The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Summary

• Introduction
• Different Types of Catholics
• The Purpose of the Feast
• Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Sacred Heart
• The Love of Christ
• The Unforgivable Sins
• Drawing Closer to Christ
• Conclusion

Introduction

The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is such a beautiful feast day. It's such an important one for the church, but it's actually also one of the most modern feasts. It was established for the universal church quite recently, only a couple of hundred years ago, and it was established at the request of our Lord Himself for a very specific purpose, and that was to fight against the errors of Jansenism.

Different Types of Catholics

There are many types of Catholics throughout history and the many types of Catholics in our world today. We have the twice-a-year Catholics who just seem to manage to show up for Christmas and Easter. We have the ones who bring their children in for baptism and then we never see them again. We have the ones who take everything very seriously and never miss a single day of anything. We have people who judge each other and judge themselves, people who have problems with adding any number of vices and problems that they battle throughout their lives. There are all types of Catholics. That's one of the reasons the Catholic Church is called Catholic—Universal. That is its word. That is what the word means: Universal. It is for each and every person.

The Purpose of the Feast

Does that mean each and every person in the church is going to achieve what the church is trying to give? Of course not. Far too many humans in the church reject her teachings, do not fulfill what grace encourages them to do, and they fail and they go to hell. But on the flip side, there's always hope for people to go to heaven while the church is here. While there is grace in the world, there is the door to heaven open for all people to have access to. And each and every one of us must consider who we are to be able to achieve that. Where we're at. What we need.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Sacred Heart

The Feast of the Sacred Heart was established in response to the error of the Jansenists. Now the Jansenists were a special kind of heresy within the Catholic Church. They believed that there were two types of Catholics: the saved and the condemned. Essentially, it was Calvinism and Gnosticism within the Catholic Church. If you could prove that you were one of the saved by the life of great virtue, then you were worthy of the sacraments. You were able to go to confession only after you had proved your repentance through strict acts of penitence. You were able to go to communion only after you had been approved by the saintly, by the highest. That was the idea of the Jansenists.

While this heresy was ravaging France, the condemnation that should come down upon such an error did not come directly from the church, not at first. It came from our Lord himself. He appeared in France to a nun, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. At first, his very first words to her were a complaint. He demonstrated his heart, as we see in the images of the Sacred Heart, with all the wounds inflicted upon it. And he said, "Behold this heart, which has so loved man, and has only had coldness and indifference in response."

The Love of Christ

The very first words out of our Lord's mouth when he appears to combat this heresy are to complain of our coldness and hardness of hearts and to demonstrate how deeply and profoundly he loves us. This is the question. It does not matter if we are sinners. Our Lord Jesus Christ can overcome sin. It does not matter if we are naturally good people. He will use whatever material we can offer. He will sanctify anybody, even the worst sinners. He will help anybody, even the most desperate. He will support anybody, especially the weakest. He will dedicate himself to that labor, and he will sacrifice himself on the altar every day for that purpose. He shows us and reveals to us in his heart all the wounds that he's suffered because of his tremendous love for us.

What the Jansenists did not comprehend is that this is not a question of us earning God's love. We could never do so. We can't earn the right to communion. We can't earn the right to forgiveness and confession. We can't earn the right to anything with God. He is God. We are His creatures. The only reason we have the ability to receive His grace and His love is because He is so generous that this chasm between us is bridged by His love. We are sinners. We are born sinners through original sin. And He wipes that clean. We are mere creatures, and He elevates us to the level of demigods through grace so that we can have a friendship and a relationship with Him. He supports us, even though we are weak and we fail time and time again. We are wounded by our sin, by original sin, and by our many personal sins. And He supports us and He encourages us and He strengthens us. And He forgives us time and time again. He carries us when we're too weak to stand. He lifts us up when we fall and fail. He cleans us up when we are stained with our sins. And He never, ever gives up on us. He never lets go of us. We let go of Him, or at least we try to. We run away from Him, at least we try to. We turn away from Him again, at least we try to. But He's always there, giving us another chance, another opportunity, inviting us closer. Come and know me. He's always trying to bring us closer to Him. His love for us is so incomprehensible, and we take it for granted. We don't understand it, and we don't respect it. His love for us is so perfect that our own imperfect, very human emotions cannot comprehend it. We must understand His love.

