In every civilization the heart is regarded as the natural symbol of love and affection. Heart is also the seat of our feelings and emotions. All our actions are directed by the thoughts coming fom our heart. So Jesus warns us to be careful to keep our heart pure at all times, because what comes out of us, from our heart, will defile us.
‘Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes into the sewer? (Thus he declared all foods clean). And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person’ (Mk 7:18:22).
We say the heart of Jesus is sacred. And for us, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has a very special place in our spiritual life. Its purpose is to return the Lord’s love with gratitude. In other words devotion to the Sacred Heart is in essence complying with the first commandment. ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ (Mt 22:17).
To love Jesus the way he demands from us is, indeed, a difficult task, because our hearts are filled with many things that prevent us from loving Jesus. ‘The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?’ (Jer. 17:9). But the Lord demands nothing short of a pure heart from us and has set it as a pre condition to see his face. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God’ (Mt 5:8).
Any spiritual exercise in the name of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus must lead us to introspect how far is our heart from the Lord. Often we recite a litany of prayers in the vain hope that it will please the Lord. But the Lord says; This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me…..’ (Mt 15:8-9).
While our lips praise the Lord, our heart is wandering somewhere else where we have kept the treasures of this world. ’For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Mt 6:21).
But our most valuable treasure must be Jesus who loved us to the point of death. Jesus showed his pierced heart to St Margaret Mary Alacoque and said; ‘Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love’
If the Sacred Heart of Jesus allowed itself to be exhausted and consumed to testify its love towards us, isn’t it our duty to repay that love?
June is the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart and Jesus invites us to try loving him with all our heart. Let us consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and make reparations for the indifference and ingratitude shown towards it by us.
Let us pray.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, remove from us our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh to love you.
