Collect

Responsory (Isaiah 12)

Second Reading 1 Jn 4:7-16

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.

Gospel Acclamation

Gospel  Mt 11:25-30

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. Then turning to his disciples, Jesus said: 27 “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 28 “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Interlude (John Michael Talbot)

Catena Nova

How good and pleasant it is to dwell in the Heart of Jesus! Who is there who does not love a heart so wounded? Who can refuse a return of love to a Heart so loving?  Amen. (St. Bernard of Clairvaux)

What more could he still do for us, that he had not done? He has opened his very Heart to us, as the most secret chamber wherein to lead our soul, his chosen spouse. For it is his joy to be with us in silent stillness, and in peaceful silence to rest there with us.... He gives us his heart entirely, that it may be our home. He desires our hearts in return that they may be his dwelling place.  (Johannes Tauler)

Geography comes to an end,
Compass has lost all earthly north,
Horizons have no meaning
Nor roads an explanation:
I cannot even hope for any special borealis
To rouse my darkness with a brief “Hurray”!

O flaming Heart,
Unseen and unimagined in this wilderness,
You, You alone are real, and here I’ve found You.
Here will I love and praise You in a tongueless death,
Until my white devoted bones,
Long bleached and polished by the winds of this Sahara,
Relive at Your command,
Rise and unfold the flowers of their everlasting spring. (Thomas Merton)

Under the symbol of the Sacred Heart the divine assumed for me, the form of fire… through its power to become universal this fire proved able to invade and impregnate with love the whole atmosphere of the world in which I lived…. It is in the Sacred Heart that the conjunction of the divine and the cosmic has taken place…. There lies the power that from the beginning has attracted and conquered me…. All the later development of my interior life has been nothing other than the evolution of that seed. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

As he passes from depth to depth in his own heart the awakened disciple reaches the ultimate depth of the Heart of Jesus— a pointer to the ultimate recesses of the source of being. Then, passing beyond all, freed from all bonds, even mental ones, he finally comes to the Source, where, in his eternal awakening, he discovers that he is.  (Henri Le Saux, Abhishiktananda)

Homily (from the encyclical letter Dilexit nos of Pope Francis)

Devotion to the heart of Christ is not the veneration of a single organ apart from the Person of Jesus. What we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart. That heart of flesh is seen as the privileged sign of the inmost being of the incarnate Son and his love, both divine and human. More than any other part of his body, the heart of Jesus is “the natural sign and symbol of his boundless love”. It is essential to realize that our relationship to the Person of Jesus Christ is one of friendship and adoration, drawn by the love represented under the image of his heart. We venerate that image, yet our worship is directed solely to the living Christ, in his divinity and his plenary humanity, so that we may be embraced by his human and divine love. Whatever the image employed, it is clear that the living heart of Christ – not its representation – is the object of our worship, for it is part of his holy risen body, which is inseparable from the Son of God who assumed that body forever. We worship it because it is “the heart of the Person of the Word, to whom it is inseparably united”.  Nor do we worship it for its own sake, but because with this heart the incarnate Son is alive, loves us and receives our love in return. Any act of love or worship of his heart is thus “really and truly given to Christ himself”, since it spontaneously refers back to him and is “a symbol and a tender image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ”.  For this reason, it should never be imagined that this devotion may distract or separate us from Jesus and his love. In a natural and direct way, it points us to him and to him alone, who calls us to a precious friendship marked by dialogue, affection, trust and adoration. The Christ we see depicted with a pierced and burning heart is the same Christ who, for love of us, was born in Bethlehem, passed through Galilee healing the sick, embracing sinners and showing mercy. The same Christ who loved us to the very end, opening wide his arms on the cross, who then rose from the dead and now lives among us in glory. The eternal Son of God, in his utter transcendence, chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love. His heart, then, is not merely a symbol for some disembodied spiritual truth. In gazing upon the Lord’s heart, we contemplate a physical reality, his human flesh, which enables him to possess genuine human emotions and feelings, like ourselves, albeit fully transformed by his divine love. Our devotion must ascend to the infinite love of the Person of the Son of God, yet we need to keep in mind that his divine love is inseparable from his human love. The image of his heart of flesh helps us to do precisely this. Entering into the heart of Christ, we feel loved by a human heart filled with affections and emotions like our own. Jesus’ human will freely choose to love us, and that spiritual love is flooded with grace and charity. When we plunge into the depths of his heart, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the immense glory of his infinite love as the eternal Son, which we can no longer separate from his human love. It is precisely in his human love, and not apart from it, that we encounter his divine love: we discover “the infinite in the finite”.

Litany of the Sacred Heart