Home                All bulletin articles

The Priestly Love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ

Series on the Sacred Heart (5/5)

The Eucharist Keeps His Heart with Us until the End of Time

Associate Pastor's Column
Sunday, June 24, 2007, Nativity of John the Baptist

“Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1).

How did he love us to the end? How did he love you, Gentle Reader, to the end? By giving you the Eucharist, the sacrifice of his Body and Blood, a perpetual memorial until the end of time which bears witness to the shedding of his blood on the cross. Yes, the cross. For the Eucharist is not a different sacrifice than the crucifixion, only it is done in an unbloody manner.

This is the reason why we have the feast of the Sacred Heart each year on the octave after the feast of Corpus Christ, or of the Body and Blood of Christ.

In the Encyclical of Pope Pius XII, Haurietis Aquas (May 15, 1956), the Pope has a special section dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist (nn. 69-74). I wish to offer some quotes and reflections on that section now.

The Pope here discusses the deep emotion with which Jesus celebrated the last supper (cf. n. 71). He had become friends with those men, the twelve apostles, and loved them in a manly way. He explained things to them which he did not explain to others. He gave them the power to forgive and to baptize, to ordain and to govern, to heal and to cast out spirits. He even reproached them for their lack of faith, but this surely only honed the tenderness of his love. These men, a handful among the billions of souls – those of all men of all times – whom God knows personally, now sat before God, that is Jesus, and this same God looked upon them with human eyes. Imagine the affection, the pity for their weakness, the hopes he had placed on them, the memories he had with them.

Now, just now, he was in the act of preparing to die for them. Not one man would ever have entered heaven, had God not given us a Messiah, a Savior: yes, that is how horrible original sin was, that the human species was a damned race. Jesus, who is God, was also a man among men, and he felt human sorrow and human fear, human hope and human frustration; and he perceived the sorrow and darkness that had come upon the human race. And in the midst of hopeless men, God spoke in human words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled! Believe in God, believe also in me!” (Jn 14:1).

It was that hour, the hour of supreme love for man, that triple love we mentioned last week – love of his divine will, love of his human will, and love of his human emotions – when he gave us his greatest gift. It wasn’t a thing, like a present, or money, or the like. He gave his very self. He instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist, where Christ is present, as a perpetual sacrifice, in his human body, human blood, human soul and eternal divinity.

This is why the Pope writes, “By this manner of acting He gave an example of His supreme charity, which He had proposed to His disciples as the highest point of love in these words: ‘Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (Jn 15:13) ” (n. 73).

You, Gentle Reader, know by now that I will soon be leaving to attend souls in other parishes, by order of our Cardinal. If there is one consolation you could offer me, show that my ministry has born some fruit in your soul, by your deep love and frequent visits to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, present in the tabernacle of every Church. And if you wish to be excessive in your kindness, pray for me there before Him who made us, that I may persevere to the end as his faithful priest.

 Picture: Pope Benedict XVI in adoration of the Holy Eucharist, Rome, Corpus Christi Procession, 2006.