Tag: Sacred Heart

Cross

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Cross, Faith, Jesus, Love, spirituality, suffering2 Comments

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
June 7, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/060724.cfm

When Israel was a child I loved him,
out of Egypt I called my son.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
who took them in my arms;
I drew them with human cords,
with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
they did not know that I was their healer.
Hosea 11:1;3-4

Our readings today invite us to pray with the profoundly beautiful image of the Sacred Heart, the mystery of divinity and humanity united in the person of Jesus. The tenderness of Hosea flows into Paul’s description of the “inscrutable riches of Christ”. These passages culminate in John’s depiction of the unbroken body of Jesus on the Cross.

Together, these readings present us with the mystery of love fulfilled by sacrifice, a reality we may resist in our lives, but one that is nevertheless true. All love entails sacrifice. Jesus loves us completely and sacrificed his Sacred Heart completely for that Love.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We pray to grow in our understanding of the Cross and of the mystery of Love as revealed to us in the Sacred Heart.

Poetry: To the Sacred Heart of Jesus – Thérèse of Lisieux, translated by Donald Kinney, OCD

At the holy sepulchre, Mary Magdalene,
Searching for her Jesus, stooped down in tears.
The angels wanted to console her sorrow,
But nothing could calm her grief.
Bright angels, it was not you
Whom this fervent soul came searching for.
She wanted to see the Lord of the Angels,
To take him in her arms, to carry him far away.
Close by the tomb, the last one to stay,
She had come well before dawn.
Her God also came, veiling his light.
Mary could not vanquish him in love!
Showing her at first his Blessed Face,
Soon just one word sprang from his Heart,
Whispering the sweet name of: Mary,
Jesus gave her back her peace, her happinesss.
O my God, one day, like Mary Magdalene,
I wanted to see you and come close to you.
I looked down over the immense plain
Where I sought the Master and King,
And I cried, seeing the pure wave,
The starry azure, the flower, and the bird.
“Bright nature, if I do not see God,
You are nothing to me but a vast tomb.”
I need a heart burning with tenderness
Who will be my support forever,
Who loves everything in me, even my weakness…
And who never leaves me day or night.”
I could find no creature
Who could always love me and never die.
I must have a God who takes on my nature
And becomes my brother and is able to suffer!
You heard me, only Friend whom I love.
To ravish my heart, you became man.
You shed your blood, what a supreme mystery!…
And you still live for me on the Altar.
If I cannot see the brilliance of your Face
Or hear your sweet voice,
O my God, I can live by your grace,
I can rest on your Sacred Heart!
O Heart of Jesus, treasure of tenderness,
You Yourself are my happiness, my only hope.
You who knew how to charm my tender youth,
Stay near me till the last night.
Lord, to you alone I’ve given my life,
And all my desires are well known to you.
It’s in your ever-infinite goodness
That I want to lose myself, O Heart of Jesus!
Ah! I know well all our righteousness
Is worthless in your sight.
To give value to my sacrifices,
I want to cast them into your Divine Heart.
You did not find your angels without blemish.
In the midst of lightning you gave your law!…
I hide myself in your Sacred Heart, Jesus.
I do not fear, my virtue is You!…
To be able to gaze on your glory,
I know we have to pass through fire.
So I, for my purgatory,
Choose your burning love, O heart of my God!
On leaving this life, my exiled soul
Would like to make an act of pure love,
And then, flying away to Heaven, its Homeland,
Enter straightaway into your Heart.

Music: Only You – Michael Zabrocki

Come to Me

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Jesus, Love, spirituality3 Comments

Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
June 16, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061623.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we hear Moses tell the People:

You are a people sacred to the LORD, your God;
he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth
to be a people peculiarly his own.

Deuteronomy 7:6

We modern readers may be a little put off by the use of the word “peculiar” which, since the 16th century, has taken on the connotation of “odd” or “uncommon”. But the original meaning of the word is “to belong exclusively to one person“, as in “Honey, I love you and you belong to me!” Moses is telling Israel that this is the way God loves them.

Below is a song many us will remember. Maybe as teenagers we even did the “Stroll” to its dulcet tones. The love described in this song is but a pale shadow of the love God has for us, and the longing sung about is but a weak imitation of God’s longing for us. Listen to it and let God sing to you – singing around the words and into the meaning behind them.

Thinking of God as we listen to a song like this can make God very human. And, of course, that is exactly who Jesus Christ is. Jesus loves us with a human heart and a divine love. He loves us with a Sacred Heart.

