July 1, 2011 Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

[이안드레아]

2011년 7월 1일 금요일 예수 성심 대축일(사제 성화의 날)

제1독서

신명기 7,6-11
모세가 백성에게 말하였다.
6 “너희는 주 너희 하느님의 거룩한 백성이며, 주 너희 하느님께서 너희를 선택하시어 땅 위에 있는 모든 민족들 가운데에서 너희를 당신 소유의 백성으로 삼으셨다.
7 주님께서 너희에게 마음을 주시고 너희를 선택하신 것은, 너희가 어느 민족보다 수가 많아서가 아니다. 사실 너희는 모든 민족들 가운데에서 수가 가장 적다. 8 그런데도 주님께서는 너희를 사랑하시어, 너희 조상들에게 하신 맹세를 지키시려고, 강한 손으로 너희를 이끌어 내셔서, 종살이하던 집, 이집트 임금 파라오의 손에서 너희를 구해 내셨다.
9 그러므로 너희는 주 너희 하느님께서 참하느님이시며, 당신을 사랑하고 당신의 계명을 지키는 이들에게는, 천대에 이르기까지 계약과 자애를 지키시는 진실하신 하느님이심을 알아야 한다. 10 또 당신을 미워하는 자에게는 그를 멸망시키시어 직접 갚으신다는 것을 알아야 한다. 그분께서는 당신을 미워하는 자에게 지체 없이 직접 갚으신다.
11 그러므로 내가 오늘 너희에게 실천하라고 명령하는 계명과 규정들과 법규들을 너희는 지켜야 한다.”

 제2독서

요한 1서. 4,7-16
7 사랑하는 여러분, 서로 사랑합시다. 사랑은 하느님에게서 오는 것이기 때문입니다. 사랑하는 이는 모두 하느님에게서 태어났으며 하느님을 압니다. 8 사랑하지 않는 사람은 하느님을 알지 못합니다. 하느님은 사랑이시기 때문입니다.
9 하느님의 사랑은 우리에게 이렇게 나타났습니다. 곧 하느님께서 당신의 외아드님을 세상에 보내시어 우리가 그분을 통하여 살게 해 주셨습니다.
10 그 사랑은 이렇습니다. 우리가 하느님을 사랑한 것이 아니라, 그분께서 우리를 사랑하시어 당신의 아드님을 우리 죄를 위한 속죄 제물로 보내 주신 것입니다.
11 사랑하는 여러분, 하느님께서 우리를 이렇게 사랑하셨으니 우리도 서로 사랑해야 합니다. 12 지금까지 하느님을 본 사람은 없습니다. 그러나 우리가 서로 사랑하면, 하느님께서 우리 안에 머무르시고 그분 사랑이 우리에게서 완성됩니다. 13 하느님께서는 우리에게 당신의 영을 나누어 주셨습니다. 우리는 이 사실로 우리가 그분 안에 머무르고 그분께서 우리 안에 머무르신다는 것을 압니다. 14 그리고 우리는 아버지께서 아드님을 세상의 구원자로 보내신 것을 보았고 또 증언합니다.
15 누구든지 예수님께서 하느님의 아드님이심을 고백하면, 하느님께서 그 사람 안에 머무르시고 그 사람도 하느님 안에 머무릅니다. 16 하느님께서 우리에게 베푸시는 사랑을 우리는 알게 되었고 또 믿게 되었습니다. 하느님은 사랑이십니다. 사랑 안에 머무르는 사람은 하느님 안에 머무르고 하느님께서도 그 사람 안에 머무르십니다.

