The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today invite us to contemplate our actions as we seek transformation in the Spirit to live fully rooted in love.
Love roots in Heart
The reading from the Prophet Hosea describes God’s compassion despite Israel’s ingratitude connecting it to the disappointment of a Parent.
* [11:4] I drew them…with bands of love: perhaps a reversal of the yoke imagery of the previous chapter, i.e., not forcing them like draft animals, but drawing them with kindness and affection.1
The response from Isaiah is a song of thanksgiving and praise.
* [12:1–6] Israel’s thanksgiving to the Lord, expressed in language like that of the Psalms.2
The reading from the Letter to the Ephesians is a prayer for the readers.
* [3:14–21] The apostle prays that those he is addressing may, like the rest of the church, deepen their understanding of God’s plan of salvation in Christ. It is a plan that affects the whole universe (Eph 3:15) with the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love in Christ (Eph 3:18) or possibly the universe in all its dimensions. The apostle prays that they may perceive the redemptive love of Christ for them and be completely immersed in the fullness of God (Eph 3:19). The prayer concludes with a doxology to God (Eph 3:20–21).3
In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ side is pierced on the Cross.
* [19:34–35] John probably emphasizes these verses to show the reality of Jesus’ death, against the docetic heretics. In the blood and water there may also be a symbolic reference to the Eucharist and baptism.4
Larry Gillick, S.J. comments that in preparing persons for the Sacrament of Marriage, he asks each of the persons exactly why they are marrying this other good person.
If they have a long list, I begin to doubt the depth of understanding. I smile when they look quietly into each others faces and they experience love rather than explain it. Love is not an idea. The human Heart of Jesus embarrasses logic and definition. When I ask ‘pre-marriagers’ if they believe they are worthy of their being so loved, ah, more silence and they eventually say that worthiness is not in their vocabulary. Humility and being humbled is the usual response. The Roman soldiers pierced the Heart of Jesus as part of their jobs of which they were worthy. We take our turns, standing in the pool of our own personal humility and look up and accept that His Heart is our “worthy.” His Heart is the explanation. His Heart beat from His mother’s womb until proof would not be needed any longer.5
Don Schwager quotes “God gave us what was most precious,” by Isaac of Nineveh (a Syrian monk, teacher, and bishop), 613-700 A.D.
"The sum of all is God, the Lord of all, who from love of his creatures has delivered his Son to death on the cross. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for it. Not that he was unable to save us in another way, but in this way it was possible to show us his abundant love abundantly, namely, by bringing us near to him by the death of his Son. If he had anything more dear to him, he would have given it to us, in order that by it our race might be his. And out of his great love he did not even choose to urge our freedom by compulsion, though he was able to do so. But his aim was that we should come near to him by the love of our mind. And our Lord obeyed his Father out of love for us." (excerpt from ASCETICAL HOMILY 74.28)6
The Word Among Us Meditation on John 19:31-37 notes that like St. Margaret Mary, countless people devote themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus today. When we contemplate his Sacred Heart, we can come in touch with the powerful, consuming love that Jesus has for us. We can bring him our burdens and worries, and he can give us insight into how to handle them. Seeing how much he suffered for us can soften our hearts and open us to the grace to turn away from the sins that we can’t seem to overcome. When we look upon his Sacred Heart and confess our failures to love, he gives us his own heart of love for our brothers and sisters.
Today, let’s be still before a crucifix. Let’s look upon our Savior, whose heart was pierced for us, and the blood and water that flowed from his side. Let’s contemplate the love that also flows from his heart and touches us and the whole world. Let’s ask the Spirit to make this love real to us today—in our loneliness, in our woundedness, in our sinful self-concern. And let’s ask Jesus to help us to receive his heart of love for all the people we will meet today. “Jesus, I give my heart to you. Please give me your burning heart of love, that I may do all things for love of you."7
Friar Jude Winkler shares two images used by Hosea to describe the Love of God. Speaking for Paul, the author of Ephesians declares the Love of God is in our hearts through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Friar Jude shares the imagery of the Gospel that connects to Adam and Eve and Jesus marrying the Church on the Cross.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, comments that the goal of our sexual longing is universal love, which is to say union with God, ourselves, and What Is. We came from union and all of our longing is a movement back toward union. The experiences of sexuality can help us glimpse and taste this unity and bring us to what he calls the “Gate of the Temple,” but they do not by themselves carry us through the doors. The late gay contemplative writer Michael Bernard Kelly (1924‒2020) understood that our incarnate, finite loves find their source in Infinite Love.
In every era and in every part of life there is a tendency for us to focus on ‘experiences,’ ecstatic ‘thrills’. . . . This tendency is especially marked in sexuality and spirituality, where the tastes are so intoxicating, fleeting and profound. These tastes are essential; they are seeds, glimpses of that fullness to which we are called. However, they are not the Journey itself, not transformation, not mystical union, not enlightenment. They set us on the road—perhaps they are even glimpses of the destination—but we have not yet arrived. Indeed we have hardly set out! If we become addicted to simply seeking more and more ‘experiences,’ whether sexual or spiritual, we never will arrive. We all know this tendency in sexuality, but the seduction in spirituality can be more subtle, more compelling and more soul destroying.8
Along our journey, we experience Love that affirms our desire to attend to the Spirit leading us to fullness.
Sacred Heart Supplement
Sister Teresa White of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, comments the imagery associated with the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, with Jesus pointing to his exposed human heart, which is topped with a crucifix and surrounded by flames and thorns, does not appeal to everyone.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit priest, mystic, theologian and scientist, kept a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on his desk. Believing that God dwells at the heart of existence, Teilhard sees Jesus, God in human form, as God’s love made manifest. He believed that God’s intimate presence, love, burning in ‘the heart of God’, embraces the whole of creation, and this means that all of matter and all of life is touched by the divine. ‘Love alone,’ he wrote, ‘is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfil them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves.’[1] His point is that all the sentient creatures of the earth instinctively seek unity, and it is the energy of love that propels them towards it. Teilhard is highlighting here the relational character of all reality, and hence the key importance of love in the life of the cosmos and in our own lives. Each act of love, he held, no matter how small or hidden, moves all of reality closer to full union. His deepest desire was that we humans, by the way we live, should ‘harness for God the energies of love’ and in doing so, discover healing and wholeness. For Teilhard, love is quite literally what makes the world go round, and a universal love is not only humanly possible, but is the only true expression of love.[2]9
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