Rose Bay, Sydney, Australia photo: Clara Malo rscj  | Last year I happened to be at Sacre Coeur (Melbourne) for the liturgy for the opening of the school year. In his homily the priest told of a small child who, if asked by her mother ‘How much does Mummy love you’, would stretch out her arms as far as she could saying ‘this much’. One day when her mother took her into a church she caught sight of the crucifix and exclaimed, with her arms outstretched as far as she could stretch, ‘Look, Jesus loves me this much!’ Today we celebrate this love of Jesus and, like that little girl we are unable to stretch out our arms far enough to express what we know of this love for us. We have discovered that this love resides, in fact, in the heart, the Heart of Jesus and our own hearts, and the heart has an infinite capacity. Iain Matthew in his writing about St John of the Cross, says, “Love is God’s activity” even if I think I am doing the loving. St Paul reminds us “Love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5.5). At the risk of revealing how slow I have been to grasp the scriptures it was with some excitement that I discovered only a few years ago that love is God’s activity, not mine. While we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus I wonder if we should also celebrate the sacredness of the human heart, of our own hearts which contain such treasure, which are capax Dei - the heart is a sacred space … “Never wound the heart of another” I remember hearing said at a school mass here last year, for it contains this treasure; maybe we should take this further - the heart of God is in the heart of the world; how do we treat this world as well as its peoples which come from the womb of God ? Those outstretched arms on the cross invite us, as does the gospel reading of today, in three ways: - - We are invited to come to him - to be refreshed and sustained; in entering into the heart of Jesus we enter into the heart of God, into the heart of the world with all its struggle and pain;
- we are invited to share his yoke – to be for the heart of the world the heart of God as we accompany others, share their lives, in ministry and prayer,
- we are invited to learn from him – enter into his designs, learn of his longings and of his love for the world as well as for ourselves.
Twice in this passage Jesus promises “you will find rest” – the rest that comes from the reassurance of being loved and of being accompanied, whatever the struggle or darkness.
I would like to end with a quotation from Noel Davis, which Mary Cavanagh shared with us recently - BE, SIMPLY BE, IN THE STILLNESS OF MY HEART THAT MY HEART MAY BE IN ALL YOU DO. Every day should be Sacred Heart Day.
The heart is a working muscle. Esmey Herscovitch rscj
Province of Australia - New Zealand
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