My dear parishioners,
Peace! The Catechism of the Catholic Church mentions the Heart of Jesus variously. “Scripture is a unity by reason of the unity of God’s plan, of which Christ Jesus is the center and heart, open since His Passover. The phrase ‘heart of Christ’ can refer to Sacred Scripture, which makes known His heart, closed before the Passion, as the Scripture was obscure” (CCC, 112; cf. Luke 24:25-27, 44-46; Psalm 22:14). how in view of the incarnation He loves with a human heart, and “the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation ‘is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that … love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings’ without exception” (cf. CCC, 470, 478; John 19:34; Pius XII Encyclical Haurietis aquas). One form of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Here we consider the second of the thirty-three invocations: Heart of Jesus, formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mother.
We can hear echos of the Hail Mary in this invocation of the Litany: “blessed is the fruit of your womb” which itself is a citation of the Visitation of Our Lady to Saint Elizabeth found in Luke 1:42. Elsewhere we read of another woman in a crowd who said “Blessed is the womb that bore you” to which the Lord responded that all who “hear the word of God and obey it” are blessed, ourselves included (cf. Luke 11:27-28). Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is an affirmation of the incarnation, God has become man, like us in all things but sin, to save us from our sins (cf. Matthew 1:21; Hebrews 4:15; 7:25). The Lord Jesus, true God and true man loves us with a love that is at once both human and divine. When we read in Sacred Scripture that God has so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son… this love is not only for a select few but for all (cf. John 3:16). The Lord, whose Sacred Heart was pierced for love of us and the Eternal Father, reminds us that “the world” has hated Him first and it will hate us to the extent we are faithful to Him (cf. John 15:18). In the incarnation the Eternal Son become man through Our Lady and her blessed womb, entering into “the world” though He is not “of the world” any more than we are when we truly follow Him by rejecting sin, Satan and the glamour of evil. This world is a fallen world, our humanity is a fallen race (cf. Genesis 3:1-24; Roman 3:22). But in His death and resurrection the Lord Jesus with His pierced Sacred Heart has “overcome the world” with its sin (cf. John 16:33; Romans 5:12). May the Sacred Heart, born of Mary, both strengthen and console us.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr