27 June, 2025, Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, YR C: Ezekiel 34:11-16; Romans 5:5b-11; Luke 15:3-7
It’s no surprise that today’s solemnity is about love, but how do I understand “love”?
I don’t believe genuine love resembles the good feelings or effervescence of romance or infatuation. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is not a Valentine Day’s heart.
That is not to say that celebrating the Sacred Heart lacks warmth, concern and care or even delight, but when any of these are solid, aren’t they founded on self-sacrifice, risk, costly engagement and a host of other strengths?
That’s why the image of the shepherd dominates two of today’s readings.
Shepherding sheep is a full-time occupation requiring a rapport between the shepherd and each sheep: the engagement is total. Sheep are not predators but prey, needing constant surveillance. If you don’t want to invest yourself totally—mind and will; if you prefer to avoid self-sacrifice and risk; or should you prefer to be isolated from the elemental and instinctual, don’t raise sheep.
Yet the shepherd is the image that Jesus uses to describe himself, representing God’s care for us through him. It is the ministry he challenges us to assume and perpetuate. It is total, infiltrating soul, body, time, interest, even vulnerability.
Does the Feast of the Sacred Heart celebrate a body-part as a protective fetish, or does it affirm my incorporation—our incorporation—into the Body of Christ? Isn’t this celebration the commitment to more fully become what we have begun to be: the Body of Christ? And the core that animates the Body of Christ?
Isn’t this the opportunity to renew what we can be, rooted in Christ?