Sacred Heart of Jesus, A June 19, 2020
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Video of Mass: https://youtu.be/d5e9vYvW0To
“It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you… it was because the LORD loved you.” So Moses tells our spiritual ancestors, the Israelites. So we need to hear today. It was not because you were good that the Lord set his heart on you. It was not because you were wealthy or pious or influential or attractive that the Lord set his heart on you.
Why did the Lord set his heart on us? Because he loved us, he loves us still. Yes, God loves us because he loves us. As St. John the evangelist puts it: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”
This is what the “wise and the learned” of this world were not able to discover and understand. In the wisdom of the world, it’s favor for favor, victory goes to the strong, you have to earn your way and take what you want. The high-powered businessman, the influential politician, the fabulous celebrity… they got where they are by their efforts; At least, that’s what they think.
But that is not the wisdom of the God who loves us because of our littleness, who loves us because we are weak, who loves us just because he does. The little ones of this world, those who know they cannot “win” at life and who know they are dependent on things beyond their power for survival – these were the ones who could recognize and accept the offer of God’s love, which cannot be earned and must be simply accepted.
This is, incidentally, also the way that Jesus brings rest to weary, burdened souls. Tiredness is one thing, and usually good. The satisfaction of a hard day of honest work, the comforting soreness of a quality workout, the peaceful exertion that leaves you ready to fall asleep as soon as you lay down. This kind of tiredness is not what Jesus talks about, nor is it always easy to find.
Weariness, however, is something else. It is that overwhelmed feeling, that paradoxical compulsion to do more while feeling like there is nothing more that can be done, that anxious experience of never doing enough, never being enough. It is weariness that expresses itself in sudden rage or crippling depression or maddening obsession.
And so often the reason we are weary and burdened is this lie of the enemy that everything depends on us, that we cannot stop. It is the lie that makes people think they can solve the world’s problems if only their candidate or their party were in power, the lie that leads to passive aggressive efforts to change the behaviors of other people, the lie that tells you to keep looking at the news, that insinuates somehow that all this mess is your fault and you should be worried about all of it all the time.
But not Jesus Christ. Not the loving rest he offers. Jesus, though he is also God, does not go about the world trying to manage it all. He teaches, he heals, and he loves those right in front of him and seems surprisingly uninterested in the rest of the world. When disciples try to draw him into local or global politics, he sidesteps it, knowing that is not the cross he came to bear. Always referring things back to two simple realities: love of God and love of Neighbor. Love of the world in general is not on that list. Love of politics. Not on the list. Love of behavior modification. Not on the list. Love of control. Not on the list.
Jesus, for all his infinite power, freely chose to be an unimportant man in an unimportant town in an unimportant country to show us rest. To teach us to put down the burden of fixing the world – or even just the person next to us – and to accept the mysterious, undeserved love of God. This is meekness. It is humility of heart. Meekness is not weakness; it is self-control and the courage to not waste time trying to control what we cannot. Humility is not thinking poorly of yourself; it is knowing and accepting the truth. The truth is that you are person made in God’s image whose destiny is ultimately to be loved by God and love him in return. It’s to know that we deserve God’s love for no other reason than that he chose to love us. It is to escape the burdensome lie of the devil that we have to prove ourselves lovable. You can prove no such thing because it’s not up to you. It’s already decided. From all eternity God saw you and decided: you are loveable to him. He set his heart on you. Don’t deny it and don’t waste time trying to earn what is already there.
This is the reason for the celebration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. To recall that God set his heart on us. Because we so often struggle to accept the dedication of a heart so divine, he took on a human heart to set that on us too. Still further, he let that heart be pierced by a lance to pour forth his very blood, blood that circulated for no other reason than to bring life and love to his body, the Church… to us.
Love one another as I have loved you. Don’t follow this commandments to earn his love. Follow it because His love is already there and acting on this love how you recognize it… it is how you are transformed by it. From the outside, a person who obeys out of weariness and person who obeys out of humility may look the same, but inside it makes all the difference.
Jesus was mocked, rejected, tortured and executed, yet calls his yoke easy and his burden light. How? Because love makes difficult things seem easy. And Jesus knows that God has set his heart on us, that he loves us simply because. There’s nothing we can do about it. So, we might as well accept it.