The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Friday, June 16, 2023

1 John 4, 7–16

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.

This solemnity was first instituted as a local feast in France, in 1670.  As devotion to the Sacred Heart spread over the years, the feast was further instituted in other European countries.  Finally, in 1856, Pope Prius IX ordered that the feast be celebrated throughout the Church on the Friday within the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi, meaning the Friday after the Sunday that followed the traditional time of Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Holy Trinity Sunday.  The feast celebrates the love of God-made-man for us, a love that led him to lay down his life for us on the Cross.  There was some debate in the seventeenth century and even afterwards of whether the feast celebrated the Lord’s actual heart, at that time still thought to be the organ that housed the mind, but this was deemed to literal of an interpretation of the intention for the feast.  While the meditation on the love of the Son of God made incarnate for us has always had an important place in Christian devotion, it was not until the preaching of St. John Eudes and the disclosure of the visions received by St. Margaret Mary Alocoque that desire for a feast honoring it began.  Many pious authors have written books and tracts on the Sacred Heard and on devotion to it.  One of the best is an encyclical on the subject by Prius XII entitled Haurietis Aquas (Isaiah 12, 3: “You shall draw water”), which is available on the internet.

“Let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.”  St. John, the beloved disciple, exhorts the members of his flock to love one another not for some abstract principle but because this fraternal charity enables a person to share in the divine love.  We ought to love one another on the principle that God loves us all and so we should love those whom God loves.  But this love of neighbor serves as a prerequisite for knowing the love of God, for intimacy with him.  The truth of this is shown in John’s next statement: “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.”  That is, God not only loves, but he is love.  This helps us to understand something of the majesty and boundlessness of his love.  He does not love as we do, for he is love and his love for us is the full expression and sharing of himself.  We can love, but his love far surpasses ours because we are not love.  It is possible for a human not to love, but it is impossible for God not to love — it is his nature.  But by his grace we can love our neighbors as ourselves and so share in his love.

“In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.”  God revealed his love for us by creating the human race and by leading his chosen people out of slavery in Egypt to life in the Promised Land, but his sending his only Som into the world to die for our salvation goes far beyond these other signs of his love.  It is like the brightness of the sun obscuring the stars in the sky.  “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”  We can understand this verse in two ways.  First, that God’s love precedes ours in time and intensity, and is the cause of ours; second, that God’s love so surpasses ours that by comparison it is as though we did not love him at all, no matter how much we might do so.  Therefore, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.”  If we knew how much God loves our neighbors, how greatly we would love them too!  And if we knew how much he loves us, how greatly we would love ourselves!  

“No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.”  The ancients used the verb to see in the two basic ways that we do in English today: as seeing with our eyes, and seeing with our minds, as when we are apprised of a fact and we respond, “I see.”  Here, John speaks of a “seeing” of God that implies having intimate knowledge of him, of comprehending him.  But this is impossible for us.  Only God can comprehend himself.  And for this reason, John says, “No one has ever seen God.”  However, if we love one another, then he will make his home in our hearts (cf. John 14, 23).  We will know him in a way in which only the elect can know him.  His love is brought to “perfection” in us — that is, to completion, meaning our perfection so that we might enter heaven st the end of our lives.

“This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit.”  We receive his Spirit in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.  His Spirit changes us through grace, making us proper temples for him.  

“Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God.”  John testifies that he, a most reliable witness, and known to his hearers, knows that the Father sent his Son into the world to save it.  They can therefore acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God.  And this act of faith makes a person capable of receiving God in him so as to know him and love him.  “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.”  The Lord Jesus gradually revealed the fact and the extent of the Father’s love which is infinite, without condition and without end for he is love.  The love of our neighbor whom we can see leads us to the knowledge and experience of the God whom we cannot, and this love is abiding and does not fade.

To look upon the crucifix is to be reminded of the intense and lasting love God has for us, and to meditate upon the Passion renews and strengthens our our experience of his love.  It is not static and fixed but is as a geyser rushing out of the earth, or like blood gushing out of an artery.