With the arrival of June, summer is upon us, and for many families, this is a time of rest, relaxation and leisure, perhaps with vacations with family and friends. We see a small sign of God’s fatherly care and concern for all things—in which nothing is mere chance or coincidence—in two significant feasts of early June: the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (commonly known as Corpus Christi, Latin for “the Body of Christ”) on Sunday June 7, and on the following Friday, the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
These two great solemnities reveal to us the depth of Jesus’ love. On Corpus Christi, we celebrate the fact that he gives his very Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist to nourish us spiritually. And on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, we celebrate the fact that he loves us each and all with a burning love. I invite you to join the U.S. bishops in prayer as we consecrate our beloved nation to the Sacred Heart in June.
While most of us are very familiar with the beautiful reality of the Eucharist, many Catholics today are less familiar with the beautiful devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. And yet, both this beautiful devotion and the great solemnity we are about to celebrate remind us of a truth that goes to the very heart of our faith: God’s intense and burning love for each of us.
Consider these words from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Church’s authoritative summary of what we believe as Catholics: “Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony and his Passion, and gave himself up for each one of us” (478).
My brothers and sisters, I invite you to ponder these words, to pray with them and to allow them to penetrate your mind and your heart. Consider: it is the official teaching of our faith that Jesus knows and loves each of us, personally.
When I was named as the ninth bishop of our beloved diocese, I chose as my motto as bishop these words from St. John’s first letter: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). And in the first months of my time as your bishop, God revealed in prayer the diocesan vision by which he desires me to lead us: to build a culture of Lifelong Catholic Missionary Discipleship Through God’s Love.
It is my deep and profound desire that each of you know, in an ever greater way, the magnitude of God’s love for you. For it is in knowing how deeply the Lord loves us—and in receiving that love—that we find true peace and true rest for our souls. Consider Jesus’ own words: “Come to me, all you who labor 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” (Mt 11:28-30).
As Jesus himself tells us, it is by going to him and receiving from him the love he offers each of us that we will find true rest, a rest the world cannot give, no matter how many vacations we might experience or trips we might take.
I echo the invitation made by our last pope, Pope Francis, in his exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel): “I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her, since ‘no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord’” (no. 3).
As we enter this restful time of summer, I pray that you might respond to Pope Francis’ invitation and rest in the love of the Lord for you, contemplate the Real Presence on a deeper level each Sunday at Mass, and reflect on his Sacred Heart this month.
