Missionaries of the Sacred

“May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere” is the motto of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. To live this motto means to make God’s love real for people, to bring God’s love to all the situations and circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Because the Church is now entering the liturgical season of Lent, I would like to take a few moments to consider how Lent can help us share God’s love. There are three traditional disciplines associated with Lent: prayer, fast­ing and almsgiving. Each of these can assist us with the task of spreading God’s love in the world around us.

Prayer strengthens our relationship with God. In prayer we personally experience God’s love for us. Prayer also connects us to one another. By offering prayers to God for the needs of others, we are remembering and sharing God’s love for them.

Fasting first disciplines and cleanses our bodies in order to strengthen us physically and spiritually. The physical hunger we feel reminds us of the much deeper spiritual hungers that are part of everyone’s life. Second, we are invited to set aside the money we did not spend on food so that someone else can eat. By fasting we again experi­ence God’s love for us and God’s care for those in need.

Almsgiving is a very specific way to share with others what God’s love has given to us. Our action of giving

for the poor, whether money or food or our time, lets them know that God loves them and that God is working through us to show that love.

Lent, therefore, is an excellent time to focus on God’s love and the sharing of that love. Our prayer for those in need, our fasting for those who hunger and our almsgiv­ing for those who are poor are all concrete ways for us to live our motto and our mission: to reveal God’s love for the world.