복음

마태오. 11,25-30
25 그때에 예수님께서 이렇게 말씀하셨다.
“아버지, 하늘과 땅의 주님, 지혜롭다는 자들과 슬기롭다는 자들에게는 이것을 감추시고 철부지들에게는 드러내 보이시니, 아버지께 감사드립니다. 26 그렇습니다, 아버지! 아버지의 선하신 뜻이 이렇게 이루어졌습니다.
27 나의 아버지께서는 모든 것을 나에게 넘겨주셨다. 그래서 아버지 외에는 아무도 아들을 알지 못한다. 또 아들 외에는, 그리고 그가 아버지를 드러내 보여 주려는 사람 외에는 아무도 아버지를 알지 못한다.
28 고생하며 무거운 짐을 진 너희는 모두 나에게 오너라. 내가 너희에게 안식을 주겠다. 29 나는 마음이 온유하고 겸손하니 내 멍에를 메고 나에게 배워라. 그러면 너희가 안식을 얻을 것이다.
30 정녕 내 멍에는 편하고 내 짐은 가볍다.”

http://www.usccb.org/nab/

July 1, 2011

Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Reading 1

Dt 7:6-11
Moses said to the people:
"You are a people sacred to the LORD, your God;
he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth
to be a people peculiarly his own.
It was not because you are the largest of all nations
that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you,
for you are really the smallest of all nations.
It was because the LORD loved you
and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn your fathers,
that he brought you out with his strong hand
from the place of slavery,
and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed,
the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant
down to the thousandth generation
toward those who love him and keep his commandments,
but who repays with destruction a person who hates him;
he does not dally with such a one,
but makes them personally pay for it.
You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments,
the statutes and the decrees that I enjoin on you today."

Responsorial Psalm

103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 10

R. (cf. 17) The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
He pardons all your iniquities,
heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction,
crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.

Reading II

1 Jn 4:7-16

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.

This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.

God is love, and whoever remains in love
remains in God and God in him.

Gospel

Mt 11:25-30

At that time Jesus exclaimed:
"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.

"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

http://www.staygreat.com/

http://www.franciscanretreats.net/

I found a short history of this feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on-line. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus goes all the way back to the 11^th century, but it remained strictly a private devotion until the 16^th century. The first feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated in Rennes, France, on August 31, 1670, through the efforts of St. John Eudes (1602-1680). It took the later visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) to make the devotion a universal feast of the Church.

The “great apparition” or vision of St. Margaret Mary took place on June 16, 1675, during the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi in which vision Christ asked her to request that this feast of the Sacred Heart be celebrated on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi (remember that previously Corpus Christi was always celebrated on a Thursday), in reparation for the ingratitude of people for the sacrifice Christ made for them in reconciling them to the Father. In 1856, Pope Pius IX extended this feast to the universal Church.

We would all do well today, I believe, to be aware of our ingratitude to Jesus for all he has done and still is doing for all of us daily. Like most everything else in life, we human beings manage to arrive at a point where we take it for granted. Alchoholics Anonymous always urges the recovering alcoholics to develop an “attitude of gratitude” to their Higher Power for their gift of quality sobriety. Not a bad attitude for all of us to acquire toward our Lord Jesus whose gifts for us are beyond numbering.

http://www.evangeli.net/gospel/gospel.html

http://www.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html

For several centuries we have celebrated the love of Jesus for mankind on this day, the second Friday after Pentecost. Pope John Paul II has added another similar feast day in our modern times when the second Sunday of Easter is now also celebrated as the “Day of Mercy.” But this latter feast is lost in the excitement of the Easter season.

The feast of the Sacred Heart recalls the miraculous revelation of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a nun of the cloistered Visitation sisters in France. Her spiritual director was St. Claude la Columbiere, a Jesuit, who helped spread her message of the revelation of God’s love as experienced in a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In her lifetime she saw the response of the faithful to her message revealed by the Sacred Heart. The most obvious is the reception of the Eucharist for nine consecutive Fridays. This occurred in an age when it was common practice to receive communion only a couple of times each year.

The revelation continues: “From this divine heart three streams flow endlessly. The first is the stream of mercy for sinners.” [From the second reading of the feast of St. Margaret Mary.] … The second is the stream of charity …and from the third stream flow love and light for the benefit of his friends who have attained perfection.”

This feast is one of love and commitment by Jesus to all of us. The prayer also reminds us of the reason Pope John Paul II instituted the feast of Divine Mercy. It introduces us to the Incarnation at the beginning of his life and the Redemptive death at the end of his life.

This final expression‎! is from the Tridentine Mass’s presentation of the gifts: O God, who has wonderfully created us and even more marvelously restored us through the death of Jesus, grant that by the mixing of this water and wine [a foretaste of the incarnation] we share in the divinity of Christ [a foretaste of heaven] .

*Because of a scheduling conflict, this last reflection written by Fr. Paul Mahowald before his death on July 16, 2010 was never shared with our readers. We would like to do so this year in tribute to his memory. Those of us who knew Fr. Paul were inspired by his passion for service, sometimes in the face of great struggles with his health. He was devoted to his C.L.C. community, to Mass and Confessions at St. John’s, helping couples individually, to being a Daily Reflections writer and to serving in a number of ways in the Jesuit community.

http://www.rc.net/wcc/readings/

"Heavenly things revealed to babes"

Do you want to know the mind and heart of God? Jesus thanks the Father in heaven for revealing to his disciples the wisdom and knowledge of God. What does Jesus' prayer tell us about God and about ourselves? First, it tells us that God is both Father and Lord of earth as well as heaven. He is both Creator and Author of all that he has made, the first origin of everything and transcendent authority, and at the same time, goodness and loving care for all his children. All fatherhood and motherhood is derived from him (Ephesians 3:14-15). Jesus' prayer also contains a warning that pride can keep us from the love and knowledge of God. What makes us ignorant and blind to the things of God? Certainly intellectual pride, coldness of heart, and stubbornness of will shut out God and his kingdom. Pride is the root of all vice and the strongest influence propelling us to sin. It first vanquishes the heart, making it cold and indifferent towards God. It also closes the mind to God's truth and wisdom for our lives. What is pride? It is the inordinate love of oneself at the expense of others and the exaggerated estimation of one's own learning and importance.

Jesus contrasts intellectual pride with child-like simplicity and humility. The simple of heart are like "babes" in the sense that they see purely without pretense and acknowledge their dependence and trust in the one who is greater, wiser, and more trustworthy. They seek one thing – the "summum bonum" or "greatest good" who is God himself. Simplicity of heart is wedded with humility, the queen of virtues, because humility inclines the heart towards grace and truth. Just as pride is the root of every sin and evil, so humility is the only soil in which the grace of God can take root. It alone takes the right attitude before God and allows him as God to do all. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (Proverbs 3:34, James 4:6). Only the humble in heart can receive true wisdom and understanding of God and his ways. Do you submit to God's word with simple trust and humility?

Jesus makes a claim which no one would have dared to make – he is the perfect revelation of God. One of the greatest truths of the Christian faith is that we can know the living God. Our knowledge of God is not simply limited to knowing something about God, but we can know God personally. The essence of Christianity, and what makes it distinct from Judaism and other religions, is the knowledge of God as our Father. Jesus makes it possible for each of us to personally know God as our Father. To see Jesus is to see what God is like. In Jesus we see the perfect love of God – a God who cares intensely and who yearns over men and women, loving them to the point of laying down his life for them upon the Cross. Jesus is the revelation of God – a God who loves us completely, unconditionally, and perfectly. Jesus also promises that God the Father will hear our prayers when we pray in his name. That is why Jesus taught his followers to pray with confidence, Our Father who art in heaven ..give us this day our daily bread. Do you pray to your Father in heaven with joy and confidence in his love and care for you?

What does the yoke of Jesus refer to in the gospel? The Jews used the image of a yoke to express submission to God. They spoke of the yoke of the law, the yoke of the commandments, the yoke of the kingdom, the yoke of God. Jesus says his yoke is "easy". The Greek word for "easy" can also mean "well-fitting". Yokes were tailor-made to fit the oxen well. Oxen were yoked two by two. Jesus invites us to be yoked with him, to unite our life with his life, our will with his will, and our heart with his heart. To be yoked with Jesus is to be united with him in a relationship of love, trust, and obedience.

