Poets, songwriters and storytellers use the heart as a symbol of love and devotion. Gods love, claiming the heart of the beloved, is revealed in the human heart of Christ. The hearts importance to Christ is found in the promises made to Saint Margaret Mary, a cloistered Visitation Nun. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Christ is a very real way of responding to the depth of his love for us
The promises
The Lord revealed to Margaret Mary the marvels of his love and the secrets of His Sacred Heart. My Divine Heart is so deeply enamored of people...that it can no longer contain within itself the flames of its ardent charity. Through thy means it must pour them forth and manifest itself to them, to enrich them with its precious treasures.
Christ revealed to her these promises for souls devoted to his Sacred Heart:
1) I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life.
2) I will establish peace in their homes.
3) I will comfort them in their afflictions.
4) I will be their secure refuge during life, and above all in death.
5) I will bestow abundant blessings upon all their undertakings.
6) Sinners shall find in my Heart the source and the infinite ocean of mercy.
7) Tepid souls shall become fervent.
8) Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection.
9) I will bless every place in which an image of my Heart shall be exposed and honored.
10) I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts.
11) Those who promote this devotion shall have their names written in my Heart, never to be effaced.
12) I promise thee in the excessive mercy of my Heart that my all-powerful love wilt grant to all those who communicate on the First Friday in nine consecutive months the grace of final penitence: they shall not die in my disgrace nor without receiving their sacraments. My divine heart shall be there a safe refuge in this last moment.
These promises cover the gamut of human experience. Looking to God as the meaning of life finds in these promises the help needed to live a good life. Living out the graces of these promises brings into play in all the corners of ones life the mind and the heart of Christ.
A fresh start
Spirituality for a Christian is putting on the mind and the heart of Christ. Many people take this seriously today, but few appreciate the connection of spirituality to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Wherever there is love, God is there. Gods love has its greatest expression in Jesus Christ. The Sacred Heart devotion images in our world the love of God. The spirituality implied in the devotion to the Sacred Heart claims Gods love for our own. We renew devotion to the Sacred Heart by making a fresh start each day in living our lives within the life style modeled by Christ. The selfishness of our world needs the challenge of Christs love. We need to love as Christ did. The Heart of Christ pierced on the cross reveals the Fathers love. But it also teaches us how to love as Christ loved. The glory of Christ is in what he suffered for out sakes.
Invitation
We learn the love of Christ by reflecting on the events in his life. The lived experience of his love allows us to truly honor his Sacred Heart. It reaches the young who proclaim their love with songs about the heart. It touches the old in their memories of their devotion to the Sacred Heart. The Heart of Christ bonds the old and young. The Christ Heart promising love gives meaning to life. Christ has been loved by the Father in eternity and in time. Christ said to his disciples at the Last Supper, I love you just as the Father loves me, remain in my love. (John 15: 9) He tells us to love in his love. ... Love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12) Love urges us to accept the challenge of spirituality -- to put on the mind and heart of Christ.
Another Christ
In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are, he was humbler yet, even accepting death, death on a cross (Phil2: 5-9).
Even as the Eternal Word let go of divinity to take on our humanity, we need to let go of ourselves to put on Christ.
The challenge
Confining Christs love to what people know of him limits the realization of how human and far reaching his love really is. Christs love holds the value and gives the meaning of every nice thing done for a member of the human race. Christs love extends to the goodness of those that have never even heard of him, forgiving even the sinful inadvertent part of our lives. Christs love knows no boundaries. Christs promises are an assurance of his love.
The need
The Sacred Heart speaks to us of what human love can be in Christs love. The Heart of Christ symbolizes Gods love in the world. When we listen to Gods love, we are challenged to goodness; when we do not listen, we pay the price. Teenage suicides are greater in number than ever before, marriages are broken or plagued with the age old problems of selfishness, slavery to comfort, and the easy way out. Sad situations of joblessness and under-employment are faced with drink, drugs and crime. Abortion and poverty threaten the value of life. The victims become the criminals, and the circle of self-destruction goes on. Crescendos of sin force us to try to find answers to the questions: Who am I? What is the meaning of my life? Is love possible?
