IN THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY
"I don't understand anything else, only love," confesses Socrates in Plato's “The Banquet”. There is no word more ambiguous than "love." Man needs love the most that is why so many imitations and substitutes of it have been invented. When love is falsified, its symbol, the heart, is also falsified. But is the heart just only a symbol?
It is worth remembering the times when we were ... teenagers. At the sight or sound of the voice of a beloved one, the heart began to beat faster and faster. It seemed as though it was about to pop or burst with excitement and joy. The relationships between love and heart, feelings and biological reactions, the most sublime experiences and the usual palpitations under the ribs are strange. But this is what man is: he is a tangle of the physical and the spiritual, the sublime and the mundane, the ephemeral and the permanent. This is how God made us.
Heart and love ... The word "love" can be doubted. Therefore, it takes courage to talk about it. The apostle Paul had it when he wrote about love to the people of Corinth, the city of paid love (cf. 1 Cor 13). St. John wrote even more boldly: "God is love" (1 Jn 4: 8). But what does it mean? This short statement of the Apostle seems vague, detached from human destiny, almost deceptive. Maybe when loving, longing, suffering from love, one must ask: God, do you love me as much as I love my beloved (husband, son, brother)? Are you waiting for me as much as I am waiting for my beloved (wife, daughter, sister)? Do you miss me as much as I miss people? Is that why my love, my waiting, my longing are so great, so beautiful at the same time, so irresistible that they were created in me in the image of Your love for me?
At the heart of Christian faith is the truth that the Son of God became man and died on the cross for our salvation. Why? For what? "Wasn't it better to sit in heaven? After all, your beloved Daddy did not chase you away? ”. It is a brilliant folk carol banter with the Son of God. But apparently it wasn't "better to sit in heaven." Apparently love is such an incomprehensible force that it will even direct God. But it is not an outside force - He Himself is love. He Himself must ... This alone "must" will be understood only by those whom love forced to do great things, but sometimes up to the ridiculous and absurd. For those who do not know that God is love, the mystery of the birth of the Son of God and the mystery of his cross seem absurd. St. Paul noticed: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor 1:18).
In the heart of Christianity is the wisdom of the cross. On the cross, the Son of God is victorious, whose heart has been wounded, pierced, crushed, filled with disgust and pain ... Did you notice? After all, these are the words of the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. For us, the "foolishness of the cross" is the greatest wisdom. And Jesus, when he appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, said: "This is the Heart that loved people so much”.
The cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was laboriously permeating to the piety of the Church. Why? Is it something new and unusual to talk about the love of the Son of God for people? Does the symbol of love - the heart - seem inappropriate here? After all, the very brief account of the Evangelist points to the Divine Heart: “One soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out." (Jn 19:34). The Gospel contains a number of scenes in which we see the good, loving, tender, sensitive, friendly heart of Jesus. Yes it's true. But we would rather see God's love in the heights of heaven, while the word "heart" is associated with a tangle of spiritual and carnal. As if we did not fully believe that since the Son of God became man, He sanctified everything that is human. Also human love, human kindness, human tenderness, human friendship, human compassion. In a word, everything that we used to call the heart.
"The cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus did not appear suddenly in the Church, nor did it arise as a result of private revelations, but it is a spontaneous outgrowth of the living faith and ardent devotion that people endowed with supernatural gifts had for the Savior and His glorious wounds ... Christ the Lord, showing in these revelations, the Sacred Heart wanted to turn human minds in an extraordinary way to contemplation and to worship the mystery of love that merciful God showed for mankind ", wrote Pope Pius XII in the encyclical Haurietis aquas (1956).
In the tradition of our piety, June is the month of God's Heart. June (16th day) is the anniversary of the apparitions to St. Margaret. In June, on Friday, after the octave of Corpus Christi, we celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In June, daily services are held in many parishes to celebrate the Heart of Jesus - that is God's love shown to people humanly. We are simply trying to humanely respond to God's love that we cannot comprehend. It is so much beyond all our loves.
Therefore, for the next few days we will meditate on the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Until Tomorrow
fr. george