Jesus also says his "burden is light". There's a story of a man who once met a boy carrying a smaller crippled lad on his back. "That's a heavy load you are carrying there," exclaimed the man. "He ain't heavy; he's my brother!" responded the boy. No burden is too heavy when it's given in love and carried in love. When we yoke our lives with Jesus, he also carries our burdens with us and gives us his strength to follow in his way of love. Do you know the joy of resting in Jesus' presence and walking daily with him along the path he has for you?

Jesus offers us a new kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy. In his kingdom sins are not only forgiven but removed, and eternal life is poured out for all its citizens. This is not a political kingdom, but a spiritual one. The yoke of Christ's kingdom, his kingly rule and way of life, liberates us from the burden of guilt and from the oppression of sinful habits and hurtful desires. Only Jesus can lift the burden of sin and the weight of hopelessness from us. Jesus used the analogy of a yoke to explain how we can exchange the burden of sin and despair for a weight of glory and victory with him. The yoke which Jesus invites us to embrace is his way of love, grace, and freedom from the power of sin. Do you trust in God's love and submit to his will and plan for your life?

"Lord Jesus, give me the child-like simplicity and purity of faith to gaze upon your face with joy and confidence in your all-merciful love. Remove every doubt, fear, and proud thought which would hinder me from receiving your word with trust and humble submission."

Psalm 94:5-10,14-15

5 They crush thy people, O LORD, and afflict thy heritage.
6 They slay the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless;
7 and they say, "The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive."
8 Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise?
9 He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?
10 He who chastens the nations, does he not chastise? He who teaches men knowledge,
14 For the LORD will not forsake his people; he will not abandon his heritage;
15 for justice will return to the righteous, and all the upright in heart will follow it.

http://www.daily-meditations.org/index2.html

http://www.contemplative.com/weekday_readings.htm

The article, “Ascension, Parousia, and the Sacred Heart: Structural Correlations,” by Giorgio Buccellati, appeared in the Spring 1998 edition of Communio which is a theological periodical dedicated to the living tradition of the Catholic Church, exploring the depths of the theology of Von Balthasar, De Lubac, Ratzinger, John Paul II and others.

This meditation is based on the article. The quotes are from the article unless otherwise noted.

The basis of the theology of the Sacred Heart is the real physical presence of the risen Jesus. That presence was manifested in a number of recorded appearances of the risen Jesus to His disciples, and before His final ascension into heaven. After His ascension, the physical presence of Jesus, glorified yet real, continues now in the mystery of heaven: “Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father.”
Quickly in the early Church several visualizations of the physical glory of the ascended Jesus take place. The first is to Stephen the deacon at his trial before his martyrdom. (The second is the appearance of Jesus to Saul on his way to Damascus.)
Stephen bears witness not only to the Name of Jesus as Savior but to the presence of Jesus in the glory of God, sharing in the Glory of God. Stephen saw “God’s Glory and Jesus standing at the right side of God” (Acts 7.55) and then again, “Behold, I see the heavens open and the son-of-man standing at the right side of God” (Acts 7.56). Stephen could have said “God validated the ‘message’ of Jesus, causing the person of Jesus to recede in the background in favor of his spiritual or social doctrine.”
“No: what haunts Stephen with joy, and the members of the Sanhedrin with horror, is the risen humanity of a very concrete Jesus. Jesus, their immediate contemporary, is still perceived as sharing, physically, in the unimaginable glory of the Ineffable. A claim, a blasphemy.”

Think how this truth has an “impact” on the Church. “Jesus chooses to refer to himself as specially human and mortal at the very moment that he projects himself beyond death as resurrected. And Stephen is struck with a vision of Jesus’ risen humanity, a mortal Jesus who shares in God’s glory. … His very specific humanity, sealed by death, and then risen from it, was in some way on a par with the transcendence of the Ineffable.”

