[stephenkhoo]

THE SECRET OF LOVE IS IN THE HEART OF JESUS
SCRIPTURE READINGS: DT 7:6-11; 1 JN 4:7-16; MT 11:25-30
http://www.universalis.com/20140627/mass.htm

“Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened and I will give you rest.” These are consoling words from Jesus indeed, because many of us are overburdened and exhausted by the works of love. These are not empty words spoken by any ordinary person but one who has taught us love by His very life and being, one who has loved completely even unto death on the cross by forgiving His enemies and yet never tired in love. Where did He get His strength to love without feeling tired, especially when His enemies continue to reject Him?


The gospel tells us that it is because He knows the Father’s love. In the gospel, Jesus declared, “Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Undoubtedly, Jesus knows the heart of the Father more than anyone else.


This explains why Jesus is called Son because only the Son knows the Father. One cannot be called a Son unless he knows the Father. Thus, the Son is the revealer of the Father since He participates in the being of the Father. This makes it possible for St John to remark, “Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.” When applied to Jesus, surely, we must say that He knows God deeply for He loves like God.


So only through Jesus, can we come to know the heart of the Father! Jesus is the perfect revelation of God. Jesus is the revealer and the revealed. This is the greatest claim of the Christian Faith. We are not saying that we know God from deduction or some intellectual reasoning based on the works of creation but that we know God personally. This is what makes Christianity different from other religions because in Jesus we know God in person. To see Jesus is to see the Father. Jesus is the perfect love of God. Within this context, we can understand why St John said, “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him, and he in God. We ourselves have known and put our faith in God’s love towards ourselves. God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.”


What, then, is the heart of the Father? Firstly, Jesus reveals to us that God is first and foremost the Lord of heaven and earth. As creator, He is the origin and author of life and of everything in heaven and on earth. Nothing comes to be without Him and thus He is the foundation of our being.


Secondly, He is our Father and we are His children. He is not some impersonal God that has no relationship with us. Only because God is Father, Jesus could assure us that the Father will hear our prayers when we pray in His name. For this same reason too, He taught us to address God as Our Father. Indeed as St Paul said, all fatherhood and motherhood is derived from Him (Eph. 3:14-15).


Thirdly, we are told that He has chosen us to be His people. In the first reading, Moses said to the people: “You are a people consecrated to the Lord your God; it is you that the Lord our God has chosen to be his very own people out of all the peoples on the earth.” As Christians, we are called to be the new people of God. To be chosen to be members of His kingdom is truly a great privilege.


Fourthly, He has chosen us not for any merit of ours but because of His love. He loved us unconditionally. We cannot claim any credit for being the chosen people of God since that is given to us as pure grace. Truly, if God has chosen us to be Christians, we must realize that it is pure gift.


Fifthly, He made a covenant with us. Moses said, “Know then that the Lord your God is God indeed, the faithful God who is true to his covenant and his graciousness for a thousand generations towards those who love him.” In this covenant, we are truly His people and He is our God. As such, we can be assured that God is forever faithful to us.


Sixthly, in order to make this covenant a reality, we are told that His love for us is so great that He even gave us the commandments to help us stay in love.


Finally, the proof of His total love for us is in the sending of His son, Jesus. St John recognizing this wrote, “God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.”


This, then, is the secret of love. Only by contemplating on God’s prior love for us can we truly love Him and our fellowmen. For when we contemplate on God’s love in Jesus especially in His life, passion, death and resurrection, we are certain of God’s unreserved love for us. That God would humble Himself to this extent shows us the depth and quality of His love. We see His humility and gentleness.


In Jesus, therefore, arising from this love we have received, we have the capacity to love. Thus only those who have experienced God’s unconditional love could love. The consequence of this is that we must “love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.” This is the foundation of our love for others.


But how shall we love in such a way that we do not get burnt-out and frustrated? Jesus says, “Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” What is this yoke that we are called to shoulder with Jesus? In Jewish understanding, the yoke is an imagery of our submission to God. The Jews would speak of the yoke of the law, the yoke of the commandments, the yoke of the kingdom, the yoke of God.


When Jesus says His yoke is “easy”, it means that it is fitting. Yokes were tailor-made to fit the oxen well. So when Jesus invites us to put on his yoke, He is asking us to surrender our lives to the Father just as He surrendered His life. This is the key to happiness. When we surrender our lives to the Father and to do His will, we will find peace and the burden becomes light because we are no longer anxious or fighting with God. We simply do what we can in love. We are not too worried about the results. What is all-important is that we love. So to carry the yoke of Jesus is to love like Him by doing the will of God.


The paradox of life is that when we surrender ourselves, we find true peace and joy. By giving ourselves to the yoke of Christ’s kingdom, we are liberated from the burden of guilt and from the oppression of sin. So when we carry the yoke with Jesus, we come to realize that Jesus is carrying the pain with us. He knows how we feel and how much we are suffering. So knowing that Jesus has carried our sins upon Himself, we need no longer despair.


But to do God’s will, to submit to the yoke of God, we must be humble and gentle. We must not resist and fight with God but be humble enough to accept His wisdom and grace. Quite often it is our pride and inordinate love of self and an exaggerated estimation of one’s own knowledge and importance that makes us trust ourselves instead of God. Intellectual pride, coldness of heart, and stubbornness of will shut out God and His kingdom.


In contrast, Jesus said, only those with child-like simplicity and humility, the children and the babes can surrender their lives to the Father. The simple of heart are more willing to trust in the Father and acknowledge the One who is greater, wiser, and more trustworthy. They seek one thing the “greatest good” who is God Himself. Simplicity of heart requires the virtue of humility, the queen of virtues, because humility inclines the heart towards grace and truth. Just as pride is the root of every sin and evil, so humility is the only soil in which the grace of God can take root. It alone takes the right attitude before God and allows Him as God to do all. Only the humble of heart can receive true wisdom and understanding of God and His ways. So it is with humility that we can carry our crosses with faith and love even when things do not work out the way we want.


So today, when we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we want to acknowledge that Jesus is the love of God in person and the one who reveals to us the way to love. Contemplating on His love gives us the capacity to love. In celebrating this feast, the Church wants us to recognize that the love of Jesus is not only divine love but human love as well. Even though Jesus is in heaven, He did not lose His human body. Even in His glorified body, He still has a human heart. That is why the Church gives us this special feast day to symbolize His love, pierced for us on the cross but forever ongoing, real, and unconditional.


So if Jesus as a human person could love in such a manner, we can too, provided like Him, we are in union with God. Within this context, we will then never give up loving. Our doubts about His love will disappear when we continue to give ourselves to others. So long as we can love, we are in union with Jesus. In loving, we become one with Jesus. We recognize that whenever we can love, God is in us.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh