Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

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Friday, 7 June 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Church celebrates the great Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, celebrating the great love of God which has been manifested by the coming of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour. And this day, all of us commemorate this love manifested not just in the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but also in His Most Sacred Heart, His bleeding and wounded Heart, pierced for our salvation, from which poured out the most wonderful, selfless and perfect love, and He truly wants to share with us this ever patient and enduring love that He had for us from the very beginning, for He had indeed created us all out of His most generous love.

In our first reading today, we heard from the Book of the prophet Hosea in which the Lord spoke to His people, the Israelites through the prophet Hosea telling all of them that He truly loved all of them, and even though He had chastised and punished them for their many sins, rebellions and wickedness because of their unfaithfulness, but God continued to love all of His beloved people nonetheless, and He also mentioned to them everything that He had done for them throughout history, how He led them all the way, and brought His salvation upon them, patiently guiding them all so that they might find their way towards Him and follow Him faithfully and worthily.

At that time, the prophet Hosea was sent by the Lord to the people of the kingdom of Israel, the northern half of the once united Kingdom of Israel, consisting of the ten northern tribes that broke away from the rule of the House of David. For much if not most of its history and existence, this kingdom and its people had been rebellious against God, refusing to obey His Law and commandments, worshipping pagan idols and gods despite the many messengers, prophets and guides whom the Lord had sent to them in order to help them to find their way back to Him. Instead, they shut their ears and hearts against those servants of God, persecuted and silenced them, killing many of them in refusing to believe in God and in stubbornly refusing to repent from their many sins.

Yet, God still loved them and all of us nonetheless. He is patient and full of love, and He still wants us all to come back to Him, repenting from all of our sins. God is always ever generous with His mercy, and His Most Sacred Heart has been manifested to us with the fullness of His love personified and made approachable to us, the love that is truly warm and wonderful, the love that conquered even sin and death. Yes, that is what we heard from our Gospel passage today, in which we heard of the account of the Passion of the Lord, at the very moment when He died after having suffered most greatly and painfully for our sake and salvation. We heard how the Son of God Himself had truly died, emptying Himself of all glory and embracing all of us with His most perfect and selfless love.

We heard how the soldiers were told to break the legs of those who were crucified with the Lord that they might not continue to hang on the Cross through to the Passover day, but the Lord had already passed away, and one of them was told to prove and check that the Lord had indeed died. We heard how this soldier, which tradition stated to be one St. Longinus, pierced the side of the Lord with his spear, just as the Scriptures had predicted, and immediately Blood and water rushed out. This was the moment when the Lord’s love has been fully given to us through His loving sacrifice on the Cross, the moment when all of us were united to His death, to die to our past sins and wickedness, and to open for us all the path to everlasting life and salvation, by the means of His Church.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this was the moment when the Church of God was born, when the Blood and water pouring forth from the Lord’s Body, from His own Most Sacred Heart, came down upon us all in this world. His perfect and most worthy offering had been completed and accepted by the Lord, His heavenly Father, as the most worthy offering for the atonement of all of our sins. Through this act of supreme love and kindness, compassion and forgiveness, God has united us all to Himself, our humanity and human nature to His own human nature and self, truly suffering and truly died on the Cross, the Lamb of God, persecuted and slain for the sake of our salvation.

St. Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians in our second reading today summarised all these in emphasising yet again the role which Christ, Our Lord and Saviour had played in the fulfilment of everything which God had planned for our salvation, to liberate each and every one of us from the power and dominion of sin and death. Through His perfect obedience and loving sacrifice, He has undone the disobedience and the corruption of sin and evil, which had separated us all from the fullness of God’s grace and love. Through Christ, we all have received a new hope and a new life, a new reality and existence that is filled with God’s grace and love, as we become part of His one Body, the Church, sanctified and made one by the outpouring of His Blood, which overflowed from His wounded and broken, Most Sacred Heart.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this Devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the most popular and oldest devotions in the Church, and it is understandable because it is through gazing upon the most loving and most holy, most worthy and most wonderful Sacred Heart of Our Lord Himself, that we are constantly being reminded yet again of His immeasurable love and compassion towards us. Through His Most Sacred Heart, pierced and wounded for us, we are reminded of every single wounds that we ourselves have caused upon the Lord, Who has loved us all so selflessly and tenderly, so patiently and generously from the very beginning of time, from the moment when He first created this world and all of us.

