Think for
a moment, in a physical way the heart is the center of who we are. It is the
pump that pushes life through us. Without it we can do nothing. All our other
organs, muscles, bones and assorted other things are important but it is the
heart that keeps us alive that makes everything we do, say and feel possible.
Emotionally
the heart is central to what we feel. It is the home of the emotions. On
February 14th we do not receive or send a card with a gallbladder on the front
that says, “I love you!” No we send or receive a card with a heart on the
front. The heart is the place of feelings and emotions. If we were to write a
song, a poem or a story about love we would talk about the heart. A broken
heart means we have lost at or been hurt by love.
In a spiritual
way the heart is important too. The heart in a spiritual sense is the dwelling
place of God. In the Old Testament, the psalmists and prophets talked about the
community or individual who was without God as having a stony heart. A stony
heart has no room for God, is closed to the presence of God.
So we might
say the heart sits at the center of who we are as human beings. These two days
remind us of just how important the heart is to us. Jesus and Mary had hearts
that lead them through their journeys of life.
Jesus’
Sacred Heart teaches us about love. It is a heart full of the kind of love and
mercy that leaves no one behind. Sometimes that love and mercy seem foolish but
not in the eyes and heart of Jesus. Every person is valuable, ever person is
important; every person is worth searching for. Now this doesn’t mean that
everyone will be found because some of us don’t want to be found and some of us
even when found don’t want to return. But the love of Jesus’ Sacred Heart will
always look, will always search and will always wait.
This
Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is about love, but it is also about hope;
the hope that God is always searching, looking and waiting for us because we
are that special, that important. The question for today is, “Can we believe in
our value, can we believe in our specialness, can we believe in God’s love for
us, can we hope in the fact that God will find us and through his mercy bring
us home?”
Have a
great Friday everyone!
Daily
Prayer:
We come to you Jesus on the Feast of your Sacred Heart, for you are our refuge
and our hope. You are the strength that keeps us going through all that is
wrong in the our lives, the forgiveness for all our faults and failings, the
comfort for all our struggles, the peace for all our anxieties, the enhancement
for all our imperfections, and the hope in all our prayers.
You are
the only one who never wearies of us and who offers us grace in the midst of
our faults, because you love us so much with an infinite love. You are the one
always in search of us especially when we follow a different path.
So we ask
you loving Jesus, to have mercy on us and do with us, and be for us, and be
within us, whatever you want. We give our hearts to you, hoping that the gift
of love that flows from your most Sacred Heart will never leave us to face the
struggles and difficulties of life alone.
Amen.
A Runner’s
Thoughts:
Holiness is not something we can build into a run. Running does not make us
holy. However, we can make our run holy by bringing to our run a sense of God’s
Presence. Thus we can transform our run from the ordinary to the sacred. (Adapted from Roger Joslin- Running the
Spiritual Path)
Daily
Blessing:
Friday greetings and blessings to all. We are to have a rainy Friday here in
Pelham but right now I cannot tell what the weather is going to do because the
sun hasn’t risen yet. So only time will tell if we are to have a rainy day here.
I am
starting the day rather early because I have a lot to do. I have two masses this
morning. One at Mount St. Michael’s High School and the second at the Wartburg
Home. Then it will be on to our monastery and parish in Jamaica, New York as the
first phase of The Sunday Mass move takes place. Everything from St. Francis de
Sales Parish will be brought to Jamaica and stored until we begin the
renovation of the lower church for the new site of The Sunday Mass. I will be
there to supervise the drop off end of the move. Then it will be back to Pelham
in order to make final preparations to hit the road on Saturday for a three
week run of missions and retreats. You might say, things are getting busy
again!
I hope
your Friday has started off well wherever you are and in whatever you are
doing. The official start to the weekend is not far away so I pray that God
will bless these morning and afternoon hours of your Friday so that they will
go quickly and bring you into the gift of another weekend. I pray that you and
those you love will be blessed by God’s Love as we celebrated it in the image
of the Sacred Heart of Jesus today. If you are traveling be safe, if you are
busy working be safe. Most of all may you be blessed with a Friday you can
enjoy and may it be filled with interesting people, wonderful experiences, fun,
joy, faith, hope, mercy and the presence of God! Peace in Christ’s Passion…Fr.
Paul
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