Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, D.D., J.C.L.
Bishop of Scranton
HOMILY
Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus – June 30, 2011
One of the things that I have always found surprising – and frankly a little bit unsettling – is the extent to which people will go to attach to God our human ways, our frailty and, frankly, our brokenness. What do I mean? You’ve heard these things a thousand times over. A tragedy occurs at the hands of some poor, misguided soul – and here is the response that we read about in the newspaper or hear on television: “They’ll have to answer to God. If there’s a God in heaven, he’ll take care of those criminals.” The poor, the elderly are exploited and the response that’s given is this: “God will get his pound of flesh out of these characters. Don’t worry.” And how many of us haven’t at some point or another uttered the words from the 70’s sitcom “Maude,” as she typically responded to her husband and anyone who seemed to disagree with her: “God will get you for this.”
These remarks that we hear more often than we’d like to admit offer a pretty unsettling image of God, don’t they? If this is really how God works, where do we draw the line – or more precisely, where do we allow God to draw the line? If we’re not careful, we can wind up on the wrong side of that line. We’ve all sinned. We’re all broken. But the Good News of Jesus Christ is that we ARE loved.
We all know of the justice of God and of the truth of the Gospel message. Yet so very often, we miss what permeates all that has been revealed about God in the scriptures – both the Old and New Testaments. Saint John says it best and most succinctly in our second reading this afternoon: “God is love.”
Lest we’re not convinced by these words, go back in the Old Testament, to a passage written thousands of years before Saint John wrote his letters and listen again to the Word of God that we just heard from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Moses said to the people: “You are a people sacred to the Lord, your God. … The Lord set his heart on you and chose you … because the Lord loved you.”” From Old Testament times, the core of salvation history is God’s unfailing love and election, and our human answer to that love.
These words remind us that our faith is not simply the result of our searching for God. In Jesus Christ, it is GOD who comes to find us, to speak to us and to show us the way to himself.
Some years ago, Pope John Paul II, on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, reflected on the words from our second reading: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” The Holy Father went on to note, “The Apostle is speaking of the love that inspired the Son to become man and to dwell among us. Through Jesus Christ we know how much the Father loves us. In Jesus Christ, by the gift of the Spirit, each of us can share in that love. … Through faith in the Son of God made man we abide in the very heart of God: “God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.” These words open to us the mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus: the love and compassion of Jesus is the door through which the eternal love of the Father is poured out on the world.”
Isn’t this notion of God’s love amazing? And yet, in the face of such profound love, the best of us can be so misguided at times. We put parameters around God. We determine how God should relate to his creation. Because of our brokenness, we go to great lengths to limit the scope of God’s love to equate it with our own. That just doesn’t work. Quite frankly, we’d all do well to simply give thanks for the generous, selfless and unconditional love of God that embraces us all.
Make no mistake; the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not a cheap love. It emerged from the cross. Yes, God’s love causes him to pursue us. But once embraced by that love, we are also embraced by a responsibility – the challenge of discipleship. “God is love, and whoever remains in that love – whoever lives the Gospel message of love, whoever loves selflessly as Jesus loved – remains in God and God in him.”
Once captured by God’s love, our faith becomes our response. And what a gift faith becomes! While it doesn’t cause us, at once, to be perfect nor does it wipe away in an instant the brokenness of our human frailty, it does enable us to assume, more and more, the person of Christ in our lives and to begin to love with the heart of Jesus.
But lest we become too romantic about this, remember what happened to the heart of Jesus. His heart was moved to pity when he saw broken, hopeless people before him, and when he brought them healing and hope, his heart was hurt by criticism and broken by a lack of gratitude. Jesus’ heart was moved to tears over the lack of love in the streets of Jerusalem, and when he tried to call the city to repent and to be gathered into the loving arms of God, he was marched out of the city as a criminal and hung upon a cross.
You and I have known both the consolation that comes from opening our hearts to the heart of Christ – and the pain that so often accompanies a conviction in our hearts to live the Gospel of Jesus in the midst of a world that seems to pay no heed to its values.
That pain is the cost of discipleship. Therein we discover the mystery of faith that emerges from the loving heart of Jesus. “God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” Jesus’ total gift of himself – in love – from the cross is the gift that gives us hope. It is the gift that enables us to see through the pain and loss of this world to the promise of life and peace. In the words of Saint Francis of Assisi: It is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Jesus understood that mystery. It would be well for us to pray for the courage and wisdom to live that mystery in our lives through faith.
As we embrace the gift and responsibility that come from opening our hearts to the love of the heart of Jesus, may each day find us accepting with renewed confidence the words spoken by God spoken to Abraham at the beginning of the patriarch’s long and incredible journey of faith: “Fear not.” May we trust the goodness of God and allow life to unfold, even in unexpected ways. May we always know the love of Jesus. And through the simple, fragile gift of our lives, may we be living images of the God who is love and faithful witnesses to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