The reply
In the Heart of Christ, we find answers. Devotions today seem on the fringe of the Churchs life. Yet devotions express the faith of people, and are symbols of relationship to God. Each age has its language of God and its ways to approach the Divine. History often repeats itself, and we come full circle to where others have already been. The Sacred Heart is a perennial devotion for reaching God, but it is much more than just another devotion. Devotion to the Heart of Christ celebrates the love of everyone in the love of Christ. Christ fulfills the promise of a Father who never goes back on his promises, and in Christs love, we discover how to be true lovers.
The window of the soul
Reflecting on our relationships to others, we find a special meaning for what good we do for the sake of others as we look at the cross of Christ. Here in his cross, his love for us and the Father meet. The timbers of his cross and the four quadrants they create give us an image to focus the love of Christ in our lives. The four quadrants can be looked at as a Christ window on our souls. Each quadrant can be used to represent what makes a relationship. How one sees oneself in relationship to Christ and how much of that relationship to Christ one shares would be the first quadrant. The second quadrant covers how a significant other sees your relationship to Christ and tells you. The third quadrant covers how the Community sees your relationship to Christ and uses you. And the fourth would be how Christ sees your relationship to the divine plan and how much of it he reveals to you. The fullness of Christs relationship to us covers the four ways love finds itself expressed in our lives.
Who Christ is
The Gospel gives us a picture window on the soul of Christ. He holds back nothing. All that the Father has revealed to him he has taught his disciples. As the Father has loved me, I have loved you. Christ holds back nothing of himself. He makes of his life the Eucharist of the Sacrament. He invites us to live in his love. The significant others in the life of Christ call him by name. He is called the Son of God. The Christian Community recognizes Christ in his resurrection. Pentecost confirms to the Apostles who Christ is.
Who a person is
There are four dimensions to any relationship. Self, another, the community and the unknown window a relationship of love. Our relationships of love involve the giving of our lives to one another and such living includes suffering for the sake of our love. The cross of Christ is a good mirror for a complete love. Each quadrant of the cross can be named with one of the aspects of love. A full love will have the four quadrants of the cross. Relationships give us the completeness of our lives. The person exists before relationships. Identity is discovered through relationships. Christ in his humanity would discover the fullness of his identity by meeting the Father in the Resurrection. Humanity has its fulfillment in the Trinity. A human heart has four chambers. Each of the hearts chambers can be allowed to stand for a quadrant of Christs Cross The dimensions of any relationship lead us to a fuller discovery of our identity. A picture is worth a thousand words. We live in the age of heart transplants.
Living in Christ brings the transplant of his heart for ours. If we accept Christs heart as ours, the discovery of ourselves in Christ is easier. All of our relationships to another have a meaning in Christs heart. The ways we are aware of self have deeper meaning in Christ.
The first chamber of our heart belongs to the day of Baptism. The Churchs mandate of Baptism carries with it the promise of Christs presence. The Mystery of Indwelling means we carry the life of Christ within us. The ways we have come alive to Christs life within us give us the right to carry the name of Christian, other Christ. Much of the relationship to Christ is found in the privacy of our prayer. The ways we are alone, with ourselves are only gradually shared with others. What we share with someone special to us opens the second area of who we are in Christ.
The second chamber of the Christ heart will be the ways we are willing to live our lives for the sake of the significant other our lives. When we are willing to find our love completed in the other, we love like Christ loves. When we make the needs of the other our needs, we love as Christ loved. When we love another as Christ loved the beloved John, the second chamber of Christs heart belongs to us. Our Christ heart is more fully uncovered in the relationship we have to another in his name.
