Hosea 11: 1, 3-4, 8-9;  Eph 3: 8-12, 14-19; Jn 19: 31-37

The contrast between the first reading and the Gospel couldn’t be sharper.  The Gospel describes a dark scene of violence and bloodshed.  It shows us the terrible spectacle of death by crucifixion.  The Jewish leaders wanted to finish it quickly – in order to be able to celebrate the Sabbath day.  So the legs of the two thieves were broken by the soldiers.  When they came to Jesus, they found that he was already dead, but, just to be sure, they plunged a lance into his heart.

The first reading, by contrast, is a happy family scene. It compares the tenderness of God towards his people to a father teaching a child to walk, or a mother taking an infant in her arms and holding the child gently against her cheek.

But both readings are about the same truth.  The tender love of God for us that we see in the first reading is the same love that is poured out on the cross for us.  On the cross, we see the God who will not unleash his fierce anger, who will not destroy his people, because he is God not man.  God is the Holy One who has no wish to destroy.  Even when they go astray, God cannot turn against the chosen people: his heart ‘recoils from rejecting them’.

God is love.  In other words, love is not just something that God does; it is who God is.  God loves us, not for our achievements or our qualities, but simply because God is love.

Today’s feast is about God who is love – the very centre of what it means to be a follower of Christ.  The summary of the whole Christian life, Pope Benedict reminded us, is that we are a people “who know and believe in the love God has for us” .  That is the vision that removes our blindness and allows us to live in the light.

We are living in hard times. There is a lot of pain and disillusionment and disappointment around. We are coming to terms with the realisation that our church and our country – and each one of us – have failed to follow Christ in many ways. There is more darkness and cruelty and neglect and shallowness in our lives and in our society than we like to admit.  The affluence that we were beginning to take for granted has evaporated, bringing job losses and hardship and worries of all kinds.  The things we took pride in, the things that we placed our trust in, let us down.  But the love of God never rejects us.

Today’s feast tells us that the light of God shines in the darkness, perhaps it shines more brightly in the darkness.  The love of God is seen most clearly in the darkness of Calvary, when Jesus gave his life for us, “so much does he love us” (Preface of the Sacred Heart).
The love of God is tender and gentle, taking us in his arms and looking after us – as Jesus ensured that children were not prevented from coming to him.  He was the visible presence of the tender love of God described in the first reading. 

What he showed us on the cross was that this was a love which is willing to give everything.  That is why it is like the love of parents who will do anything for their child.  Jesus showed the love greater than which no one has when he laid down his life for us.

Although we know that God loves and cares for us, we sometimes feel lost. The world seems full of cruelty and injustice and anxieties and shattered hopes.  God loves us like a parent. Children know that they need their parents so that they can grow and learn and above all so that they can know that they are loved. They need to be able to trust.  They need to know that someone will do anything, however hard or demanding, if it is for their good.

The feast of the Sacred Heart is about how God’s love is shown to us. It does not express itself in anger or destruction.  It is a strong, generous, tender love that offers us everything. That love is saying to us in the tender words of the first reading and in the horror of Calvary:
‘This is how great my love for you is; put your trust in me; all the things that seem so important to you are only important if they lead you to open your heart to my heart which was opened for you on the cross.  My love is all you need.  When you put your trust in something else – in your own plans, your own gifts, your own efforts – you are in danger of missing the love that surpasses everything’.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus speaks to us and says: ‘I am the Holy One present among you.  I will not let the flames consume you’.

+Donal Murray