The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Friday, June 24, 2022

Luke 15:3–7

Jesus addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes: “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 until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”

This feast was promulgated in the Church throughout the world by Pope Pius IX in 1856 after it had been already celebrated in various places since the 1600’s.  It celebrates the love of the Incarnate Son of God for all humanity, a love demonstrated most dramatically in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and his subsequent Death on the Cross.

In today’s Gospel reading for this Feast, the Lord speaks of a flock of a hundred sheep, one of which strays.  The shepherd goes in haste to find it.  The sheep, away from the safety of the flock and its shepherd, has exposed itself to numerous dangers.  It may even have left the pasture.  It could be attacked by wolves, lions, or other predators, or injure itself, making it even more vulnerable to other animals.  The search for this sheep becomes more desperate as the time passes, but at last the shepherd  sights it and, rather than risk its life further, he puts it on his shoulders and carries it back to the fold.  The shepherd has gone to great trouble and stakes his own life in his search for the sheep, and now rejoices and even feasts with its recovery.  This might strike others as an overgenerous response to the finding of the sheep, but it is not their sheep but that of the shepherd, and his feelings are his own.  This is the Lord Jesus, who rejoices way out of proportion to the lost soul that comes back to him, drawn by his grace, causing all of heaven to rejoice with him as well.  

Another passage from the Scriptures helps us to understand the Sacred Heart of Jesus and what it does for us: “And when Moses had lifted up his hand, and struck the rock twice with the rod, there came forth water in great abundance, so that the people and their cattle drank” (Numbers 20, 11).  This verse signifies the Lord Jesus, who approaches our hardened hearts and strikes them twice with the rod of his Passion and Death so that our hearts may gush forth our love for him.  He strikes them twice: once in his Incarnation and Birth, when he became a tiny Baby lying in an animal’s trough because the inns of our hearts were closed to him; and once in his suffering and Death on the Cross, abandoned by all and left to the inhuman jeers of the Pharisees and soldiers.  The rock which Moses struck shows us how our hearts ought to react to what the Lord Jesus endured for us, the pathetic depths into which he took himself to gain our love: it gushed forth “water in great abundance”, so much so that not only did all the Israelites drink of it until they were satisfied, but their livestock as well.  Our hearts, greatly affected by our considerations on the Lord’s sufferings and indignities, should gush forth such abundance of love for him as to result in a plentitude of good works done for his sake which will benefit our neighbors both materially and spiritually.