Our love of the church local or universal is what gives us the third chamber of Christs heart. Wanting all we say to be what the Church thinks and says is the beginning of the recognition of Christ in the Church, a fuller Christ love of our hearts. Our obedience to the Church reaches the proportion of the Christ heart in obedience to the Father when we accept what the Church is saying as the word of Christ. Our need to share in the work of the Church is the Christ heart at work in us. When we finally reach the love of the Church as our life, and the Church finds us worthy to live its life through the Sacraments, the third chamber of the Christ heart is complete in us.
The fourth chamber of our Christ heart is the relationship Christ had with his Father. It is seen in the mission he had from the Father and the ways he tried to live out the love of the Father with his disciples and friends. It is the God relationship in all of us and it is what makes a mystic out of all of us. Christ would bring us to the Father. He tells his disciples at the Last Supper that he has loved them even as the Father has loved him. Christ invites us to live in that love. He tells us to love one another with the same love the Father had for him and he has for us. The Spirit of this love, in our hearts pulls us into Trinitarian love. The heart of Christ is the symbol the Church has used to express Christs love.
The Scriptures are full of the outpouring of his love. The multitudes fed in both body and soul speaks lavishly of a boundless love. It is a love that touches life and life touches. The Sacred Heart devotion gives us the continuation of Christs love by superimposing his love on our crosses of life. The Sacred Heart brings realization of Christs love as an active force in all relationships. The power of Christs love within us can be conceptualized by the relationships each of the chambers of the Christ heart can be imagined to represent. Imagining Christ living and working in each of these four areas of relationship gives us the scope of our Spiritual life.
The growth of our awareness of Christ is gradual and surprising. Startled by the extent of Christs love, we learn the gestures of his love. We move into an awareness of self connected to Christ. A strong Christ personality unfolds quickly. A vague Christ relationship needs the challenge of a faith crisis. The crisis of faith brings forth from deep within the heart statements of self that bear the traces of who Christ is in us. Slowly, but surely, we become the hands and the feet of Christ in where we go and how we lend a helping hand. We learn to stand up for Christ. The child in us follows the footsteps of the elder brother. The lover becomes like the beloved. The child of God lives as the Christ he or she is becoming.
Use of the Heart of Christ is a logical development of the awareness of self and can serve as a simple device to illustrate the four stages of self awareness mentioned before -- self and self, self and other, self and community self, and Christs Father. We work toward self-discovery in all we would do or say to be true to self. Looking at the events in Christs life allows us to see ourselves better. We measure the truth of what is found by the joy experienced in being ourselves in Christ. Seeing ourselves through the eyes of Christ, we see who we are meant to be in Christ. Understanding how Christ lives and works in anyone is not only the bottom line of our Spiritual life, but also the deepest level of our own true self.
The mystery of Christs love is his willingness to die so we could know the love of the Father. Christ gave us the example of perfect love. The Sacred Heart devotion gave those who practiced it an understanding of how to make Christs love, their love. Perfect love deserves a return. God has given us Christs love, a gift with no strings attached to it. It is our freedom to accept Gods love and act upon it that the Sacred Heart devotion builds on. The Sacred heart makes our love Christs love of the Father. Even as Christ chooses us, we can choose him. Putting on the heart of Christ is to live in Gods love and to be Christs love to our world. The mission of Christ to the world becomes our mission, and our lives begin to express his relationship to the Father. Knowing ourselves as loved by Christ helps us to want his relationship to the Father. Telling ourselves Christ died for us, in obedience to the Father, makes his death and resurrection the motivation of our lives. The conscious awareness of Christ at work in us is a contemplative grace. Love is the commandment, prompting the gift of self.
Parents love teaches one how to live ones life even as it gives birth to freedom. An example that moves our heart teaches us what to do and love gives the freedom to want to do it. Love can not he bought or forced. Dictatorships always spawn revolts. The sin of the angels and the sin of Adam and Eve are natural consequences of freedom misused. Love turns obedience into freedom and our willingness to surrender our life to Christ makes of our obedience Christs love for the Father. The Contemplative life can bring one to the point where they could say I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The Contemplative in action is trying to let Christ work a hundred percent in all that is done.
