A SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF SACRED HEART
From a very early age we come to
realize what a very tragic word is our word Lost. We learn very quickly that, no matter what
the context, the word seems to convey nothing but mishap and sorrow. And as we
grow from childhood to old age and beyond, our losses seem to get worse. As a small child we lose our toys. When we get older we might lose a baseball
game. We go through the childhood stages
of losing our temper, losing our battles for control with parents and teachers. As we grow older, we might lose our job, or lose
an election, maybe lose our chance of marrying the man or woman we love. And then we grow older still, and we lose our
teeth, our memory, our health; we might lose our mind, or perhaps we lose the
will to live. Eventually we will lose
our battle for survival and lose our life.
And then ultimately, most sadly of all, some of us will lose our soul.
Today is the Sunday within the
Octave of the Sacred Heart, and this morning’s Gospel is all about losing
things. In his parables, Our Lord paints
two separate pictures of loss. First the
man who has a hundred sheep, and leaves ninety-nine of them to go look for the
one that is missing. Then the woman with
ten pieces of silver, who loses one and combs the house looking for the one
that is lost. The meaning of the parables
is explained by Our Lord, and is clear—that there is greater joy over one
sinner who repents than over the nine, or the ninety-nine even, who are just
and have no need of repentance. In other
words, nothing causes more joy for the angels and saints in heaven, nothing
pleases God more, than the return of the sinner to grace. in the words of that famous protestant hymn
that we all know, Amazing Grace, “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”
This is the message the Church
would have us learn on this Sunday within the Octave of the Sacred Heart. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd seeking
the lost sheep, the Sacred Heart pursuing and extending his mercy to the
repentant sinner. The image of that lost
sheep returning into the loving arms of its shepherd.
“Behold this Heart which has so loved men,”
said Our Lord when he appeared to St. Margaret Mary. And for us to understand this love, we need
to compare it to the way we ourselves love.
We all have loved. We have loved
parents, children, our husbands, wives. We
love in different ways, sometimes passionately, sometimes with a more steady, a
more stable love. Love is, after all, a
many-splendoured thing. Sometimes we take
our love for granted. More tragically, we
often take those whom we love for
granted. Usually it is only when we fear
losing these persons, fear their loss, that we love them most. This is perhaps the kind of loss we find
hardest to endure.
Perhaps you still fear losing
someone you love. Or perhaps you are
already grieving. But whether we fear the
losses of the future, or whether we are already acquainted with a past loss, one
thing we know, that whenever we experience either the fear of this loss or the
actual loss itself, it is then that we love these persons with a greater love than
we had ever known before. Such is the
psychology of our human nature.
God knows our nature. He knows it because he created us. And so we must conclude that God will use our
human nature so that we may learn important lessons. This is perhaps one of the reasons why God allows
the loss of our loved ones, why he permits us to suffer the almost intolerable
grief of bereavement. Certainly, one lesson
we cannot help but learn is that of the finality of death. By showing us that our loved ones do not
return, we are reminded that once we
are dead, we won’t be coming back either.
We won’t be given the chance to do those things we ought to have done,
or to undo the things we ought not to have done. It’s over, and we will be judged according to
the state of grace, or the state of sin, in which we die.
But I sometimes think that an even
more important lesson that God teaches us through the death of our loved ones
is so that he can give us a taste, a very bitter taste, admittedly, but a taste
nonetheless, of that most intense feeling of love that comes with loss. So that we can be reminded, so that we can
actually feel, in some tiny way, some
pale reflection, the type of love the Sacred Heart feels for the sinner who is
lost in his sin. When our loved ones
die, we know they don’t come back, and that a curtain has been drawn for the
rest of our lives to separate us from them.
More than anything, we want them to come back to us. But they cannot. What incredible joy would we have to
rediscover him or her living once more amongst us. Imagine, then, the joy experienced in heaven
when that loved one, the object of the love of God and angels, repents from his
sin, and his dead soul is returned to a life of grace. It is as though they have returned from the
dead.
