This year our Church celebrates the Feast of the Sacred Heart on June 12. We and our Church honor the Son of God under this title of the Sacred Heart. On this feast we are also celebrating our call to live a “Spirituality of the Heart” by how we live our lives through love and caring.
Fr. Eugene Cuskelly, MSC, former Father General of the MSC’s and former Auxiliary Bishop of Brisbane, Australia, wrote in his book “A Heart to Know Thee.” He explains that Devotion to the Sacred Heart, stresses the personal love of God. He shows how the human and divine love of Christ has through the centuries kept this personal tone in Christian life in spite of human tendencies toward over abstraction, exclusive stress on law and duty, and toward a separation of the supernatural from the humanly personal.
The symbol of the living, human heart of the Risen Christ, the heart pierced on the cross, has been a living summary of God’s love for all people and an invitation to return that love in a living personal dedication.
St. John tells us that the love of God was revealed to us in this way. God sent His only Son into the world so that we might have life through Him.
St. Luke gives us two stories to show the love of God for His people. The Parable of the Good Shepherd and the Parable of the Forgiving Father of his Prodigal Son describe God’s love for His people, a love to be shared with our brothers and sisters over and over and over again.
Fr. Richard Kennedy, MSC