People working together for the good of the entire group form community. Relationships make up community. Identifying relationships makes community a living body and gives us our identity in the community. Identity is how a person sees self in relationship to others. Finding self in Christ completes Christs identity in anyone. When we finally possess enough love to give our lives for one another, community becomes the mutual unfolding of inner hearts. The blood of Christ flows through community and is a lifeline for all. We need to find ourselves by seeing who we are in what others see us to be. Community lets us know the size of our heart by what they ask of us and by what they see in us. Community empowers us to be able to do what is necessary for Gods love to be incarnated in the world.
We often discover in the ways the community has us meeting its needs that we are going beyond what we thought possible. Self-discovery is enriched through the empowerment of community. Our goodness reaches out to respond to the members of our community. Community calls forth our love. Love becomes the divine giving of self for the sake of others because wherever there is love, God is there. Christ, the greatest lover in history, gave his life for the human race. Forever he is the model of true human love even as he is the meeting place of human and divine love. When we say to another who is treating us badly, Have a heart! we are asking to he loved. The human race needs the challenges of love. Christ himself tells us that the greatest gift we can give to another is the laying down of our lives. Life given for the sake or another impresses and enriches us as a living echo and image of Christs love.
We learn how Christ got to be such a lover by meditating on the events in his life. Recognition of the Christ way of doing something allows us to imitate his love in our lives. Touched by his love, we become part of his response to the sinfulness of the world. His love involves us with the hurts and the pains of our worlds poor. How much of our life we live for his sake is measured by the way we live our lives for the sake of the least ones of our world (Mt.25, 40).
Commitments to live Christs love are living expressions of the Sacred Heart in action. The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them.(John15: 13) It comes down to our being born to die. Love is the preparation to die well. We have the possibility of being far-reachers in giving our lives for the world. There will be no room for despair about the worthwhileness of our lives when our lives make a difference to God. God looks at how well we love and not at what we are accomplishing. God makes no distinction between the strong or weak, the wise or not so wise.
Loving with all their minds, hearts, and souls, people give God a return for all he has given through his Son. Christ gives human love a divine connection with life. Christ as the meaning of life is not just information. His love is not understood merely by listening or reading about it. Loved by Christ, we become lovers. Christs love is appreciated in its imitation. The Christ heart in us convinces us to give our lives to each other and for our world. Seeing the winning of the world as possible in his love, we escape from ourselves and are freed from any clouds of despair. We express Christianity with Christs love by reaching out to people who have never heard of him. Thus Christ is no longer a prisoner of our hearts.
Our world faces a crisis of trust. We are capable of destroying each other. The evil of this distrust corrupts us. We search the depths of our being and discover selfishness. Pleasure found in what we are doing and what we are getting out of something too easily becomes the motive of what we do. Me, Me, Me, rather than what we are putting into something for the sake of others too often drives us. When Thomas Merton used the title No man is an island, he spoke the truth of our love belonging to the world. Christs heart within makes us belong to the world.
People live and die for their beliefs, for their meaning of life. In Jesus Christ we find the greatest possible meaning of life. We can live by him and in him and by reaching out to the Christ in our littlest brother and sister, always beginning with each new person who comes into our lives a new relationship with Christ. The beauty of the Christ heart is that what we give away in his name comes back to us in the proverbial hundred fold of Christianity. There is a leveling out of the great and the small in what is done in the name of Christ. The meaning of life does not depend on what we do or how long we live, but on how much love we give away. What we do at any moment by our love possesses the possibility of the full meaning of life.
Surrendering ourselves to Christ -- dying to self and coming alive to Christ takes a lifetime. There are no shortcuts to putting on Christs life and love. We can idealize the story of Christs love and life to such a point that what Christ did by his love does not touch us. Belittling his humanness says he is so much God that it was easy for him. Honoring his humanness makes it seem possible to do what he did. The victory of Christ claims everyone on the face of the earth. For one to be true to self, one must be true to the Christ of their hearts. So is lived a bit of heaven on earth. The Christ life is true happiness, and the more we live out his love in our day and age, the more happiness we and our world will have.
