June 15, 2007 Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

 2007년 6월 15일 금요일 예수 성심 대축일

 

 제1독서

 에제키엘 34,11-16
11 주 하느님이 이렇게 말한다. 나 이제 내 양 떼를 찾아서 보살펴 주겠다. 12 자기 가축이 흩어진 양 떼 가운데에 있을 때, 목자가 그 가축을 보살피듯, 나도 내 양 떼를 보살피겠다. 캄캄한 구름의 날에, 흩어진 그 모든 곳에서 내 양 떼를 구해 내겠다.
13 그들을 민족들에게서 데려 내오고 여러 나라에서 모아다가, 그들의 땅으로 데려가겠다. 그런 다음 이스라엘의 산과 시냇가에서, 그리고 그 땅의 모든 거주지에서 그들을 먹이겠다.
14 좋은 풀밭에서 그들을 먹이고, 이스라엘의 높은 산들에 그들의 목장을 만들어 주겠다. 그들은 그곳 좋은 목장에서 누워 쉬고, 이스라엘 산악 지방의 기름진 풀밭에서 뜯어 먹을 것이다.
15 내가 몸소 내 양 떼를 먹이고, 내가 몸소 그들을 누워 쉬게 하겠다. 주 하느님의 말이다. 16 잃어버린 양은 찾아내고 흩어진 양은 도로 데려오며, 부러진 양은 싸매 주고 아픈 것은 원기를 북돋아 주겠다. 그러나 기름지고 힘센 양은 없애 버리겠다. 나는 이렇게 공정으로 양 떼를 먹이겠다.

 

 제2독서

로마서   5,5ㄴ-11
형제 여러분, 5 우리가 받은 성령을 통하여 하느님의 사랑이 우리 마음에 부어졌습니다.
6 우리가 아직 나약하던 시절, 그리스도께서는 정해진 때에 불경한 자들을 위하여 돌아가셨습니다.
7 의로운 이를 위해서라도 죽을 사람은 거의 없습니다. 혹시 착한 사람을 위해서라면 누가 죽겠다고 나설지도 모릅니다. 8 그런데 우리가 아직 죄인이었을 때에 그리스도께서 우리를 위하여 돌아가심으로써, 하느님께서는 우리에 대한 당신의 사랑을 증명해 주셨습니다.
9 그러므로 이제 그분의 피로 의롭게 된 우리가 그분을 통하여 하느님의 진노에서 구원을 받게 되리라는 것은 더욱 분명합니다.
10 우리가 하느님의 원수였을 때에 그분 아드님의 죽음으로 그분과 화해하게 되었다면, 화해가 이루어진 지금 그 아드님의 생명으로 구원을 받게 되리라는 것은 더욱 분명합니다. 11 그뿐 아니라 우리는 또한 우리 주 예수 그리스도를 통하여 하느님을 자랑합니다. 이 그리스도를 통하여 이제 화해가 이루어진 것입니다.

 

 복음

루카 15,3-7
그때에 3 예수님께서 바리사이들과 율법 학자들에게 이 비유를 말씀하셨다. 4 “너희 가운데 어떤 사람이 양 백 마리를 가지고 있었는데 그 가운데에서 한 마리를 잃으면, 아흔아홉 마리를 광야에 놓아둔 채 잃은 양을 찾을 때까지 뒤쫓아 가지 않느냐? 5 그러다가 양을 찾으면 기뻐하며 어깨에 메고 6 집으로 가서 친구들과 이웃들을 불러, ‘나와 함께 기뻐해 주십시오. 잃었던 내 양을 찾았습니다.’ 하고 말한다. 7 내가 너희에게 말한다. 이와 같이 하늘에서는, 회개할 필요가 없는 의인 아흔아홉보다 회개하는 죄인 한 사람 때문에 더 기뻐할 것이다.”

 

 

 

 

 June 15, 2007

 Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

 Reading 1
Ez 34:11-16

Thus says the Lord GOD:
I myself will look after and tend my sheep.
As a shepherd tends his flock
when he finds himself among his scattered sheep,
so will I tend my sheep.
I will rescue them from every place where they were scattered
when it was cloudy and dark.
I will lead them out from among the peoples
and gather them from the foreign lands;
I will bring them back to their own country
and pasture them upon the mountains of Israel
in the land's ravines and all its inhabited places.
In good pastures will I pasture them,
and on the mountain heights of Israel
shall be their grazing ground.
There they shall lie down on good grazing ground,
and in rich pastures shall they be pastured
on the mountains of Israel.
I myself will pasture my sheep;
I myself will give them rest, says the Lord GOD.
The lost I will seek out,
the strayed I will bring back,
the injured I will bind up,
the sick I will heal,
but the sleek and the strong I will destroy,
shepherding them rightly.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 23:1-3a, 3b-4, 5, 6

R. (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
beside restful waters he leads me;
he refreshes my soul.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
He guides me in right paths
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil; for you are at my side
with your rod and your staff
that give me courage.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for years to come.
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.

