From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for Pentecost (Jun 08)

Parish School of Prayer, Pt 19: Our (Sacred) Heart Monitor

It’s a mark of love that one care about the contents of the other’s heart: to be concerned with what the other is experiencing, thinking, feeling. St. Paul says “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15). Those who love their neighbor to the point of counting his or her weal or woe as their own will do just that. 

Devotion to the Sacred Heart applies this logic of love to Our Lord. Jesus revealed to St. Margaret Mary the contents of His adorable Heart: it’s love, primarily, but also it’s feeling and experience resulting from how His love was by and large ignored and unappreciated by the race of men. In the measure we love Jesus, this revelation will affect us. We will respond with love to the One who so loves us, even as we are pained and moved to compassion on account of the wounds that our indifference continues to inflict on the Heart that was “pierced for our offenses.” 

Might what Jesus revealed to Margaret Mary so long ago be “old news”? On the contrary. It stands to reason that the love of the world for Christ has only waxed colder (cf. Mt 24:12) in the intervening centuries. So what Jesus said to that chosen soul in the 17th century about His Heart ought to be all the more true now. In fact, the inner experience of Christ has been revealed in words of perennial truth already in the Scriptures: for example, when Jesus said from the Cross “I thirst” (Jn 19:28), or when He tenderly yet painfully lamented to His unheeding people, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Mt 23:37). 

Truly, for devotees of the Word Incarnate, the whole of the Gospel can be read as a revelation of the contents of His Heart: His love for the Father (“I do exactly what the Father has commanded Me, so that the world may know that I love the Father!” Jn 14:31); His compassion for men (“When he saw the crowds, his heart was moved with compassion for them, because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” Mt 9:36); His grief over sin (“He looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts,” Mk 3:5); even something of His boundless joy (“Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said, ‘I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent…’” Lk 10:21). But how does one learn to read the Gospels this way?

St. Paul speaks about those who read the Sacred Scriptures with a veil over their eyes: they are prevented from grasping their true meaning because they read according to the flesh, that is to say, according to their own limited ways of understanding. “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord,” says St. Paul, “the veil is taken away.” Then he explains: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor 3:16-18). Here “the Lord” is the Holy Spirit, “the Lord and giver of life,” the One who enables us to behold Christ’s glory and Person as revealed in the inspired word. 

Elsewhere, Paul speaks of how the Spirit reveals to use things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard. Though such things are ordinarily inaccessible to man, “the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (1 Cor 2:10), in such a way that those who have the Spirit become familiar with the depths of His Heart. Through the Holy Spirit, we come to know the thoughts, feelings, and designs of Our Lord, to the extent that we can say with St. Paul “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16). 

Then come, Holy Spirit, and reveal to us the deep things of the Heart of Jesus, that we might share His joys and sorrows, and help accomplish all His loving designs!

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The Ascension