I try really hard to put a note in Scott’s lunchbox every morning to remind him of how much I love him.  (Yes, we are one of “those” couples who are all schmaltzy and lovey-dovey even after almost 18 years.)  We remind each other constantly that we love each other, by doing, showing, and saying “I love you,” in about a million ways ever day.  There is a lot of love in our house.  He has my heart as I know I have his. 

Today is a day that celebrates love.  Not, however, the ‘hearts and flowers’ kind of love that Scott and I share, but the love that comes from the heart of Jesus.

All of you have seen one…..a picture or a statue of Jesus, heart exposed. All of you have heard the phrase: the sacred heart of Jesus. Today is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. What is this all about? Why do we see pictures and statues of Our Lord with his internal organs exposed???

We, as Christians, continually talk about ‘the love of God,’ and that is specifically what this Feast Day is all about: The love of God. The fact that we are, all of us, held in the heart of Jesus, who loved us so much that he chose to become one of us to save us from sin, from death, and from ourselves.

According to Wikipedia, that bane of all researchers everywhere, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus can be clearly traced back at least to the eleventh century. It marked the spirituality of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century and of Saint Bonaventure and St. Gertrude the Great in the thirteenth. The beginnings of a devotion toward the love of God as symbolized by the heart of Jesus are found even in the fathers of the Church, including Origen, Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Hippolytus of Rome, Saint Irenaeus, Saint Justin Martyr and Saint Cyprian, who used in this regard John 7:37-39 and John 19:33-37.

When you see a picture, or a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a picture or a statue of Our Lord, heart exposed, I want you to stop for just a second, and really look at it. Think about it. And look for yourself in that picture or statue. You are there. For you see, YOU are in the very heart of Jesus. YOU are the reason that he has exposed his heart; to give you a home, to give you a hope, to give you joy.

Jesus has given you his heart, his most precious and sacred heart……Won’t you give Him yours?