This gives us a faint glimmer, a
pale reflection, of the love the Sacred Heart has for us, as he goes in search
of souls to save, and sinners to lead home.
At some point in our own past he has sought us, and given us every grace
that we might save our souls and be with him for ever. How much he has sought for and cared for us! Our Blessed Saviour, our loving Good Shepherd
has sought me out, has found me, and has led me back out of sin to his
sheepfold, where he has prepared a table in my sight, and where I may no longer
be afraid to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. This is my joy, our joy, that we have been given another chance. That if we stay within the fold of grace, our
souls will not be lost forever. But It
is also, and infinitely more importantly, the joy of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who
is always in search of souls to save, always longing to free us from the snares
of sin, to wash us in his Blood, to feed us with his Body.
Last week during the octave of Corpus
Christi, we contemplated the greatest of all the gifts of God to men, the Holy
Eucharist. And yet, huge as it is, this sacramental gift is still just the outward
sign of something far greater. In this
sense, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The Holy Eucharist, certainly, is the gift that crowns all other gifts
of the love of Jesus for men. But now we
must think beyond the gift to the very reason, the source and the cause of this
gift, and of all God’s other gifts. This
week we must move from the tip of the iceberg to the tip of a lance. And we must follow that lance, as the soldier
Longinus pushes it upwards into the very side of God himself. This lance penetrates the very Heart of Jesus. And it is to this most Most Sacred Heart that
we have been brought this week. Look at this heart, “Behold this Heart, which
hath so loved men.” And we behold, and we
see that this Heart is nothing other than the infinite love of God, covering
us, overshadowing us, shielding us, protecting us, seeking us when we are lost. And we behold the
very essence of the glory of God. For
what is this essence, if not love? We see, as St. Paul says, the
“breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and we know the love of Christ,
which passeth knowledge”.
The love which passeth
knowledge. And yet we can know this love. We can know it because the Sacred Heart has
been opened with a lance for all to see and know. It has been exposed to the gaze of our
imperfect little minds in all its infinite glory, and we have seen his
glory. Vídimus glóriam ejus, glóriam quasi Unigéniti a Patre, plenum grátiæ et
veritátis. We have seen his glory,
the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And now, during this Octave of the Sacred
Heart, this glory is declared unto the heavens and to all the corners of the
earth. “And the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as
the waters cover the sea.”
And what shall be our response to
this glory of the love of God? In the
most famous of the apparitions of the Sacred Heart to our heavenly patroness, St.
Margaret Mary, Jesus revealed himself to her as she knelt in prayer before the
Blessed Sacrament. He showed her his most
Sacred Heart, and, complained that in return for his unbounded love he met with
nothing but outrages and ingratitude from mankind. Outrages and ingratitude! Is that all we have to offer back to God for
all the good things he has given unto us?
Surely we can improve our lives by sinning less and loving more?
In the same apparition, Jesus asked
that a new feastday be established to venerate his Sacred Heart, so that it may
be duly honoured, and so that the faithful could expiate for all the insults
offered to God by sinful men. This is
the feast we celebrated Friday, and which we continue to celebrate today and throughout
the Octave. This is what we are asked to
do. Venerate the Sacred Heart. Make reparation. And when Christ comes again, in his glory to
judge both the quick and the dead, think ye, he asks, if he shall find faith in
this earth? We look around at the state
of the world, and we sometimes wonder too.
But it isn’t for us to ask this question. On the contrary, our job is to answer it. We answer it by keeping that faith, by
struggling on to make sure that this faith of our fathers is not “lost”! That our children do not lose their
faith. That they have it, that they keep
it, and that they love it. Love it
enough not just to practice it themselves, but love it so much that they will
want to pass it on to their children, and their
children’s children, so that the faith of God and the love of God shall not
perish from the earth. So that it’s
never lost.
And so, finally, we stand, humbled,
before this image of God’s glory that is his love, his Sacred Heart. We know we are incapable of loving enough in
return. Let us therefore approach the
throne of God, let us kneel before the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the source of all
love, and let us simply implore, that we may love him, daily more and
more.