We must understand and realise that it is our sins and wickedness, our faults and evils, our disobedience against God that had made Him to bear the consequences and punishments for all those that were meant for us. We should have been destroyed and perished because of our many faults and sins, and yet, God willingly took it up upon Himself to bear the burden of those sufferings and pains, all the wounds we have inflicted on Him, so that by His wounds, and through His Most Sacred Heart, full of ever burning and passionate Love for each one of us, we may have the hope and assurance of everlasting life through reconciliation and reunification with God, our Lord and Master.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us all therefore renew our commitment to the Lord, by recalling His love for us and remembering everything that He had done for us, all the love that came forth outpouring from His Most Sacred Heart. Let us continue to put our trust in Him and the love that He has constantly shown us, and do our best so that in our own respective lives in this world, our lives will continue to be full of love, both for the Lord our God and for our fellow brothers and sisters around us, now and always. Amen.

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Friday, 7 June 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

John 19 : 31-37

At that time, as it was Preparation Day, the Jews did not want the bodies to remain on the cross during the Sabbath, for this Sabbath was a very solemn day. They asked Pilate to have the legs of the condemned men broken, so that the bodies might be taken away.

The soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and of the other man, who had been crucified with Jesus. When they came to Jesus, they saw that He was already dead, so they did not break His legs. One of the soldiers, however, pierced His side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water.

The one who saw that, has testified to it, and his testimony is true; he knows he speaks the truth, so that you also might believe. All this happened to fulfil the words of Scripture : Not one of His bones shall be broken. Another text says : They shall look on Him Whom they have pierced.

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Friday, 7 June 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Ephesians 3 : 8-12, 14-19

This grace, was given to me, the least, among all the holy ones : to announce to the pagan nations, the immeasurable riches of Christ, and to make clear to all, how the mystery, hidden from the beginning, in God, the Creator of all things, is to be fulfilled.

Even the heavenly forces and powers will now discover, through the Church, the wisdom of God in its manifold expression, as the plan is being fulfilled, which God designed from the beginning, in Christ Jesus, Our Lord. In Him, we receive boldness and confidence to approach God.

And, now, I kneel in the presence of the Father, from Whom, every family in heaven and on earth has received its name. May He strengthen in you, the inner self, through His Spirit, according to the riches of His glory; may Christ dwell in your hearts, through faith; may you be rooted and founded in love.

All of this, so that you may understand, with all the holy ones, the width, the length, the height and the depth – in a word, that you may know the love of Christ, that surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled, and reach the fullness of God.

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Friday, 7 June 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Isaiah 12 : 2-3, 4bcd, 5-6

He is the God of my salvation; in Him I trust and am not afraid, YHVH is my strength : Him I will praise, the One Who saved me.

You will draw water with joy from the very fountain of salvation. Then you will say : “Praise to the Lord, break into songs of joy for Him, proclaim His marvellous deeds among the nations and exalt His Name.”

“Sing to the Lord : wonders He has done, let these be known all over the earth. Sing for joy, o people of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”

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Friday, 7 June 2024 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Hosea 11 : 1, 3-4, 8c-9

I loved Israel when he was a child; out of Egypt I called My Son. Yet, it was I Who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; yet, little did they realise that it was I Who cared for them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with leading strings of love, and I became for them as One Who eases the yoke upon their neck and stoops down to feed them.

My heart is troubled within Me and I am moved with compassion. I will not give vent to My great anger; I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not human. I am the Holy One in your midst: and I do not want to come to you in anger.

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Friday, 16 June 2023 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Homily and Scripture Reflections)

Liturgical Colour : White

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Church celebrates the occasion of the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in which we celebrate the great love of God that has been shown to us firstly through His Son, Who has come down into our midst in the flesh, as the perfect manifestation of the love of God, and then, the most loving and wonderful Heart filled with love that Christ has shown us. The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus shows us the greatest love that ever exists, the pure love that God has always had for us, that He has always had for each and every one of us without exception. This very popular devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is similar to the other popular devotion to the Divine Mercy, in which both of them showed unto us the loving Heart of the Lord, that has ever been shown and directed to us, in God’s desire to reach out to us, healing us and loving us most tenderly as He has always intended.

