Click here for today’s Scripture readings
Ez 34:11-16
Lk 15:3-7
A generally known fact is that a healthy adult heart beats about 72 times a minute. It’s a vital organ of the body and “works” to an infinite number of beats over a lifetime. A simple reflection on this awesome personal wonder found in each one of us is not only mind boggling but wondrous, as is the whole of God’s creation.
The ever misnamed parable of “The Prodigal Son” relates for us NOT the story of what the Son (we?) wanted and then squandered; rather, that of the love “The Prodigal Father” Whose heart of forgiveness beats an infinite number of times demonstration what true love is all about. The number of passages in the 72 books of the Hebrew Scriptures that speak of God’s love for his people is quite impressive. The Gospels are replete with the same theme in stories of the Person of Jesus whose compassionate heart is extended many times over through miracles, forgiveness and his death on a cross.
Popular devotion and celebration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has waned since the Second Vatican Council. For some people pious devotions of whatever kind are an anachronism. However for centuries, forms of prayers by God’s “little people” continue even today with fervent faith and love. Therein is the rub: LOVE! In modern secular society, a myriad of signs and symbols of love shows itself in flowers and furs, chocolates and champagne, dinners and diamonds, trinkets and truffles – to name just a few! Given the intention of the giver, all well and good. What is interesting is how sophisticated moderns tend to scoff at one manner of love, yet fail to take an objective view of contemporary manifestations of love. So much for our striving in love……
Might not God’s “little people” in expressing the manner of their love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus be in order today and everyday into infinity?
Fr. Xavier Vitacolonna, CP is a member of the Passionist community in Union City, NJ.
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Beautiful meditation bringing together one’s personal experience and the imagery of Scripture. The Sacred Heart statue in side altar chapel of our Passionist church of St. Joseph in Baltimore towers over the person who kneels beneath it. But it is not a threatening presence, rather reassuring when life’s journey is troubled. “Come to my heart” it seems to say, “where you will find strength for your heart, your life in its challenges today.”
Thanks for the thought.