Here’s where the concept of “parousia” comes in. The basic meaning of the Greek word, parousia, is presence. Usually parousia is used in the context of Christ’s second coming. But the more basic meaning is that the presence of Jesus is now; and it is so great and omnipotent, that it will endure until the end, when the presence will be made manifest completely throughout creation on the last day. Thus the humanity of Jesus is present because of its being filled with the glory of the Trinity, “seated at the right side of God.”

In this mystery of the ascension, the apostles and the first Christians lived in the mystery of the Trinity without using the theological and philosophical terms the Church would later use to guard the Mystery in its being handing down faithfully throughout the ages. “Their contemporary Jesus, the human-mortal (son-of-man) who was now present and coming in divine glory (the parousia), was ‘sitting at the right sides of the Power’: this was their insight into the Trinity.”

Our faith delivers to us the fact of Jesus’ ascension and His session (His sitting) in the glory of the Triune Godhead. The ascension must not be thought of as a myth, born out of the insight of the Apostles into the resurrection of Jesus as a divine manifestation. No. Jesus is particular and concrete, a fact. So is His death. So is His resurrection. So, too, is His ascension in the reality of His humanity. The Gospel and Acts of Luke, in their account of the ascension, are “intended to be as much of a factual account as the one relating the events of Pentecost, which are also found exclusively, and only once, in Luke.”

Thus the early preaching of the Church is set on the witness of Jesus within two factual events of His life: from the baptism of John “until the day in which he was lifted up away from us” (Acts 1.21-22) and 1st Timothy 3.16 which gives the “core of worship” as “a sequence which begins when Christ ‘was shown in the flesh’ and ends when he ‘was taken up in glory.’”
The Ascension is not only an event but it is “a state.” It is a new beginning. As the Incarnation was an event at the annunciation to Mary, it also continues as a state. Jesus’ state as God and Man in the Person of the Word continues. So, “the Ascension is also a state which declares a new modality of being.”
The enunciation of our faith is that Jesus “sits in the flesh at the right hand of the Father” (the Council of Rome AD 382). “During Jesus’ lifetime, faith in him entailed the recognition that, in him, God was man. After the Ascension, faith in him entailed the recognition that, in him, man was within the Trinity.” And Stephen is the first martyr. That is, he witnesses in his own blood that Jesus is seated in the glory of God.
All that we have said is related to Mary, the Blessed Mother of God, in her assumption into heaven. The body of Mary shares in the glory of the ascended Christ. She shares as an anticipation of our own resurrection and our sharing in the glory of God corporeally at the last day and in the re-creation of the world in Christ’s final victory. “In this light, the Assumption is not an elegant act of kindness on the part of God for his mother; it is an ontological implication of her having been outside our culture of sin, and a proclamation of what the redemption of our culture will mean for us once restored to the same status.”
In sharing with other religions in dialogue, as for example, with the Buddhists, we must maintain the absolute difference in our ontological understanding of what our ultimate state will be. We are not absorbed spiritually into a One so that all duality is lost. The concreteness and particularity of the risen and ascended Jesus, as this particular Man—son-of-man—is in glory. So we too are to be risen in our particularity and concreteness of persons. The sacred duality of our mysticism is that we are united completely to the Other in love in a sharing in the divine life while always remaining who we are, as Jesus remains who He is.
Finally, then, devotion to the Sacred Heart is devotion to the reality of the Heart of Jesus now in glory. Jesus now is in the glory of His ascended humanity. Jesus loves us with all His heart now in the most literal sense. The heart of Jesus is real; it pulsates with divine and human love in the oneness of that Divine Person, the Word who is Jesus.
All the Sacred Scripture readings speak of the searching of Jesus for us, the lost sheep. When Jesus speaks of the greater Father, Lord of heaven and earth, to you I offer praise…. Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. It is His heart which is truly joyous. It is His heart that has a yearning love for each of us, as He has shown in the private revelations to St. Margaret Mary and to St. Maria Faustina, “the Secretary of Divine Mercy.”
When we sit or kneel in silent, centered prayer of the heart, we are one with the ascended Christ, one in the love of His heart. There are some verses in Ephesians which I find connect the heart prayer practice of sitting in the intentionality of love with “the session”—“the sitting”—of Christ in His glory:
“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), AND RAISED US UP WITH HIM, AND MADE US SIT WITH HIM IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES IN CHRIST JESUS….”(Ephesians 2.4-6). Even now! At this moment! And our prayer practice is the simple intentionality of consenting to this state of sharing in the ascended glory of the Son of God.
The concreteness of our sitting or kneeling in quiet prayer is one with the fact of Christ’s ascension and His state of glory at this very moment. The act of our intention of love is one with the love in the heart of Christ. Let our Holy Eucharist be a thanksgiving for this mystery of our humanity sharing now in the glory of the Triune God which is heaven.