Reading II
Rom 5:5b-11

Brothers and sisters:
The love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
For Christ, while we were still helpless,
died at the appointed time for the ungodly.
Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person,
though perhaps for a good person
one might even find courage to die.
But God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood,
will we be saved through him from the wrath.
Indeed, if, while we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,
how much more, once reconciled,
will we be saved by his life.
Not only that,
but we also boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Gospel
Lk 15:3-7

Jesus addressed this parable to the Pharisees and scribes:
"What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them
would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert
and go after the lost one until he finds it?
And when he does find it,
he sets it on his shoulders with great joy
and, upon his arrival home,
he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,
'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.'
I tell you, in just the same way
there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents
than over ninety-nine righteous people
who have no need of repentance."

 

 

 Commentary

 

 Jesus is the Shepherd who tends the sheep, rescuing them, gathering them together, leading them home, pasturing them, protecting them, and giving them rest/peace. He seeks out the lost, forgiving, bringing back the stray, binding the injured, but destroying the sleek and the strong-shepherding all with justice. This is the love of the heart of God in Jesus.

This love has been shared with us in the life/death/resurrection of Jesus. God is not/has not ever been wrathful even when we have been inhuman. All we have known is God's reconciliation and mercy in Jesus the Lord. We have each been the one lost and straying that has been brought back to the other sheep-so that we could all be one again in God. The Shepherd wants to keep us all together. The heart of Jesus seeks to bring us all into the fullness of God, the Trinity, so that we might dwell as one.

 

 

 “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost”

 

 Jesus’ heart of love and compassion is most clearly revealed in the way he sought out sinners and outcasts of society. No one was excluded from his gracious presence unless they chose to stay away out of jealousy or mistrust.  The scribes and Pharisees took great offense at Jesus because he freely associated with sinners and treated them graciously. The Pharisees had strict regulations about how they were to keep away from sinners, lest they incur defilement. They were not to entrust money to them or have any business dealings with them, nor trust them with a secret, nor entrust orphans to their care, nor accompany them on a journey, nor give their daughter in marriage to any of their sons, nor invite them as guests or be their guests. They were shocked with the way in which Jesus freely received sinners and ate with them. Sinners, nonetheless, were drawn to Jesus to hear him speak about the mercy of God.  Jesus characteristically answered the Pharisees' charge with a parable or lesson drawn from everyday life.

What does Jesus' story about a lost sheep tell us about God and his kingdom? Shepherds normally counted their sheep at the end of the day to make sure all were accounted for.  Since sheep by their very nature are very social, an isolated sheep can quickly become bewildered and even neurotic. The shepherd's grief and anxiety is turned to joy when he finds the lost sheep and restores it to the fold. The shepherd searches until what he has lost is found.  His persistence pays off.  He instinctively shares his joy with the whole community.  The poor are particularly good at sharing in one another's sorrows and joys.  What was new in Jesus' teaching was the insistence that sinners must be sought out and not merely mourned for.  God does not rejoice in the loss of anyone, but desires that all be saved and restored to fellowship with him.  That is why the whole community of heaven rejoices when one sinner is found and restored to fellowship with God.  Seekers of the lost are much needed today.  Do you persistently pray and seek after those you know who have lost their way to God?

"Lord, let your light dispel the darkness that what is lost may be found and restored.  Let your light shine through me that others may see your truth and love and find hope and peace in you. May I never doubt your love nor take for granted the mercy you have shown to me. Fill me with your transforming love that I may be merciful as you are merciful."

Psalm 23:1-6

1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want;
2 he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters;
3 he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;  for thou art with me;  thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies;  thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;  and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

 

 

I once heard about a Jesuit priest who sat at the bedside of his dying father. He encouraged his father to sleep, to save his strength. But every time his father would close his eyes, he would open them again just as quickly. He stared intently at his son with eyes full of love and a smile on his face. It was as if he could not get enough of looking at his son. The weakening man needed sleep and rest, but he could not take his eyes off his son. All he wanted was to be present with his son for this time, savoring it in the deep love and joy he had for him.

That's the kind of love I think of with today's celebration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a God who can't take his eyes off of us. The readings center of God's great love for us, particularly through the image of a shepherd. In the first reading from Ezekiel, God tells the beloved people of Israel that "I, myself will look after and tend my sheep." We are sheep that belong to God, loved by God and looked after in a very personal way.