All love is refined and proven in sacrifice. Jesus testified to his infinite love for us in his Passion, Death and Resurrection. In that miracle of redemptive love, God embraces, strengthens and commissions us. We are to love as God loves – to have hearts themselves made sacred by imitation of Christ.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

Prose: In the late 17th, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque shared her vision of Christ’s Sacred Heart. In a book of her writings published after her death we read:

Christ showed me that it was His great desire
to be loved by human beings 
and of withdrawing them from the path of ruin 
that made Him form the design 
of manifesting His Heart to us, 
with all the treasures of love, of mercy, of grace, 
of sanctification and salvation which it contains, 
in order that those who desire 
to render Him and procure Him 
all the honor and love possible, 
might themselves be abundantly enriched 
with those divine treasures 
of which His heart is the source.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart was fostered by the Jesuits and Franciscans, but it was not until the 1928 encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor by Pope Pius XI that the Church validated the credibility of St. Margaret Mary’s visions of Jesus Christ in having “promised her that all those who rendered this honor to His Heart would be endowed with an abundance of heavenly graces.”

( see: https://sacredheartfla.org/sunday-mornings/seasonal/feast-days-solemnities/the-solemnity-of-the-most-sacred-heart-of-jesus/

Music: Empty Space – Jose Mari Chan

Alleluia: God’s Heart for Us

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Jesus, Love, Poetry, Prayer, spirituality1 Comment

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
June 24, 2022

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062422.cfm

Alleluia, alleluia.
Take my yoke upon you, says the Lord,
and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we offer our loving adoration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Who teaches us the boundless humility of God.

Although not today’s reading, this passage from Philippians captures for me the perfect description of God’s humility in Jesus:

Though Jesus was in the form of God,
he did not count equality with God
a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form
he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Creator.

Philippians 2: 6-11

In order to meet our invisible God in prayer, we must imagine God in the ways that most speak to our spirits. For St. Margaret Mary Alacoque that image came in the form of the Sacred Heart, an image which combines both the sacred infinity and the full human heart of Jesus.

Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647 – 1690) was a French Roman Catholic Visitation nun and mystic, who promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in its modern form.

We must never be discouraged or give way to anxiety. . . but ever have recourse to the adorable Heart of Jesus.

Margaret Mary Alacoque

As we pray on this holy feast, may we lean closer and more confidently into the loving heart of Jesus. God loves us enough to do for us what is described in our passage from Philippians. May we fully trust that love and give our own hearts to it.

Poetry: from Rumi in The Masnavi, an extensive poem written in Persian. The Masnavi is one of the most influential works of Sufism, commonly called “the Quran in Persian”. It has been viewed by many commentators as the greatest mystical poem in world literature. The Masnavi is a series of six books of poetry that together amount to around 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines. It is a spiritual text that teaches Sufis how to reach their goal of being truly in love with God.

Open the Window

There’s a street where the Beautiful One
is known to take a stroll.

When a certain radiance is noticed
through the latticed windows
of that neighborhood,

people whisper, The Beloved
must be near.

Listen: open a window to God
and breathe. Delight yourself
with what comes through that opening.

The work of love is to create
a window in the heart,

for the breast is illumined
by the beauty of the Beloved.

Gaze incessantly on that Face!
Listen, this is in your power, my friend!

Find a way to your innermost secret.
Let no other perception distract you.

You, yourself, possess the elixir,
so rub it into your skin,

and by this alchemy
your inner enemies will become friends.

And as you are made beautiful,
the Beautiful One will become your own,
the intimate of your once lonely spirit.

Music: This Ancient Love – Carolyn McDade

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Faith, Jesus, Love, Mercy, ordinary time, Prayer, sufferingLeave a comment

Friday, June 11, 2021

Today’s Readings

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Isaiah for our Responsorial Psalm:

God indeed is my savior;
    I am confident and unafraid.
My strength and my courage is the LORD,
    who has been my savior.
With joy you will draw water
    at the fountain of salvation.

Isaiah 12:2-3

This fountain of salvation is the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I woke up before dawn today. Not really wanting to formally begin my day, I lingered on the pillows for my early morning prayer. Having always loved this feast, I began placing all my suffering loved ones into Jesus’s heart – one by one, asking for their strength and healing.

The list was long, because there are all kinds of suffering, and I love a lot of people – even ones I don’t know personally! Finally I said to Jesus, “You know, life is HARD!” 

And in my spirit, I heard this answer,
“I know. I lived it for the love of every one of you.”

To me, this is the meaning
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
– that merciful companionship
which Infinity assumed for us
in the person of Jesus Christ.

That fountain of love and mercy continues to nourish our lives in the Eucharistic community of faith practicing the works of mercy. We are the threads which bind one other to God’s heart.

