The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Commentary on Deuteronomy 7:6-11; 1 John 4:7-16; Matthew 11:25-30
There exists a hillside in Los Altos, California where retired priests and brothers from the Jesuit order go to reside when they have reached the age of retirement. They rest in this building that bears the name “Sacred Heart Jesuit Center”. The name is appropriate. Its residents have made choices about their path in life—decisions that involved passion or suffering—and the commitment to see it through. As they rest there and contemplate their life experiences, the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus accompanies them. The readings for today’s feast offer an opportunity to reconsider what the ancients thought about when using images like the heart and emotions like love. For the seat of emotions and the seat of thought in the human person from biblical times differ slightly from modern ways of thinking about these things.
Love According to the Book of Deuteronomy
In today’s passage from Deuteronomy, Moses speaks as God’s mouthpiece to remind the people that they are set apart from the other nations. It is not that the Hebrew people were ‘special’, but rather the point made in this section is that they are chosen as an instrument and for a purpose.
It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath.
The first part of these verses uses the phrase “set his heart” to capture the sense of the line. But in the original Hebrew, the word for heart was never used; instead the author used a verb that suggests choice, desire, and thought. In the next verse, the actual word ‘love’ was selected, which also conveys a decision and thought process suggesting to ‘join together’—to be attached or devoted to someone else. It is the action and process of choosing by the Lord that is emphasized. In the Hebrew language, words like ‘love’ involve a committed decision, and not a romantic emotion. The ‘heart’, as a metaphorical space in human feelings and thinking, is the seat of thought and decisions, whereas the ‘bowels’ are the place or seat of emotions. Where modern westernized people point to the mind for thinking, the ancient Hebrews pointed to the heart.
Love According to the New Testament
‘Love’ is used frequently in New Testament literature. The Greek word agape describes a selfless affection unique to the Gospels and Letters of the New Testament. In today’s Second Reading, we discover a hymn to agape-love:
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
When the author uses agape to describe a unique aspect of love’s many faces, it means to love someone more than one’s own life. This is why we attribute agape-type love to Jesus. We know that Jesus’ life was given away freely for the world since he loved us more than holding on to his own life. The image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus captures this reality. Can the ‘heart’ or love of Christ ever be exhausted? In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we find a helpful reminder to answer this question. Paul was thinking out loud when he wrote about his ministry to them:
I will most gladly spend and be spent for you. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? (2 Cor 12:15)
The answer is no; one cannot exhaust one’s love for another when the action is rooted in Christ. That is why we hold the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus so dearly within the iconography of the Church. Christ’s love is never a diminishment, but rather something that expands like the image of the mustard seed for faith; it keeps growing slowly and deliberately.
Love According to Matthew
Curiously, ministry, and especially the weight of obligations to one another, can seem exhaustive to many followers of various faith traditions. This is a reality from which today’s Gospel does not shy away:
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Jesus allows us to enter into his intimate prayer between himself and the Father. In the verses above, Jesus personifies the voice of divine Wisdom itself, a characteristic from the Old Testament. In our first testament, from the Hebrew Scriptures, the law could be seen or described as a ‘yoke’. It was both necessary for life and flourishing, but also a burden. Only a fool would neglect the work and labor required to take up the yoke of the Law of Moses.
In today’s verses, Matthew does not speak about love as in the First and Second readings. Instead, the Evangelist shares an image of the heart of God as one who shares the load with us. In Matthew, Jesus is called ‘God-with-us’, which we sing in Christmas carols calling upon Emanuel. But Jesus shows that love in deeds, rather than words. He walks with us and in the obligations that we owe to God and to our neighbor. This is a yoke made bearable because we share in the life of Christ.
All of this is tied to the mystery of today’s solemnity for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s like the fathers and brothers who rest at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Altos. They have labored and been burdened through a life of service. Held in the heart of Christ, may they at last discover true rest in their souls—souls now at peace at the end of their earthly abode.
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Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor – Readings
Commentary on 1 John 4:7-16; Matthew 23:8-12
The Gospel reading from chapter 23 of Matthew is a denunciation of the mentality of many of the Scribes and Pharisees. On the one hand they were very legalistic in their interpretation of the Law of Moses and at the same time tended to put themselves on a pedestal, seeing themselves as superior to ‘ordinary’ people.
In today’s passage, Jesus speaks of their demands to be given honorific titles and to have people bowing and scraping to their superior virtue. He tells his followers that they are not to adopt such titles. They were not to be called ‘rabbi’ because they had only one ‘Rabbi’, God, and they were all brothers to each other. They were to address no one among them as ‘father’ because they had only one Father and that was God. And they were not to be called ‘master’ because they had only one Master and that was the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus their Master and Lord. Unfortunately, in the history of the Church many civic titles were accumulated and we still have them with us, although with less insistence than before.
Augustine was one of the greatest minds in the history of the Christian Church. He was a bishop, and so could have demanded the same kind of honours which the Pharisees (both Jewish and Christian) expected. But he was not like that at all. In spite of his great intellect and theological acumen, and his position as leader of his diocese, he lived a simple life with his clergy and showed a deep concern for the poor.
