THE SACRED HEART

A reading from the holy Gospel according to St. Matthew.

Jesus exclaimed: “Come to me, all you who labour and are
overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from
me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”

Several times in the Gospels we are told that Jesus prayed, but very
rarely are we told what he said in his prayer. The brief text we have heard
is precious because it gives us the words and feelings with which Jesus
prayed.
What did Jesus say, and why did he pray like this? During his
public ministry, Jesus realized that the simple people were accepting God
and opening their lives to him. This small “success” of his mission filled
his heart with joy and led him to open his mouth in prayer.
The prayer of Jesus therefore begins with a “thanksgiving”. It is his
“Magnificat”. Jesus thanks his Father for having manifested himself to the
little ones. Like Mary, he declares that his Father is on the side of the poor
and simple people. In his prayer to the Father, Jesus calls himself Son, with
all simplicity and clarity: in this way he reveals who he is and points out
that his mission is to make his Father known.

After praying like this, Jesus makes an invitation and a promise to

the simple people, that is: to the poor and ignorant, to the weary and
oppressed. Realizing how much these people were suffering, he tries to lift
their spirits and ease their pain. But, he does it in a way that surprises us
because he makes a paradoxical statement, saying: “I will give you rest,”
and he adds: “Take my yoke upon you.” How on earth does one find rest
under a yoke?!
Yes, it is possible, says Jesus, because, as they learn from him how
much the Father loves them in their suffering, they feel loved by God and
seek to respond to him by loving him in return. It is love, therefore, that
makes it easy for them to bear the yoke! As the great Saint Augustine used
to say, “Where there is love, there is no sacrifice, and if there is sacrifice,
the sacrifice itself is loved!”
And, what is this yoke that Jesus invites us to take up? For “the
weary and oppressed” of Jesus’ time, the yoke was the law of Moses,
which over the centuries had become an unbearable burden of hundreds of
detailed rules and practices. Instead, Jesus teaches that the relationship
with God does not consist essentially in external things, but in love, joy,
and trust, viz. in a relationship of sons and daughters who expect
everything from their Father and feel loved by him. This new filial
relationship is not to be found in the law of Moses, but in the Person of
Jesus who is to be loved and followed – “Learn from me”. And, what have
we to learn at the school of Jesus? To be, like him, gentle and humble in
heart!”
Here lies the big difference between, say, Mahatma Gandhi and a
Christian. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “It would not be a problem for me if
one day someone proved that the man called Jesus never existed and that
the Gospels were the fruit of someone’s imagination. For me,” he added,
“the Sermon on the Mount would still be true.” That is not the case with
the Christian. The Christian practices the sermon on the Mount, and lives
in gentleness and humility, not because they are beautiful virtues,
appreciated by the world and so very necessary, but because Jesus lived
them, and because of the way he lived them!
Here, then, lies the meaning of the words, “Learn from me!” It is a
call to learn from his heart, that is, to learn his way of loving. And his way
of loving is in gentleness and humility. We must shape our heart to become
like his – the Sacred Heart.

Humility and gentleness. There are different ways of

understanding these two virtues. Humility is the fundamental virtue;
gentleness is its consequence and expression.
Well, how did Jesus live humility? He, who was the Son of God,
stripped himself of everything, humiliated himself by taking the form of a
servant, in order to save us! He therefore had every right to say: “Learn
from me because I am humble.”
When you think of it, only God is truly humble, because, in the
position in which he is, God cannot go higher than himself (there is
nothing above him!). He can only go lower. And that’s what he has been
doing ever since creation: in creating the world, he came down; in
inspiring the Bible, he acted like a father who bends down and speaks
slowly to teach the child to speak; in the Incarnation he came down; in the
Eucharist he came down. The history of salvation is the story of God
humbling himself. St. Francis of Assisi was so taken up by this way of
looking at God that he used to exclaim: “Consider, brothers, God’s
humility!”
And in his Canticle of the Creatures, he described water as the
symbol of humility. Water is humble because, left to itself, it always goes
down, down, until it reaches the lowest possible point. Water always
chooses the last place for itself! On the contrary, steam always tends to rise
up and is therefore rightly associated with pride.
As a matter of fact, humility is inspired by love: it is a gift of
oneself; it is forgetting and placing oneself at the service of another; it is
choosing the lowest, the needy; it is choosing to get dirty with those who
do not count; it is a profound acceptance that the other comes first,
whoever he may be.
And true humility leads to gentleness. Perhaps the word that is the
best translation of the word “gentleness” is “meekness”. The prophet Isaiah
describes Jesus like this: when he was treated badly, he allowed himself to
be humiliated and did not open his mouth; he was like a lamb led to the
slaughter. And St. Peter writes: “When he was insulted, he did not respond
with offence; and while he suffered, he did not threaten, but entrusted his
cause to God who judges justly.” Here lies the example of meekness or
gentleness, that quality of the person who does not have recourse to threats,
who overcomes anger with calmness, who does not meet violence with
violence.

Today Jesus invites us to respond to the love we have received from

God, by loving with humility and gentleness. In this way – he assures us –
“you will find rest for your souls.” In other words, a humble and gentle life
is demanding – in this respect, it is a yoke – but since it is inspired by a
love for God, it becomes our greatest support in bearing the burdens of life.
We are reminded in the first place that the same divine and human
love which led Jesus to love his apostles, to weep at the tomb of his friend
Lazarus, to rejoice and thank his Father for the simple people who received
his word, that very same love leads Jesus today to love each one of us
with affection and tenderness, and to expect us to love him in return in our
own human way – with our affections, our thoughts, and our feelings.
Secondly, we are invited to change the idea of God that we have,
of a God who is severe and distant from us, and instead to see the true
face of God as of Someone who is all tenderness and love, and that Jesus
showed us in his Sacred Heart, both divine and human.
 And finally, let us not forget that, as Saint Paul tells us, “the love of
God has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit”. That is to say: not only
have we received the love of Jesus but we have been made capable of
loving with that same love; our heart becomes daily transformed by
receiving Jesus in the Eucharist and made capable of loving like him, with
his own feelings. That is why St. Paul exhorts us, saying: “Have in you the
same sentiments that were in Jesus Christ.”

Points for reflection:

1. Going by what Jesus tells us, how does one find rest under a
yoke?
2. What does it mean to be humble?
3. What can I do to grow in humility and gentleness?