Jesus' love for us is so powerful and described vividly in today's gospel. A shepherd realizes one of his 100 sheep is missing. He leaves the other 99 and wanders through the hills until he finds the helpless animal. With great joy, he gently sets it on his shoulders and walks back to town, calling his friends to rejoice with him.

What a remarkable image that is! In our relationship with God, we wander away, our hearts filled with selfishness, anger, fear, jealousy or self-destructive habits. But Jesus follows us over the hills, searching us out. And when we simply turn and see him there, just accept Jesus into our small hearts, he rejoices and with the greatest of care, puts us on his shoulder and brings us back home where we belong.

Today is a day of rejoicing and of reveling in Jesus' generous and lavish care for us. We can imagine his heart burning with love, his warm, patient eyes that can't stop looking at us, and strong hands, ready to carry us lovingly home. 

 

by
Maureen McCann Waldron
The Collaborative Ministry Office

 

 BE-LOVED

'The lost I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal.' Ezekiel 34:16

We human beings are made in such a way that we need to know we're loved. Without love, we can't function. We become disoriented. We get lost, stray away, and become injured.

Jesus the Good Shepherd constantly reaches out to us sheep 'with bands of love' to keep us close to Him (Hos 11:4). Yet sometimes we refuse His love and wander astray. Then the devil tries to confuse us even more. He tells us God never truly loved us, and our alienation from the Lord is His fault, not ours. The devil tries to persuade us that, if God loved us, we wouldn't suffer, die, or have tragedies in our lives. He manipulates us to run away from God.

While we're running away from the Lord but blaming Him for kicking us out, Jesus the Good Shepherd continues to reach out to us, pour out His Spirit, and raise up prophets to convince us of His love (Acts 2:17). For example, in 1675, Margaret Mary Alacoque received a prophetic vision of Jesus with His heart exposed and on fire with love for us. The Spirit has spread this prophetic word throughout the world and millions have repented and let the Lord love them.

From His heart to your heart, the love of God has been poured out through the prophetic vision of the Sacred Heart (Rm 5:5).

Praise: Wayne gives pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to newlyweds as wedding gifts.
Prayer: Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me. May I know that I'm loved by You always, unconditionally, and forever.
Promise: 'It is precisely in this that God proves His love for us.' Rm 5:8

 

 

 ?Celebrate with me for I have found my lost sheep?

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. From time immemorial, man has been “physically” placing in his heart the best and the worst of the human race. Christ shows us his, with the scars of our sins, as a symbol of his love for men, and it is from this very Heart, where past, present and future History is revitalized and renewed, where we can contemplate and understand the joy of He who has found what He had lost.

?Celebrate with me for I have found my lost sheep? (Lk 9:6). When we hear these words, we always tend to place ourselves in the group of the of the ninety nine upright who do not need to repent and observe “from the distance” how Jesus offers the salvation to a number of our acquaintances who happen to be much worse than us... Not at all!, Jesus' joy has a name and a face. Mine, yours, his..., because of our sins, we all are “the lost sheep”; so we better stop adding fuel to the flames of our arrogance, while we think we are fully converted.

In the times we live in, where the concept of sin is played down or is even denied, where the Sacrament of Penance is considered by some persons as something hard, sad and obsolete, the Lord, in his parable, speaks only of celebration, and He does not do it only here, but actually all throughout the Gospels. Zaccheus, after having been forgiven, invites Jesus to eat to celebrate it (cf. Lk 19:1-9); the prodigal's father forgives him and offers a party for his return (cf. Lk 15,11-32), and the Good Shepherd rejoices for his found lamb that had wandered off the trail.

St. Josemaria said a man ?is worth his heart's worth?. Let us meditate from Luke's Gospel whether the price ?which appears in our heart's price tag? compares with the ransom the Sacred Heart of Jesus has paid for each one of us.

 

 

The infinite love and mercy of God is shown in many different metaphors and symbols.   First of all, his undeserved mercy is shown in the fact of the Incarnation: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son who became one of us.    The primitive Church expressed the love of Christ in the symbol of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep.   Recently, the Sunday after Easter has been designated as Divine Mercy Sunday: This commemorates the lavish and undeserved love of God.   In Romans 5, St. Paul expresses this love: God loved us even when we were his enemies by sin; how much more does he love us now that we have been justified by Christ our Lord!   The symbols of this love vary from age to age.   The Medieval Period used the symbol of the crucifix which showed the tortured body of Jesus.   In the Sixteenth Century, the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus began to be used.  Whatever the symbol, let us always remember the reality:   God loves us from all eternity.  Let us rejoice.   Let us accept his love, repent of our sins, and resolve to radiate his love to all persons.
 

 

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 1^st 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 joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent, 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.