Let us examine our hearts and resolve to improve the world
By Bishop Mark Beckman
Today, I write on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord, having just celebrated the liturgy in our Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Anna and Simeon meet God in that ancient place of sacred encounter in a wholly new way. They meet God in the flesh, as a most vulnerable child in the arms of Mary, His Mother.
This past Oct. 24, Pope Francis presented to the Church a new encyclical letter “On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.” Many of us have memories of childhood on Valentine’s Day exchanging small cards and even candy hearts with messages of love. It is timely for all of us to reflect on the infinite love and goodness that flow from God through the tender heart of His Son.
Pope Francis notes that “…if love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and be loved” (21).
If we pause for a moment, we may note that our world is desperately in need of this message today. Survey for a moment the wars and violence that touch our world in Ukraine, the Holy Land, across Africa, and in so many places.
Note the lack of a loving, compassionate response and the indifference of many to the faces of the most vulnerable in our world today—in the faces of refugees, migrants seeking a safer and better place to live and work, and countless others.
Pope Francis, quoting the Second Vatican Council, notes “every one of us needs a change of heart; we must set our gaze on the whole world and look to the tasks we can all perform together in order to bring about the betterment of our race. For the imbalances affecting our world today are in fact a symptom of a deeper imbalance rooted in the human heart (29).
“Let us never forget that our hearts are not self-sufficient, but frail and wounded. … We need the help of God’s love. Let us turn, then, to the heart of Christ, that core of His being, which is a blazing furnace of divine and human love and the most sublime fulfillment to which humanity can aspire. There, in that heart, we truly come at last to know ourselves and we learn to love” (30).
The “Sacred Heart is the unifying principle of all reality…and the paschal mystery of His death and resurrection the centre of history…” Pope Francis lifts up a timely and urgent appeal of prayer: “In the presence of the heart of Christ, I once more ask the Lord to have mercy on this suffering world in which He chose to dwell as one of us. May He pour out the treasures of His light and love, so that our world, which presses forward despite wars and socio-economic disparities and uses of technology that threaten our humanity, may regain the most important and necessary thing of all: its heart” (31).
I believe it is only when we ourselves have experienced deeply the tender, merciful love of God that flows from the heart of Jesus for us, that we are capable of being set free to love others as we are loved. Then, like Anna and Simeon, we begin to meet God in the vulnerable, tender flesh of others. “The eternal Son of God…chose to love each of us with a human heart. His human emotions became the sacrament of that infinite and endless love” (60).
May the love of Christ, who poured out His life for us, inspire in us a burning fire of love for others in our world today that expresses itself in concrete actions of noble kindness, generosity, goodness, and love.