Today all of us are reminded that God has never abandoned or forgotten about us, despite us having done the same again and again, many times, in our constant and persistent rebellions against Him, and in our refusal of listening to His words and reminders for us, which He has done for us again and again. The Lord has always ever been patient towards us, and yet, we have always spurnt His love, rejected His kind and most compassionate approaches and efforts, hurting Him again and again, making His Most Sacred Heart to be wounded because of our many transgressions, sins and disobedience. This is what the Lord has shown to some of His servants, through whom the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus became popular from. It all began from the popular devotion to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the devotion to the Sacred Wounds of the Lord, which became popular after the Crusades and after the efforts from the saints like St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Francis of Assisi in calling the people of God to deepen their spiritual lives.

As many of the people had great affinity and connection to the Sacred Wounds of the Lord, this devotion naturally develops into the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, that became concrete and in the form that we are familiar with the revelations which St. Margaret Mary Alacoque received a few centuries later. Beginning with St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who spoke of the piercing of the side of the Lord during the crucifixion, in which the Most Sacred Heart of the Lord was pierced, pouring out the love that He has always had for us, and the heart being always associated with love amongst us, it therefore deepened our appreciation and understanding of just how beloved and dear each and every one of us are by the Lord, ever patient and ever generous with His kindness and compassion towards us, desiring us all to be reconciled with Him, by turning away from our wicked and sinful ways.

Many other saints like St. Bonaventure and St. Gertrude the Great also alluded to the Most Sacred Heart of the Lord Jesus, and spoke of His love, with the latter having received vision of the Lord’s loving Heart. But it was only after St. Margaret Mary Alacoque received series of visions from the Lord that the current form of the devotion became finalised, and as we recognise it today. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque received the vision of the Lord and His Most Sacred Heart, in which He spoke of His Heart that had loved mankind so much, His bleeding and wounded Heart that had been rejected and abandoned by mankind again and again, and of all the sufferings, pain and persecutions that He had endured and faced in the midst of His desire to heal us and to be reconciled with us. Through all these visions and all that the faithful had received in revelation from the Lord, all of us gained greater knowledge of the love of God that had been made manifest to us.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we heard from our Scripture passages today, all of us as Christians, as the beloved children of God are all expected to embrace God’s love, obey His will and to love Him most sincerely and genuinely. The Lord has always waited for us, and endlessly reached out for us in His efforts to call us to return to Him. In our first reading today from the Book of Deuteronomy, we heard the words of the Lord delivered to His people through His servant Moses, reminding all of them that they have all been chosen and consecrated to God as His holy and beloved people, and how they have received His Law and commandments, through which the Lord wanted all of them to follow Him and the path that He has led them all into, the path of righteousness and justice, the path of goodness and love, by obeying those Law and commandments.

And it was also there that God told us how His love was truly wholesome and patient, pure and sincere, and He is truly caring towards us, ever concerned of our overall well-being. It is also where we are reminded that God’s love for us, His mercy and compassion is always comprised of not just His generosity and kindness towards us, but also His desire for us to turn away from our wickedness, evil and sins. That is why God has always chastised and punished those who have committed rebellions, sins and wrongdoings, as mentioned, and as He has shown us all from time to time, again and again. That is because He truly cared for us, and He does not want us to continue to walk down the path of evil and wickedness. That is because if all of us keep on doing those wicked things, we will end up being separated forever from the Lord forever, and fall into eternal damnation, something that the Lord certainly does not want to happen to us.

In our second reading today, the Apostle St. John in one of his Epistles reminded all of us of how God made His perfect love manifested to us through His Son, the Divine Word Incarnate. Just as mentioned, the love that God has shown for us is so wonderful, magnificent and wholesome that all of us really ought to realise that we have received the most wonderful and amazing love of God through Christ, and all of us have been shown and taught what Love is truly all about, and therefore, we should do our best to show that same love in our own respective lives, by loving one another, our fellow brothers and sisters in the same way, and of course in loving God just how He has loved us all first. All of us have received God’s love and known the boundless grace and compassion of God, just as we have also heard in our Gospel passage today, when the Lord Jesus told His disciples, of Him calling all of His beloved ones, to come to Him, because through Him alone there is hope and true joy.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, having heard and been reminded of the great and most generous love that God has always shown us, let us all therefore spend some time to reflect upon our lives and how we have lived them. Have we truly been committed to the Lord and His love for us? Have we taken His love for us for granted? Have we been so stubborn and unreasonable in continuing to disobey Him and in committing whatever is evil and wicked in His sight? That is what many of us have often done, in rejecting His ever generous offer of kindness and compassion, in having betrayed Him and chosen to follow the path of sin and evil instead. Then, we must truly remember and realise that for every sins and wicked things that we have committed, each one of these are the cause of the many wounds, hurt and pain that made His Most Sacred Heart to bleed and to be wounded, all for our sake.

