Missionaries of the Sacred

I would like reflect on the readings for the feast of the Sacred Heart this year, and relate to them my own experience of Our Lord’s loving relationship with me.

First Reading:
For 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. Ezekiel 34:11-16

For me there are times, plenty of them, when my mind and feelings feel like they are scattered in places cloudy and dark.  I want go home, home where my Father is, home where I am loved, where my Father hugs me before He asks me how I have been or what I have been up to.  His love sent Jesus to look for me and bring me home, home where He forgives me, heals me, and gives me peaceful rest.

Second Reading:
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, yet 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.  Romans 5:5b-11

Paul also wrote : I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me. Galatians 2:20

Since I was twenty years old this passage has stayed with me, and it directly relates to the passage from today’s reading “But God proves his love for us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us.” Paul never met Jesus before Jesus died and rose again from the dead.  His encounter was a vision years later. Yet he wrote “Jesus loved me and gave himself up for me.”  I knew that my relationship with Jesus was the same as Paul‘s.  Jesus knew me and gave himself up for me.  From that time forward, even with my weaknesses and sins, I live now, not I, but through faith Jesus lives in me.”  And so it that my prayer is heart to Heart.

Gospel
So to them he addressed this parable. “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.  Luke 15:3-7

Jesus didn’t find just any lost sheep.  He found “MY” lost sheep.  When I feel lost, trapped in my weakness, I call out, cry out in my heart for Him from whom I have drifted, and He who has been looking and calling out for me, comes and finds me and brings me home rejoicing.  Me, his lost sheep.  Heart to Heart.

Br. Joe Tesar, MSC