Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened

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Today in the Catholic Church we celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart.

Today we celebrate the infinite love God has for the human race and his personal and limitless love he has for each person. God loves you with all his heart.

 This feast is based on the passage of St. Paul in Ephesians which describes the love of our Lord Jesus as so great that we can never understand it. “ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God”. (Ephesians 3:18-19) In 1 John 4:6 the author writes: “he who does not love, does not know God, for God is love.” On the Cross the soldier pierced the Heart of Jesus and Blood and Water flowed from his Heart. This a symbol for the grace of Baptism (the water) and the Holy Eucharist (the blood) coming to us from his inexhaustible love.

The heart is the symbol of love. To visualize the love of God, brought to us by Jesus, who is “the visible likeness of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), we have the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Sacred Heart says: I love you?

 

Friday 19 June 2020

Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened

 

Ps 32: 11, 19

The designs of his Heart are from age to age,

to rescue their souls from death,

and to keep them alive in famine.

 

 

Prayer

Father in heaven, we praise and thank you for your love.

The image of your Son’s Heart

reveals in a human way the infinite love

you have for each of us. Jesus, your perfect reflection,

is on fire with love, yet his heart is pierced with thorns,

our wilful sins which crucified him. In his cruel death

he reveals the extent of your love. He died that we may live.

May we come to know your love today.

We make our prayer through your Son Christ our Lord.

 

First reading

Deuteronomy 7:6–11 ·

The Lord set his heart on you and chose you.

Moses said to the people: “You are a people sacred to the Lord, your God; he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly his own. It was not because you are the largest of all nations that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of all nations. It was because the Lord loved you and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn to your fathers, that he brought you out with his strong hand from the place of slavery, and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Understand, then, that the Lord, your God, is God indeed, the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant down to the thousandth generation toward those who love him and keep his commandments, but who repays with destruction a person who hates him; he does not dally with such a one, but makes them personally pay for it. You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments, the statutes and the decrees that I enjoin on you today.” THE WORD OF THE LORD.

Prayerful reflection

The message of God is a source of great joy. It is that God loves you with all his heart. He wants you. Death is the end of life for all living beings. But it need not be for you. God offers you life everlasting. It is not just a repetition of this life. He wants to share his very life with you. He wants to make you like himself so that like him you can spend eternity in the bliss of his company.

The Old Testament is a faint image of the New. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They had no future but misery. We were slaves of sin and Satan. There was no future for us but misery. As God looked on them and sent Moses to liberate them from their cruel bondage, so he sent Jesus. Jesus has overthrown the tyranny of Satan and abolished the despair of sin. Through the waters of Baptism, he brought us into freedom. We too are now on the way to the Promised land of life with God. If we accept Jesus, he will lead us through the desert of life with all its hardships to the home of our Father. For we are the children of God.

God so loved the world, that he sent his only Son that those who believe him may not perish but enjoy eternal life. We are not great, nor powerful. But we are loved. God loves you. He wants you for himself. He will do anything for you, even become a human being and die for you. There is nothing he will refuse which is best for you. Can you really believe it? If you can then your life will become a joy with him, and a joyful expectation of life face to face with the God of infinite love for you.

  

Psalm  (With gratitude, rejoice in the Lord’s goodness)

Psalm 103:1–2, 3–4, 6, 8, 10

The Lord’s kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.

 

Bless the Lord, O my soul;

all my being, bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul;

and forget not all his benefits.

The Lord’s kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.

 

He pardons all your iniquities,

heals all your ills.

He redeems your life from destruction,

crowns you with kindness and compassion.

The Lord’s kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.

 

Merciful and gracious is the Lord,

slow to anger and abounding in kindness.

Not according to our sins does he deal with us,

nor does he requite us according to our crimes.

The Lord’s kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.

 

____________________

 

Second reading

1 John 4:7–16

God loved us.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us.

This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as saviour of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.

God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. THE WORD OF THE LORD.

Prayerful reflection

The very essence of God is love. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. Their mutual love is infinite and without any imperfection. It is the Person of the Holy Spirit. Three Persons who love to the point of being One God. Their love has created you. You are born of the infinite love of Father and Son through their Holy Spirit. You are the embodiment of their love. If you turn to them, the light of their face will shine upon you and you will shine, like Moses.

To make it easy for us to understand the Son became a human being. Living among us as one of us, he revealed God’s love for us. Study his life in the Gospels and see how God loves you. he freely underwent the Passion and ignominious death of the Cross, so you may have life and have to the full.

His heart is the symbol of his infinite love for you.

 

Matthew 11:29ab

Alleluia, alleluia.

Take my yoke upon you, says the Lord;

and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.

Alleluia, alleluia. 

 Gospel

Matthew 11:25–30

I am meek and humble of heart.

At that time Jesus exclaimed: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.

“Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

 

Prayerful reflection

Like the treasure hidden in the field and discovered by some poor labourer, so there is a treasure hidden in this world. Blessed is the one who discovers it. The treasure is that God loves us and sent his Son as a mere human being like us, to prove it. If we come to Jesus and love him as he loves us, then he will change our life into joy, as he changed water into wine (John 2:1-11). How much does Jesus love you? Look at the crucifix and there you will see how much he loves you. He freely suffered the Passion and Crucifixion to show the depth of his love. He could have saved us in some easy way, but no, he wanted to go to the very extreme of love for us.

Today as always, he invites to make our home with him, even now. He will give us the rest and peace that we long for and cannot find anywhere. Let us listen and obey, for therein lies our joy. Taste the sweetness of his love and open your heart to him.

Do you spend time with him each day?

One of the soldiers opened his side with a lance,

and at once there came forth blood and water.

Prayer

Father in heaven,

through the Word we have heard

set our hearts on fire for love of you

and coming close to your Son, Jesus,

we may be able to shed his love

on our brothers and sisters.

We make our prayer through

Your Son, Christ our Lord.