READING 1
Matthew 11:28-30
Jesus declared: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
READING 2
From the eyclical Dilexit Nos x 179-180 by Pope Francis
Saint Charles de Foucauld sought to imitate Jesus by living and acting as he did, in a constant effort to do what Jesus would have done in his place. Only by being conformed to the sentiments of the heart of Christ could he fully achieve this goal. Here too we find the idea of “love for love.” In his words, “I desire sufferings in order to return love for love, to imitate him… to enter into his work, to offer myself with him, the nothingness that I am, as a sacrifice, as a victim, for the sanctification of men.”1 The desire to bring the love of Jesus to others, his missionary outreach to the poorest and most forgotten of our world, led him to take as his emblem the words, “Iesus-Caritas”, with the symbol of the heart of Christ surmounted by a cross. Nor was this a light decision: “With all my strength I try to show and prove to these poor lost brethren that our religion is all charity, all fraternity, and that its emblem is a heart.”2 He wanted to settle with other brothers “in Morocco, in the name of the heart of Jesus.”3 In this way, their evangelizing work could radiate outwards: “Charity has to radiate from our fraternities, as it radiates from the heart of Jesus.”4 This desire gradually made him a “universal brother.” Allowing himself to be shaped by the heart of Christ, he sought to shelter the whole of suffering humanity in his fraternal heart: “Our heart, like that of Jesus, must embrace all men and women.”5 “The love of the heart of Jesus for men and women, the love that he demonstrated in his passion, this is what we need to have for all human beings.”6
Father Henri Huvelin, the spiritual director of Saint Charles de Foucauld, observed that, “when our Lord dwells in a heart, he gives it such sentiments, and this heart reaches out to the least of our brothers and sisters. Such was the heart of Saint Vincent de Paul… When our Lord lives in the soul of a priest, he makes him reach out to the poor.”7 It is important to realize that the apostolic zeal of Saint Vincent, as Father Huvelin describes it, was also nurtured by devotion to the heart of Christ. Saint Vincent urged his confreres to “find in the heart of our Lord a word of consolation for the poor sick person.”8 If that word is to be convincing, our own heart must first have been changed by the love and tenderness of the heart of Christ. Saint Vincent often reiterated this conviction in his homilies and counsels, and it became a notable feature of the Constitutions of his Congregation: “We should make a great effort to learn the following lesson, also taught by Christ: ‘Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart’. We should remember that he himself said that by gentleness we inherit the earth. If we act on this, we will win people over so that they will turn to the Lord. That will not happen if we treat people harshly or sharply.”9
REFLECTION
As we console the Heart of Jesus by receiving His Love, we are transformed by that love and empowered to share that love as He commanded us: “Love one another, as I have loved you.” By loving as Jesus loves, we spread the very love of Jesus and we extend the work of His redemption, repairing the damage caused by sin. Although Jesus accomplished everything needed to redeem the world by His death on the Cross, He left work for us to do to apply and mediate that redemptive love, such that St. Paul could say: “in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col 1:24). It is a privilege to administer the love of Jesus to others. It is also a burden on us who have come to know the love of Jesus: “The love of Christ urges us on…” (2 Cor 5:14) and “necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel” (1 Cor 9:16)! And our preaching is not merely a matter of words, but the incarnation of those words by embodying and sharing the love we proclaim.
How engaged are you in sharing Christ’s love? Is there someone on your heart right now who needs Christ’s love and could receive it through you? Do you feel the burden of urgency to share the love of Christ with others? If not, is there some area in your life where you have more love to receive from Him?
Newman’s Prayer to the Sacred Heart (longer or shorter form)
One of the prayers from the Roman Missal
The Litany of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
- Écrits spirituels, Paris 1947, 67. ↩︎
- Letter to l’Abbé Huvelin, 15 July 1904 ↩︎
- Letter to Dom Martin, 25 January 1903. ↩︎
- Cited in René Voillaume, Les fraternités du Père de Foucauld, Paris, 1946, 173. ↩︎
- Méditations des saints Évangiles sur les passages relatifs à quinze vertus, Nazareth,
1897-1898, Charité (Mt 13:3), 60. ↩︎ - Ibid, Charité (Mt 22:1), 90. ↩︎
- H. Huvelin, Quelques directeurs d’âmes au XVII siècle, Paris, 1911, 97. ↩︎
- Conference, “Service of the Sick and Care of One’s own Health”, 11 November 1657. ↩︎
- Common Rules of the Congregation of the Mission, 17 May 1658, c. 2, 6. ↩︎
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