
loves the Church.
You know, in other words,
the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the model
for matrimonial love.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus, of course,
is the model for religious consecrated love,
that kind of espousal, you know, dying to self.
And it's the model for any love that is truly love.
You know, and today in our world,
we don't really have a very good understanding of love.
You know, you hear all,
all these secular songs and the secular world,
the way they portray love,
they've got love and lust confused.
And maybe, really, you can look at this whole
same-sex marriage scandal that is going on in our world today
as an attack, really, on the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Because if the marriage, matrimony,
is a reflection of the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
for his Church,
his Bride,
and then to somehow tinker with that and say,
well, it doesn't matter what matrimony it can be,
you know, two men, two women, three men, one woman,
400, whatever, you know, what a, what a, what a,
what an insult, what a sacrilege that is when it,
it obfuscates.
And clouds the nature of that sacrament
and the matrimonial love.
Because in one sense, you know,
the higher informs the lower.
It's not that marital love isn't like,
it's like marriage and that reflects the Sacred Heart.
It informs everything.
And any true love, if it's worth the name of being loved,
has to have in some way,
this love of the Sacred Heart reflected.
And what is that love?
It's that which the Greeks called agape, you know,
that sacrificial love,
that love which loves to the point of dying,
willing to shed his blood,
willing to sacrifice everything for, for the beloved.
And that is truly what our Lord has done for us,
like the Good Shepherd.
You know, who went out looking for that lost sheep.
He spared nothing until he found that lost sheep
and brought him home.
And so today, as we reflect on the solemnity
of the Sacred Heart,
and tomorrow we will celebrate the Feast
of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
You know, this is the, really,
the two hearts that show us what love is.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Great God,
the Great Divine Lover who sought out his Beloved,
and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
you might say the Beloved Heart,
who responded to that love in the most perfect manner.
You know, love is only repaid by love,
the famous poem by St. John of the Cross.
And that, you know,
this is what we all have to reflect on in our lives.
What is important in our life?
Is it, is our career important?
Is it gaining money and fame and fortune
and, you know, seeking pleasure?
Or, really, is it what is most important
at the end of our lives?
Can we say that we have truly loved God
and loved our neighbor as God has commanded us to do?
For that's the only thing that we will take with us,
which is of any value.
You know, St. Paul writes that, you know,
faith will be the only thing that will take you
when you pass away, hope will pass away.
The only treasure that we can really take with us
when we leave this world that will be of worth anything,
because that's what we're going to be judged upon
when we get to the other side
is to the degree that we loved,
that we loved like the heart of Christ,
and that we loved like Our Lady
in returning that love to the heart of Christ.
That's the only thing that's worth anything.
And you don't need, you know, a college education.
You don't need to have all the money in the world.
You don't have to have all the things that so many people think,
you know, I have to have everything being perfect.
You know, I have to have all this and that before I can do it.
No, all you need to do is to have a heart
that is open to God's grace to respond to that.
You know, it's dying to all those things that we try to put
in place of God.
You know, that's the first sin of man was,
man's heart was made, turned towards God
and away from creatures.
You know, he sought first and foremost,
when Adam was first created,
that was his first love was to serve God.
It's when through the temptation of the serpent
that he then turned his heart away from God
and towards creatures.
He put,
himself and other things in the, ahead of God.
And this is always the temptation of man
throughout the ages.
And so we want to look to our Lord
who gives us the example of loving God.
You know, he loved the father with that great sacred heart,
that human flesh, flesh heart.
He returned the love to his heavenly father
by going to the cross.
And by serving and doing the will of God
with all of his heart, literally.
And that is what we want to do.
And we want to imitate our Lord.
And then of course, our Lord shows love of neighbor
and loving his neighbor to the degree
that he poured himself out for our sakes,
that he allowed himself to be crucified,
to be wounded out of love for us.
That sacrificial, heroic love of our Lord.
And so we have the crucifix, wherever we look at it.
You know, it reminds us of the great love
of the sacred heart of Jesus for mankind.
Our Protestant brothers and sisters have it all wrong.
We're not keeping a crucifix up on the wall
to remind us of a dead God.
No, we're keeping a crucifix,
on the wall to remind us of how much God has loved us
and has sacrificed himself for us.
And that that love is still with us today,
in the Eucharist, in this great sacrament of love
that we have every day presented before us
in the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
It is interesting that that Eucharistic miracle
of Lanciano, I don't know if everybody has ever been there
to see this miracle of the Eucharist in Lanciano, Italy.
But of course, as you know,
scientists have found that the flesh that is exhibited
in that miraculous host is flesh from the heart,
and that it is living flesh.
And the thing that I think is most interesting
is that Lanciano is Lance in Italian.
And that Lance,
the reason why it has the name Lanciano
is because traditionally history says
that that's where Longinus went to reside
after he left Italy, or excuse me,
after he left his service in Palestine,
when he returned back to Italy as a retired Roman soldier,
that he settled in that area,
and it took its name from him, St. Longinus, for the Lance.
That he used to pierce the heart of Christ.
And there in that little village of Lanciano,
God has left a memorial of that heart,
that miraculous Eucharistic miracle
of the heart of Christ being exhibited for us to this day.
That Longinus' opening up of the heart of Christ on the cross,
our Lord is still letting us look into his heart.
Amen.
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of love for him. That's what inspired the saints
to sacrifice everything they had for Christ
because he sacrificed everything he had for us.
Let us today, as we adore
the most sacred heart of Jesus, truly present, especially
his body, blood, soul, and divinity in the blessed sacrament,
let us ask Our Lady in a special way to show
us how to love the heart of Christ with
her most immaculate heart. And let us
today, you know, thank our Lord for this great love which we
have received as St. Paul reminds us that has
been poured out into our hearts at baptism.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Amen.