Let’s talk about the Sacred Heart devotion really quickly. I realise that it is the great feast of Pentecost, but it is impossible to separate the love of the heart of Christ for His Church from the gift of the Holy Spirit that proceeds from that love. So, here, at some length, is what Our Lord said to the Visitation Sister S. Marguerite-Marie Alacoque in the seventeenth century, when He appeared to her and appointed her the Apostle of His Sacred Heart. He said (and we visualise a typical depiction of the Sacred Heart),
‘Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to consuming itself to witness its love. And in return, I receive from most of them only ingratitude from their irreverences and their sacrileges and by the coldness and contempt that they have for Me in this sacrament of love.’
He declared that the greatest hurt He experienced was from those who are His own – His Christians, His Catholics – and yet have done these things. The heart of this devotion of the Church is therefore reparation – making personal offerings to Christ in an effort to console Him for this devastating response to His Sacrifice on the Cross. I and the Father are one, He had once said, they who reject Me reject not only me but Him Who sent Me. This devotion and its respective offerings are therefore given to both the Father and the Son.
So, let us participate to the greatest extent that we are able in this effort, that has been lauded and recommended to us by popes, Saints, and saintly popes. There is this excellent litany of the Sacred Heart, one of the approved litanies of the Church, which we tend to recite in the month of June: the month of the Sacred Heart. I encourage all of you to seek out this litany, either in old books or on the internet. I’ve put it up on this parish website. It addresses the Sacred Heart in many ways, begging the Lord for His mercy upon us and upon those who have so offended Him.
We in England have had the good fortune to be among the first to honour the Sacred Heart, for the confessor of S. Marguerite-Marie, the French Jesuit Blessed Claude de la Colombière, carried this devotion to us when he became chaplain and confessor to the Duchess of York (the king’s sister-in-law) in her London chapel at London S. James (AD 1676). Let us restore to prominence in this country the devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Our gospel reading this weekend demonstrates the relationship of love between Christ and the Church, here represented by the Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper.
“‘If you have any love for Me, you must keep the commandments which I give you; and then I will ask the Father, and He will give you another to befriend you, One Who is to dwell continually with you for ever. It is the truth-giving Spirit, for Whom the world can find no room, because it cannot see Him, cannot recognize Him. But you are to recognize Him; He will be continually at your side, nay, He will be in you. I will not leave you friendless; I am coming to you. It is only a little while now, before the world is to see Me no more; but you can see Me, because I live on, and you too will have life. When that day comes, you will learn for yourselves that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. The man who loves Me is the man who keeps the commandments he has from Me; and he who loves Me will win My Father’s love, and I too will love him, and will reveal Myself to him.‘ Here Judas, not the Iscariot, said to Him, ‘Lord, how comes it that Thou wilt only reveal Thyself to us, and not to the world?’ Jesus answered him, ‘If a man has any love for Me, he will be true to My word; and then he will win My Father’s love, and We will both come to him, and make Our continual abode with him; whereas the man who has no love for Me, lets My sayings pass him by. And this word, which you have been hearing from Me, comes not from Me, but from My Father Who sent Me. So much converse I have held with you, still at your side. He Who is to befriend you, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send on My account, will in His turn make everything plain, and recall to your minds everything I have said to you.”
Gospel of S. John, 14: 15-26 [link]
Christ says that, to demonstrate that we love Him, we should follow His commandments. He Himself would demonstrate His love for us the next day, in His death upon the Cross. The whole goal and direction of the Christian life is the establishment of this relationship of love between us and Christ, individually and as a community. Pentecost is the result of this love between Christ and His Church, for it is via the gift of the Holy Spirit that God the Father and Christ our Lord, in the words of this Gospel, come to us and dwell with us and make us their own.
In the runup to Pentecost, as described by the first reading (the narrative of the Pentecost story from Acts), we find the Apostles gathered together in prayer before the grand event. Set aside the miraculous gift of tongues that they immediately received; these gifts are given as they are required, for the building up of the Church, and we shall ourselves probably not be able to talk to every tribe of mankind in their own languages after we are confirmed by the Bishop. What is more important about living this Christian life – living in the Holy Spirit – is what S. Paul describes in the second reading: it is the purifying of our attachments, and the establishing of our priorities in life.
“Those who live the life of nature cannot be acceptable to God; but you live the life of the spirit, not the life of nature; that is, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. A man cannot belong to Christ unless he has the Spirit of Christ. But if Christ lives in you, then although the body be a dead thing in virtue of our guilt, the spirit is a living thing, by virtue of our justification. And if the Spirit of Him Who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He Who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead will give life to your perishable bodies too, for the sake of His Spirit Who dwells in you. Thus, brethren, nature has no longer any claim upon us, that we should live a life of nature. If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death; if you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life. Those who follow the leading of God’s Spirit are all God’s sons; the spirit you have now received is not, as of old, a spirit of slavery, to govern you by fear; it is the spirit of adoption, which makes us cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself thus assures our spirit, that we are children of God; and if we are His children, then we are His heirs too; heirs of God, sharing the inheritance of Christ; only we must share His sufferings, if we are to share His glory.”
Letter of S. Paul to the Romans, 8: 8-17 [link]
If we are to obey the commandments of Christ and remain in His love, the things of this world cannot be for us an end in themselves, but they should be a means and be carefully chosen so as to lead us to God. If they do not, put them away. If they are sinful and we recognise them as destructive of our relationship with Christ, push them far away.
For if we are truly the children of a heavenly Father, we shall seek always, not to hurt His Sacred Heart, but to honour His great love for us.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 