Happy/ Blessed Feast of the Sacred Heart.
A Feast-day Reflection
GOSPEL POINTERS TO JESUS’ SACRED HEART
How do the Gospels reveal Jesus. Heart? Some pointers.
Perhaps best to start with John’s Gospel, chapter 1, opening up language of the Trinity, the beginning, the Word, the Word with God, is God. Then incarnation language, the Word made flesh, the Son, God’s human experience, Jesus living our lives with us. But, this opening hymn of John’s Gospel goes on to make quite clear who Jesus is, who the Son is, the Son who is nearest to the Father’s heart – and, who in his life as the Word made flesh, has made known the very heart of God to us.
We know that Mark’s Gospel is full of stories with great detail about what Jesus said and did. In terms of his heart, we can go to the end of chapter 1, Jesus and the healing of the leper. Those who encountered Jesus seem to have responded so well to Jesus as a man of heart. The leper was prepared to disobey health regulations, no social distancing, but came out of his quarantine. He was confident in the compassion of Jesus, ‘if you want to, you can heal me’. The Jerusalem Bible translation emphasises Jesus’ response, ‘Of course, I want to…’. And, then, the literal outreach, personal touch and touching. The postscript of this story is that Jesus was prepared to forego the regulation in his compassion for the sick man. He accepted that for 40 days he would be leper, sharing our sickness with us, relegated to quarantine outskirts, ritual tearing his hair, throwing dust on himself and, experiencing human anonymity by having to warn people away, Jesus ‘unclean’.
There was a tradition that Luke’s gospel was referred to as the gospel of compassion. Any number of stories, any number of encounters, when Jesus revealed that he was a man of the heart. But, the heartiness of Jesus extraordinary love is very clear in the stories he told, the parables which undercut assumptions about human care. In Luke 15, probably Jesus’ most famous parable, referred to as the parable of The Prodigal Son, and, sometimes, The Prodigal Father, a suggestion could be made that it could be called the parable of The Most Permissive Father. And, Jesus is telling us that this is what God, his father is like (and Jesus knows because he is nearest to the Father’s heart). The father has no hesitation in giving into his son’s unreasonable and presumptuous demand for his inheritance, allows him to go off, potentially to ruin his life. But he has never cut him off, the son can always return, not only repent, but experience his father rushing to meet him, embracing, lavishing clothes and feast on him, rejoicing to recover his lost son. (And, calmly going out to reason with the unreasonable older son: ‘everything I have is yours’.)
Which leaves the Gospel of Matthew. No surprise when we look at Chapter 11, Jesus’ prayer of wonder to the father, revealing the love of God to those who might not have been expecting it. There are the words of his heart ’reassurance’. When we are tired, feeling overburdened, Jesus invites us to come to him and promises relief, assures us of respite and rest. And he can do this because he is gentle. He is in no way is uppity, he is grounded, realistic about life, humble of – heart. But, after the rest, we are ab again le to shoulder the yoke with Jesus, continue our life and work, but its demands seem lighter when carried with him.
We are blessed to have such solid grounding as we develop our Spirituality of the Heart -
and a spirit of delight in that Prodigal Father' heart.
