Pastor's Column 6-23-2024
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June 23, 2024Dear Parishioners,
I think that by the time you read this at least one hallway will have been completed in the church. As I said last week, in addition to painting the exterior of the church and the rectory, we are also having the main interior entrances of the church painted. It has been several years since Fr. Joe had the church renovated and the wood and the paint in those hallways needed restoration. Once all of these projects are completed I plan to post on our parish Facebook page before and after pictures (I will also have a poster board or two made as well).
Spiritually speaking June is a month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Sacred Heart Devotion began when St. Margaret Mary Alacoque received private revelations from Jesus Christ. Jesus spoke to her on June 16, 1675, and asked her specifically to promote a feast that honored his Sacred Heart. St. Margaret Mary described her experience with the Lord: “My divine Heart is so passionately fond of the human race and you, particularly that it cannot keep back the pent-up flames of its burning charity any longer. They must burst out through you and reveal my Heart to the world to enrich humanity with my treasures.” Following this revelation, Jesus united His heart with hers in a fusion of mystical love and joy. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is devotion to Jesus and his love. It is a sign and a symbol of both the divine and human love that Jesus has for his Father and us. It also symbolizes the interior life of Jesus, which led to his willingness to lay down his life for us.
As to the origin of these devotions, while on the one hand it is the case that God makes some revelation usually to a particular saint—that is, God is the one who prompts the devotion; still, one can ask, why this particular devotion at this particular time? It is widely known that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, especially strong among the French and the Irish, emerged as a response to the Jansenism of the period. Jansenism emphasized an especially harsh moral theology, people were overly scrupulous, would never receive Holy Communion, and they over-emphasized God’s law. In response, devotion to the Sacred Heart showed our Lord’s tenderness, His humanity, and His compassion.
In our day the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, that is, there is an especially lax moral theology, people can be uncritical (in some areas), Holy Communion is received haphazardly, and God’s law is under-emphasized. Paradoxically the extreme positions on either side of the pendulum result from the same problem. Like in the 17th century, the issue today is a misunderstanding of God’s love. Whether it’s the 17th century or the 21st century the answer to our maladies is the Sacred Heart: the true revelation of God’s love and what that means for our lives.
In the Sacred Heart,
Fr. Barrow