The motivation for all this is contained in the First Reading from the First Letter of John. This is one of the most striking passages in the whole of the Scriptures. It is about the centrality of love in our relationship with God and with the people all around us. But it is a special kind of love. The Greek word that the Letter uses is agape. Agape-love is an outreaching concern for the other which is totally unconditional. It is given irrespective of how it is received—or rejected.
In today’s short passage a form of the word agape occurs no less than 15 times. It is the love which God has for his creation and for each and every one of us. It is the love which Jesus, the Son of God, showed and which reached its climax on the Cross. It is the love by which followers of Jesus will be recognised.
This love is not just something which God does. God is this love. It is his very nature. He cannot not love. For us to be like him is to be people of this love:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)
And this love is all we need. The Letter today says:
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
Augustine, who was a very passionate person both before and after his conversion, wrote commentaries on this Letter. One of his most striking phrases is: Ama, et fact quod vis, meaning, “Love, and do whatever you like.” In other words, provided an act or a word is an expression of agape-love, it cannot be bad because where there is agape-love, God is there. It makes life very simple—and very challenging.
He left behind many memorable sayings. Here are two From his Confessions which are among the best known:
Late have I loved Thee, O Lord; and behold,
Thou wast within and I without, and there I sought Thee.
Thou wast with me when I was not with Thee.
Thou didst call, and cry, and burst my deafness.
Thou didst gleam, and glow, and dispel my blindness.
Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace.
And:
Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee. Lord, teach me to know and understand which of these should be first, to call on Thee, or to praise Thee; and likewise to know Thee, or to call upon Thee.
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Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus – Readings
Commentary on 1 John 4:7-16; John 11:19-27 or Luke 10:38-42
There is a choice of Gospel readings for today’s Memorial, each one featuring Martha and Mary and one focused around the death of Lazarus.
The first is from Luke’s Gospel and describes an occasion when Jesus went to visit the family’s house in Bethany. It was not far from Jerusalem and it seems that Jesus was a regular visitor there. On this occasion we are told that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to him. Martha, on the other hand, was fussing about in the kitchen getting the meal ready. After a while, Martha complained (perhaps there was there a slight hint of jealousy and resentment here):
Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.
Jesus replied:
Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things…Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.
Jesus had said elsewhere that his followers should not be anxious or worried:
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing…seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matt 6:25,33)
Jesuit Father Anthony de Mello used to say: “Why worry? If you worry, you will die. If you don’t worry, you will die. So why worry?” Martha gives the impression that Mary is just sitting there doing nothing. But in fact, she is listening to Jesus—listening to the Word of God.
Many of us are very busy, run off our feet from dawn to dusk. But what are we busy about? What was Martha busy about? We need to stop and listen, as Mary did. ‘Busy-ness’ is not a virtue. The important thing is to be active about the right things—and to know what is the right thing to do, we have to stop and listen.
The alternative Gospel reading is from John. It is story of raising of Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha. Jesus had been told some days before that Lazarus was seriously ill, but did not immediately respond. By the time Jesus reached Bethany, Lazarus was already dead for four days.
When the sisters heard that Jesus had arrived, Martha, typically, rushed out to greet him while Mary stayed mourning in the house. As soon as Martha saw Jesus, she told him that if Jesus had been there earlier, Lazarus would not have died. But she was confident that any prayer Jesus would make to his Father would be answered.
Jesus said to her:
Your brother will rise again.
Replied Martha, expressing her faith in a future life:
I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.
In so speaking, she draws from Jesus one of the great sayings of John’s Gospel:
I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?
In other words, those who believe in Jesus as Lord and follow his Way immediately enter a life that will never end, although the body, of course, will pass away.
This, in turn, draws a great profession of faith from Martha:
Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.
It is a statement on a par with that of Peter at Caesarea Philippi earlier on.
And that, of course, is what this whole chapter is about. Jesus, the Son of God, as the Source of Life. It is also a preparation for Jesus’ own death from which he will rise in glory and be reunited with his Father. The same future is promised to us.
The First Reading for the Memorial is from the First Letter of John. It is one of the most central passages in all of the New Testament. It is about love being at the very centre of our lives. Love here is agape, a very special kind of love. It can be defined as an unconditional reaching out for the well-being of the other person. It is the love that God extends to us. It is the love that motivated all that Jesus did and said. It has to be at the heart of all we do and say. It is the essence of Christian living. The word agape, or some form of it, occurs 16 times in the short passage of today’s reading. We are to love in this way because that is what God does. It is what Jesus did. When we love in this way we become like God. And wherever this kind of love is expressed, God is there, because God is this love.
We Christians do not have any monopoly on this love. It can be found in all kinds of people. But let us make sure it is the driving force in our own lives, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of everyone else, for:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love [agape] for one another. (John 13:35)
It is the best thing that could be said about any of us and the only thing that matters.
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