June 12, 2026 - Solemnity of the Sacred Heart
Deut 7:6-11; 1 John 4:7-16; Mt 11:25-30
H O M I L Y
The aspect of the mystery of salvation that we celebrate today is not so different from the one we celebrated about ten days ago, on Trinity Sunday. “God is love,” St. John repeats, like a refrain, in the second reading of today’s Mass. These three words sum up the entire mystery of the union of the Father with his Son in their shared Spirit. They also sum up the entire mystery of the relationship between God and humanity.
Already in the Old Testament, the Hebrew people saw themselves as particularly loved by God and were captivated first by the gratuitousness of this love, and then by God’s faithfulness to that love despite all the unfaithfulness of his people.
Saint John is fascinated by the fact that God loved us first and showed us his love by sending his only Son, so that through him we might have life in all its fullness. But that is not enough for him. He also draws out the implications for our daily lives, using a very simple and flawless logic: since God has loved us, we must not only love him in return, but also love one another. And, following the same logic, he continues: since God is love, whoever remains in love—that is, whoever persists in love, who dwells in love, who is faithful as God himself is faithful—that person remains in God and God remains in them. That person is introduced by love into the very mystery of the life of the Trinity.
Anyone who truly loves knows that love is demanding. The Book of Deuteronomy, through the words of Moses, emphasizes the importance of keeping the orders, commandments, and decrees prescribed by God or in God’s name, because this obedience is seen as an expression of love and faithfulness. Jesus, in the Gospel, is no less demanding. It is to those who wish to follow in his footsteps—that is, to become his disciples and live according to his teaching—that he reveals the secrets of the Father, which have remained hidden from the wise and the learned. He presents himself as meek and humble of heart.
In all cultures, the heart is regarded as the seat of feelings, emotions, and love. This is why, as early as the Middle Ages, mystics such as Gertrude, Catherine of Siena, Matilda, Margaret Alacoque, and Jean-Eudes developed a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is not a devotion to a physical organ, but to the divine love lived by God made man. While this devotion may have taken on rather romantic and sentimental forms at certain times—as evidenced by a vast collection of devotional images of rather dubious taste—it is essentially, in its original intuition, nothing other than the contemplation of God’s love for us, incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth.
Since he has loved us so much, let us therefore love one another with the same demanding love, ready to go as far as the gift of ourselves and the gift of our lives.
AV