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In modern languages the heart is associated with the emo­tion of love. But in the Scriptures it was not associated with any emotion in particular; it was rather a symbol of the whole inner life of a person. Great damage has been done to reli­gious sensibility by forcing and feigning the emotion of love. It has put simulation where there should be a relentless truth­fulness.

The religious images we grew up with were of the ‘repository art’ kind – weak, shallow, and sentimental. They are being replaced by far superior images from the many schools of iconography originating in the Eastern Churches. There are many icons of Christ, many designating him the “Pantokrator” – the all-powerful one. Among these icons you could, if you wished, choose one that could be called “the Sacred Heart.” It is an image of the Sacred Heart, in a sense, but this is visible only in the gesture; the heart remains within. The hands draw one's attention to the heart. There could hardly be a greater contrast between such icons and the images of repository art. These show a wounded heart that has been displaced from within the body. This is a caricature of interiority; it is the inner world turned out, like a pocket. Such a heart, like such a pocket, could hold nothing at all. The icon, in contrast, does not beg your pity or whine about your sins. It shows the strong Lord of the Gospels revealing the in­ner world in which God's Kingdom must strike root.

Having said that, we have to remember that faith is much more than art-appreciation. Countless people came to God despite the pitiful religious art available in their time – and even through it. But it is probably equally true that countless people were repelled by it. A picture says more than a thousand words, and therefore religious images that make Christ and the saints look weak and unreal are destroying something more precious than all art

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BE-LOVED

"Beloved, let us love one another because love is of God." �1 John 4:7

God calls us "beloved" (1 Jn 4:7, 11). This not only means that He loves us; it also means that He loves us every moment forever. We can live on in His love (Jn 15:10). "Trial, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword" cannot separate us from God's love (Rm 8:35). We can be perfectly secure in God's love and be "certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor powers, neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord" (Rm 8:38-39).

In this permanent state of being perfectly and infinitely loved by Love Himself (see 1 Jn 4:16), we are transformed into "more than conquerors" (Rm 8:37). Because we are beloved to this "breadth and length and height and depth" (Eph 3:18), we live lives of constant thanksgiving (see Lk 7:42, 47) and perfect joy (Jn 15:11). Even the worst series of tragedies is dwarfed by the awesome reality of being God's beloved. We have been loved into life, new life, and eternal life. Experiencing God's incarnate, personal, crucified, and glorified love for us, we "attain to the fullness of God Himself" (Eph 3:19). Choose to live forever in His love. Be beloved.

Prayer: Sacred Heart of Jesus, on this day of prayer for the sanctification of priests, penetrate the hearts of priests so that they will know and proclaim Your love.

Promise: "Take My yoke upon your shoulders and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart." 뾏t 11:29

Praise: Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

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Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. One of the most comforting passages in scripture reveals Jesus’ gentle love for us. At one time or another, we all get weary; we all find life burdensome. Jesus promises that when we come to him, our souls will find rest. These words are also a reminder that we must be the physical arms of Jesus for others who need encouragement. We must bear one another’s burdens in Jesus’ name. O Lord, for refreshment when we are weary, we pray. PC