Behold this Heart which has so loved men that It has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming Itself, in order to testify Its love.
Jesus
You may already know about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But as one of my professors in college used to say, “there’s knowing and there’s knowing.” Do you really know the Heart of Jesus? In this meditation, I hope to remind you how much God loves you through His Sacred Heart.
Take a good look at “this Heart”. Do you know Its love for you? Can you see the gaze of love and longing coming from the One who offers this Heart to you?
The human heart is a symbol of love. In the case of Jesus, His Heart shows us His unfathomable love for every one of us: “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). He loves you! If you were the only person on the whole planet, He would have gone through His entire Passion just for you. Pause and think about that with me for a moment.
Beloved By the Sacred Heart
Jesus is the Bridegroom and we are His Bride, the Church. But in addition to being His Beloved as a collective Church, each of us is also His Beloved as an individual. Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, loves you as a beloved spouse. He desires a real relationship with you, not just an acquaintance. He desires to be deeply and intimately united to you, His Beloved Bride. Because of this, He wants us to spend time with Him. In the morning I often think of a line from the Song of Songs: “Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come” (2:10). He is calling us to be with Him!
The Sacred Heart Testifies Its Love for You
How do we know that the Creator of the Universe even cares about us? He doesn’t need us. Aren’t we just dumb little subjects to a great and untouchable God King?
No. Jesus tells us explicitly:
Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? . . . Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all His splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will He not much more provide for you?
Matthew 6:26-30
We know from Sacred Scripture, God’s own words to us, that we are beloved and chosen. In the book of Deuteronomy, God gives many proofs of His love for the Israelite people. He purposely chose them to be His own people from all the peoples of the earth. He set them free from bondage so that they could live in the freedom of His love. And even when His chosen people rejects Him and is unfaithful, He remains faithful. He continues to love them.
When Christ is baptized in the Jordan by St. John the Baptist, God the Father says: “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17). With our Baptism, we become God’s adopted sons and daughters. He says those same words to us: “You are my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”
The Beloved Disciple reiterates this message of Love in his First Letter: “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are” (1 John 3:1).
And because, as Jesus says, “the Father and I are one” (John 10:30), we are loved not only by the Father, but also by His Son. That love becomes visible to us in a physical way through the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Spending Time With the Beloved
In order to know and love someone, you have to spend time with them. You have to share heart to heart with one another. The same goes for truly knowing and loving the Lord. You need to know the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
This requires some soul-searching first. You might say that you want a good relationship with the Lord, but do you really? Are your actions showing that you want to spend time with Him? I know that I have fallen short here many times. You (and I) might make the excuse that you don’t have the time to spend with Him today. But if God is the most important Person ever—more important than anyone or anything else—then don’t you think you can spend some time with Him every day?
If you aren’t spending time with Him daily, you are showing Him (and others) that you don’t really want a relationship with Him. Remember, actions speak louder than words.
I invite and challenge you: spend time with your Beloved Bridegroom today.
Where to Go
- Eucharistic Adoration: Not every parish makes this available, but I would recommend looking around your diocese to find one that does. Or you can ask your pastor to start doing so!
- Prayer Corner or Home Altar: Devote some space in your home as a prayer corner or home altar where you can spend time with Jesus.
- Before or After Mass: Be intentional about arriving early for Mass or staying after Mass to spend time with Jesus in the Tabernacle.
How to Spend the Time
- Silence: One of the best ways to spend time with Our Lord is to sit in silence with Him. Prayer can be simply resting in His loving gaze and gazing with love at Him in return. Saint Teresa of Calcutta wrote a letter on this that I would recommend reading. Here is a PDF with some excerpts from it.
- Listening: Oftentimes we talk so much during our designated prayer time that we have no time to listen to what the Lord has to say to us. Try to spend time just listening for Him to speak to you—what is He saying?
- Offering: Offer your entire being to the Lord. Your body, mind, and soul. Your wounds, your hopes, your dreams, your sins, your virtues, your insecurities. Everything. He wants us to submit to Him—to be united to Him under His mission of Love. We can only do that if we offer ourselves completely to Him, holding nothing back.
- Spoken Prayer: Lastly, open your heart to His. Tell Him everything that is on your mind: your worries and anxieties, as well as your joys and sorrows.
Now go spend some time with Him! Off I go to Adoration.
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