That is why all of us should remind ourselves to turn away from sinful and wicked ways, and we should strive from now on to do what is right and just in our lives, remembering as always God’s ever generous mercy and kindness, His love and mercy that has always been given to us. Let us all look upon the Lord, at His Most Sacred Heart, full of wounds and hurt because of our every transgressions and sins. Let us all look at Him Who has been crucified for us, and ask ourselves, if we have deserved all that He had done for us, to the point of enduring the worst sufferings, humiliations and pain for our sake? The Lord has patiently loved us all these while, and what many of us had done to Him, is to keep on inflicting hurt upon Him whenever we continue to sin, disobey and disregard His love and kindness towards us, and whenever we also cause hurt and suffering upon others around us by our selfish actions.

May the Lord in His Most Sacred Heart, continue to love us and care for us, as He has always done, and may all of us then continue to do what is right and just, worthy and appropriate for us all as Christians, as all those who have been called and chosen by the Lord, and all beloved by the Lord all the same, with the love overflowing from His Most Sacred Heart. Let us all turn towards Him with renewed faith and commitment, with love and dedication from now on, so that we may truly be good and faithful disciples worthy of His love. May the Lord be with us always, and may He bless all of our good works and efforts, our every endeavours, now and always. Amen.

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Friday, 16 June 2023 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Gospel Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Matthew 11 : 25-30

On that occasion, Jesus said, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I praise You; because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to simple people. Yes, Father, this was Your gracious will.”

“Everything has been entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”

“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart; and you will find rest. For My yoke is easy; and My burden is light.”

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Friday, 16 June 2023 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Second Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

1 John 4 : 7-16

My dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves, is born of God and knows God. Those who do not love have not known God, for God is Love. How did the love of God appear among us? God sent His only Son into this world, that we might have life, through Him.

This is love : not that we loved God, but that, He first loved us and sent His Son, as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, if such has been the love of God, we, too, must love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love comes to its perfection in us.

How may we know that we live in God and He in us? Because God has given us His Spirit. We ourselves have seen, and declare, that the Father sent His Son to save the world. Those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in them, and they in God.

We have known the love of God and have believed in it. God is Love. The one who lives in love, and God in him.

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Friday, 16 June 2023 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Psalm)

Liturgical Colour : White

Psalm 102 : 1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8 and 10

Praise YHVH, my soul; all my being, praise His holy Name! Praise YHVH, my soul, and do not forget all His kindness.

He forgives all your sins and heals all your sickness; He redeems your life from destruction and crowns you with love and compassion.

YHVH restores justice and secures the rights of the oppressed. He has made known His ways to Moses; and His deeds, to the people of Israel.

YHVH is gracious and merciful, abounding in love and slow to anger; He does not treat us according to our sins, nor does He punish us as we deserve.

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Friday, 16 June 2023 : Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (First Reading)

Liturgical Colour : White

Deuteronomy 7 : 6-11

You are a people consecrated to YHVH, your God. YHVH has chosen you from among all the peoples on the face of the earth, that you may be His own people. YHVH has bound Himself to you and has chosen you, not because you are the most numerous among all the peoples (on the contrary, you are the least). Rather, He has chosen you because of His love for you and to fulfil the oath He made to your fathers.

Therefore, with a firm hand YHVH brought you out from slavery in Egypt, from the power of Pharaoh. So know that YHVH, your God, is the true and faithful God. He keeps His covenant, and His love reaches to the thousandth generation for those who love Him and fulfil His commandments, but He punishes in their own persons those who hate Him and He repays them without delay.

So keep the commandments, the norms and the laws that today I command you to practice.