Paul knew this. That’s why he prayed this beautiful prayer for his beloved Ephesian community. Our second reading offers an example of Paul’s magnificent benedictions and doxologies. As he prays for the Ephesians, so he prays for us. These prayers are exalted, yet simple. They thrill the soul who prays them. They place us, in awe and thanksgiving, fully in the divinely generous, Sweet Heart of Christ.

Let’s pray for our beloveds today and for the world:

For this reason I kneel before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory
to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self,
and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
that you, rooted and grounded in love,
may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,
so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Music: Two songs today:

Threads – by David Leonard

We beseech the Sacred Heart today that all who suffer any kind of fragmentation may find tenderness, wholeness, and comfort in him.
(To hear the song, click on “Watch on YouTube” in the black clock below.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q0fBEV6u0I

This one is old school, but it still works for me:

Sacred Heart of Jesus – James Kilbane

Fount of Love and Mercy

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Charity, Community, Discipleship, Faith, Jesus, Love, Mercy1 Comment

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus 

Friday, June 28, 2019

Clcik here for readings

Today, in Mercy, we celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart, a day of deep devotion and gratitude for God’s lavish mercy to us.

All of our readings today suggest the image of a good shepherd caring for his sheep. This metaphor, perhaps more meaningful for the agrarian society in which these scriptures were written, still retains for us the imagery of tenderness, attentive responsibility, strength, protection, and vigilant presence.

Ez34_15 shepherd

Our first reading comes from Ezekiel whose ministry occurred in Babylon during the second captivity there. God calls Ezekiel to prophesy against Israel’s leaders who have forgotten their defenseless sheep, who have fed themselves instead of their flock. Today’s particular verses have God speaking, taking over the shepherding duties, because the human “shepherds” (kings and priests) have so badly failed their sheep. 

The Lord makes clear who will be the beneficiaries of his tenderness:

The lost I will seek out,
the strayed I will bring back,
the injured I will bind up,
the sick I will heal,
but the sleek and the strong I will destroy,
shepherding them rightly.

As I prayed with this passage, I was struck by the awareness of how some things never change. The parallels to our Church and society are painfully evident. Immorally self-indulgent “pastors” and self-serving, indifferent leaders still plague their “flocks”. The poor and weak are still abandoned by those they had depended on.

Our reading from Romans and Matthew raise before us the model of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who both renders us infinite compassion, and teaches us how to dispense it as his disciples. We are invited to become one with the sacred, compassionate Heart of Jesus, being healed ourselves to become healers.

Take my yoke upon you, says the Lord,
and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart.

Our world aches for this healing. Let us pray together today for God to inspire and energize us to be Mercy for our world.

Music: Sweet Heart of Jesus – sung by the Irish soprano Maureen Hegarty

(I know this hymn is tinged with a bit of the old, sentimental spirituality. Still, I have loved it from my long-ago youth and it touches me deeply. I hope it will touch you as well.❤️ Lyrics below.)

Sweet Heart of Jesus!
Fount of love and mercy,
Today we come,
thy blessings to implore;
Oh touch our hearts, so
cold and so ungrateful,
And make them Lord,
Thine own for evermore.

Sweet Heart of Jesus!
We implore
Oh, make us love Thee
more and more.

Sweet Heart of Jesus!
Make us know and love thee.
Unfold to us
the treasures of thy grace.
That so our hearts, from
things of earth uplifted,
May long alone
to gaze upon Thy face.

Sacred Heart of Jesus

On By Renee Yann, RSMIn Jesus, Love, Mercy, Prayer2 Comments

Friday, June 8, 2018

Readings: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060818.cfm

heart

Today, in Mercy, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.  We are blessed with several powerful and profound readings, including the final moments on Calvary.

The second reading offers an example of Paul’s magnificent benedictions and doxologies. As he prays for the Ephesians, so he prays for us. These prayers are exalted, yet simple. They thrill the soul who prays them. They place us, in awe and thanksgiving, fully in the divinely generous, Sweet Heart of Christ.

Let yourself be there, allowing God to love and bless you, as you pray these words:

For this reason I kneel before the Father,

from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory

to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self,

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;

that you, rooted and grounded in love,

may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones

what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge,

so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Music: Two offerings today.  The first captures Ephesians Prayer.  The second harkens back to my childhood — and maybe to yours. (I couldn’t resist the lovely nostalgia!)

Dwelling Place ~ St. Louis Jesuits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f9bzXG2BF0

Sweet Heart of Jesus ~ James Kilbane