Word to the Wise
Friday, June 15, 2007 - Sacred Heart of Jesus
[Ezekiel 34:11-16; Romans 5:5B-11; Luke 15:3-7]What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one untill he finds it?
. The feast of the Sacred Heart arose in part in the 16th century because formal theology in the church had become too cerebral and technical. A more affective spirituality was more appealing. The heart (by that time, although not in the Old Testament) had come to be seen as the seat of the emotions, such as love and caring. The image of the shepherd, taken from Ezekiel, Psalm 23 and Jesus' own imagery, is one of caring and concern. A person who has no care for others or does not respond to the troubles of others is said to be "heartless" or "stonyhearted." The liturgical celebration of the devotion to the heart of Jesus gradually grew until it became a major feast of the Church. Popular devotion was expressed in pictures of Jesus showing his heart aflame with love and in movements such as the "enthronement of the Sacred Heart" in Catholic homes. To this day, I still see copies of the picture showing that this devotion has been practiced in a particular home. A distant God or a savior who does not continually care is not a particularly attractive reality. Humans were made to love as God loves humans. The heart is, at least in Western cultural concepts of humanity, the symbol of love. In some ways, the feast of the Sacred Heart is the Catholic valentine's day. The shepherding image in today's scripture is meant to drive home the point that God does love and God does care, even when we are showing our ugliest and coldest side. The challenge is to respond to that love in such a way that we literally become mirrors of it, or better still, prisms! The celebration of this feast reminds us of the power of love. AMEN