On June 27th, Feast day of the Sacred Heart, a diocesan celebration was held by the English zone at St. Aloysius Parish to thank the Fathers of the Sacred – particularly Fr. Bill Marrevee – for their many years of service in the diocese. On that occasion, Archbishop Durocher presided at Mass and invited Fr. John van den Hengel, priest of the Sacred Heart, to give the homily. Fr. John was a teacher of theology at St. Paul’s University for many years. Among his field of studies was the spirituality of Venerable Léon-Gustave Dehon, founder of the priests of the Sacred Heart. In his homily, Fr. John presented some of the key insights to be found in Pope Francis’ last encyclical which was devoted to the spirituality of the Sacred Heart.
Here is the text of his homily:
I am – as well as a number of my confreres here, among them Fr. Bill, whom we wish to honour for his years of service to the Archdiocese of Gatineau, and Fr. Greg, your pastor here – a Priest of the Sacred Heart. The mystery around which our religious community has circled is the Sacred Heart. Despite all the difficulties with this devotion during the last century, our community has sought to honour that treasure and to live out of the gift of the Heart of Christ. Our Founder, Leo Dehon, in one of his last words, said “I leave you a wonderful treasure: the Sacred Heart.” What I have discovered in my own life as a member of Priests of the Sacred Heart, is that in my preaching, in my writings, in my meditations, I have continued to circle around one main topic: the topic of love. As a Priest of the Sacred Hear, the topic of God’s Love, the love of the Heart of Christ, is the one core element in the Gospels with which we never quite finish, one mystery about which we never seem to find the right words... because it exceeds us.
Last year Pope Francis, almost as his last testament, wrote an encyclical about the Sacred Heart, entitled “He Loved Us”. He insisted that the Sacred Heart touches the most decisive question of our time: the desire of our heart and the necessity for humans to be in touch with a love that is unconditional. With this reflection on unconditional love, he acknowledged, he was summarizing what he had done and said in his ministry as Bishop of Rome. For him this was the synthesis of the Gospel: “There, he said, we encounter the whole Gospel, there we find a summary of all truth, there we find what we pray for and seek in faith, there we find what we need the most.” (Dilexit nos, # 89) “What we need the most” We could say a lot about what we need the most.
This feast of the Sacred Heart makes me think of two things; they are drawn from the words of our founder, Léon Dehon and Pope Francis. The first thing we need the most is to recognize that at the heart of everything there is love. The second thing we need the most is for us to learn how to act with our heart. The Sacred Heart gives us to think; it tells us what we must not forget. Our life depends on it.
Let us start with our first need: it is to acknowledge that at the heart of everything there is love. I know we sing it in most of our songs. Didn’t the Beetles sing: “All you need is love.” They were right. Pope Francis in his encyclical reminds us of a long list of people throughout the centuries who have told us that we have been born out of the love of God. At the very core of God, they said, there is love: within God there is the incredible gift of Godself that goes so far that he repeats himself; that we have here a complete mirror of the giver. And that mirror of the Father came among us. It took on a heart of flesh and lived among us. Every Sunday we tell part of this story of Jesus, this story of love. We see him seeking people, healing them, conversing with them as with the Samaritan woman drawing water at the well, we see it in the story of the woman caught in adultery, we see it in the blind man by the roadside of whom he asks: “What do you want me to do for you.” (Mk 10.51) And it is most visible in the symbol that adorns all our churches: the image of Jesus dead on the cross with his heart pierced, an image of God, lifeless on a cross, the last drops of blood forced out of him by a lance. The heart of everything is love: much like the love of the poor widow who put her last two copper coins in the temple treasury for others. This is the heart of life; this is the greatest mystery in our life – a love that seeks us and remains a mystery for each one of us. It remains our deepest and at times most illusive desire.
The second great need, I said, was to be able to act with our heart. The Sacred Heart teaches us that we must do something for our time, for our world. The most devastating image of ourselves today is the image of Narcissus. Narcissus found himself one day staring into a well and saw an image of himself in the water and he was so attracted by the image of himself that he could not let it go. He became totally self absorbed, heartless. Many see this as an image of our time. Our society is built around technical reason. For us what is central is our will, our reason, our intelligence. We built a technocratic society, we communicate with our cellphones, write to each other using artificial intelligence. However much we appreciate what modern life has given us, it has made us into consumers, takers, full of ourselves. There is “no room left for the heart” said Pope Francis. It has not given us what we seek. The Sacred Heart teaches us to pay more attention to the heart as our primary agent. What we should learn is with the heart to build a “guest house”, open to others, open to God, where we build another kind of world, a bit more harmonious, a world capable of acknowledging others, where like Mary, according to Luke, we see things with the heart, where we treasure our life, and ponder its mysteries in our heart.
We pray today that we may be given the gift of the heart, that our heart may be touched by the intense love of Christ for me and so become an instrument allowing the heart of Christ a new possibility to spread into our world the flames of his love. The devotion to the Sacred Heart seeks to give our Lord a new possibility to spread this love in our world and to make amends for all the occasions where this love has been rejected and refused. It would allow us to help heal the wounds of the Church and of the world. Blessed be the heart of Christ.