The Unforgivable Sins

Our day and age is cold. We're scared of attachments. We're scared of relationships. We're scared of responsibility. We're scared of all the things that come with love. But God is there. Christ is there to make the burden lighter. Christ is there to guide us in the darkness of our own ignorance. He's there to light the way. He's there to show us the doctrine and the truth. He is there to guide and protect. We have no reason to fear if we are drawing closer to Him. The flame on His heart, the heart burning with love for us, is precisely the image of the warmth and comfort of being truly home. The pain that we suffer through our lives, we have a companion always suffering by our side with us. Who is our Lord Jesus Christ? Who knows our pain better than even we do? Our ignorance, our blindness, etc.

There are two grave sins, the so-called unforgivable sins, not because they're bigger and more powerful than God, but because by their very nature they deny the possibility of forgiveness. That is despair. Two sins against the Holy Ghost: presumption and despair. Presumption, where we just assume that God is going to forgive us. God is going to take us to heaven, and so we don't have to work for it. This is one side of the coin. The other side is despair. We think we would never be good enough. The Jansenists fell into both.

Drawing Closer to Christ

The world may be a mess. We may be weak. We may not understand how we are supposed to go forward. We may not be able to see in front of us. But Christ lovingly is with us every step of the way. We should never fear to draw close to the Blessed Sacrament. We should never fear to receive Holy Communion or the forgiveness of confession. We should never let our very human fears and qualms and difficulties stand in the way of the grace of God. How can we appreciate the love of God more? Well, let's start with just looking at the Blessed Sacrament and looking at the Sacred Heart. They're both the same thing—effectively the most excellent proofs of the love of God. If we contemplate those two things, those two images of Christ, those two realities of who Christ is, we will understand a little bit more just how much our soul is worth.

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, during one of her apparitions, told Our Lord, "How is it possible that you love me so much?" And his response was, "My daughter, if you were the only sinner on earth, everyone else was perfect, you were the only sinner and you had only ever committed one venial sin, I would gladly suffer passion and death a thousand times if it was to buy your soul back." That's how much he appreciates and treasures our soul. And we treat it with such disdain. Our souls are precious before the eyes of God himself. He loves us despite how unlovable we are and despite how sinful we are. He loves us even against our own selves.

Conclusion

We need to start responding. The moment we understand, as Saint Paul says, the length, the height, the breadth, the depth of the love of God. Once we understand a little bit more of how much He loves us, we must give back. How do we give back? Christ gives us the most excellent response: "If you love me, keep my commandments." We should all know the Ten Commandments by heart. And if we don't, we need to do an examination of conscience again, because it's based on the Ten Commandments. They're the most basic perfect guidelines of how to live one's life, of how to find God. "If you love me, keep my commandments."

So let's review the commandments. Let's find where we're weakest, where we don't complete what we should. And let's start tackling there. Let's eliminate our dominant faults. Let's eliminate the most pressing, the greatest sins. Let's start perfecting ourselves and moving forward. It's going to take a lot of effort. But if Christ is so willing to sacrifice and die for us, surely we can sacrifice just a little bit of a temptation or a desire or a wish or a weakness. Surely we can give just a little bit back. Surely we can take advantage of His many graces that He offers through the Blessed Sacrament, which He pours out of His heart. Surely we can do a little bit more, a little bit better.

My spiritual director in the seminary, Father Scar, told me a story of a man he knew in Argentina who was very insistent: "Father, I believe so firmly in every article of the creed, in every question of the catechism. I would die for any of them. Ten Commandments, though, maybe not so much." And of course, it was meant as a joke. But how true that is. Hopefully, we all have enough faith that we would gladly die for any of the articles of the faith. But we should also die before we violate one of the commandments. The rule that guided the life of Saint Louis of France, taught to him by his mother: "Death before sin." And that is the amount of love that we should have for our Lord Jesus Christ, not as the Jansenists did, to be able to win the love of our Lord that we have to be perfect. We have to be perfect because we love our Lord. He so loved us. We should respond in kind. He was so generous and so complete in His love that we should be so complete and dedicated in our love for Him. There should be nothing else. Everything and everyone around us is just one more expression of His love for us, each and every one of us individually. He loves us, and He shows it to us in every possible instance of our lives. We don't even notice.

Let's start taking notice. Let's start paying attention to His love. Let's start understanding how profound and complete that love is. And let's start paying it back, love for love. Let's start making ourselves truly His. Letting His heart open to us so that we can disappear in it. Let us make ourselves absolute members of the Club of the Sacred Heart, disappearing into it, learning to love from Him, learning to sacrifice from Him, giving ourselves to God the Father through Him, making Him our absolute everything. And by doing so, we can find the peace that He promises. Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine. He says, "Take my yoke, for it is sweet and light, and I will give you rest." If we take that yoke of love upon ourselves, we will have eternal rest, happily with His love in heaven.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.