There is the something more we have been called to be in Christ that has not yet been realized - an ever-deepening consciousness of Divine Indwelling, This awareness I call Synchristic. There is more of Christ in the Mystical Body than in any one of us. Synergetic energy means there is more energy in the molecule than the sum of the energy of the atoms. Synchristic means that there is more Christ in community than in the sum of all our Christ relationships together. Wherever two or three are gathered together, Christ is there with a reality that is more than -the Christ of the individuals.
We can say with Saint Paul: It is no longer I who Live, but it is Christ who lives in me (Gal, 2: 20). When we really live in Christ, our foothold in heaven, we are united to a person who needs eternity to be known. All the people who will live in the history of the human race are necessary for the love of the Mystical Body of Christ to be fully expressed. Our communities have never enough of Christ. First impressions are too long lasting. Our communities usually see us being unchanged from when we first met. We need to let our communities know whom we are today by willingness to go beyond ourselves in Christs name. Christ is not one more link in our journey into God. He is every link and more than all the links we have ever met. Christ is the alpha and the omega of our own identity. He created us and completes the story of our lives by calling us to his resurrection. He is always calling us to be ourselves. In Christ we can be so much more ourselves by the very foothold we possess in heaven in his love and relationship to the Father.
The mystery of Christs relationship to the Father is lived in the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. The degree to which we become part of each other in the Church is part of the heart of Christ in us. Our journey of life relives Christs journey. His having gone before us opens the path to a deeper and fuller meaning of life. Without Christ, too deep a look at life could breed despair. In Christ, the most insignificant moments can be life giving. Each event in Christs life suggests a difference Christ can make in our daily lives. We have a destiny -- Gods providence for us. A task remains for us until the day we die -- the putting on of Christ as our real self. Even as Christ would claim to perfectly express the Father, we are called to express Christ in our lives and in our world as perfectly as his heart in us would allow. Our foothold in heaven can have an ever greater foothold an earth by living his love and being his love to each other.
Privileged moments in the life of each one of us overflow into our future as the richness of how we have learned to love. There are great people who touch our lives with love and teach us how to be lovers. These people reflect the truth of Christs love whether they are aware of it or not. Christ, the most significant human being who has ever lived in the history of the human race, calls us to look more closely at how we can become great lovers. At any moment God can touch as by drawing us into his life, and what we perceive in the mystical, is what God reveals to us beyond lifes experiences. By ourselves or with others, what we perceive in our prayer can be an inexpressible moment of Divine Presence.
Significant moments in the life of Christ open our hearts door through which each of us can walk to find the bigger and better self of Christ. Christ, the prisoner of our hearts, waits to be invited out in the way we would share ourselves with one another. He waits to give us his life by the love we share and we need to be his heart to the world. The exchange of our hearts with his is ongoing. When we have found his heart in ourselves, we will be able to be his love to and for the world. We will see and treat others as Christ would. We will try not to turn away from anyone because Christ is open to everyone. The question, how can we love the God we do not see, if we do not love the brothers and sisters we do see, will no longer need an answer. Christs love in how we share our lives with others resolves the question. When the Christ heart transplant is finished, our hearts belong to the world.
The Sacred Heart will truly be our heart, the Heart of Christ. Every event in Christs life becomes a prayer. Facing his heart opened on the cross claims from our hearts a response:
Lord Jesus Christ, I offer myself today to your Divine Heart. I give to you my body with all its senses, my soul with all its faculties -- my will, my mind, my memory.
I offer to your love all my thoughts, words and works, my sufferings, hopes, consolations and joys. I commend to your Heart my family, friends and all who need your love. Your love for me and for all people, which fills your Sacred Heart, prompts me to promise my life in return for that love. I desire to live in union with You, strengthened by the Eucharist, your Sacrament of love and unity. I wish to share in your mission of bringing the Fathers love to all people.
May Your Sacred Heart ever be for me, the symbol of self-sacrificing love and the promise of eternal life.
AMERICA PRESS P.17 |
