Feast of the Sacred Heart: Homily by the Joseph De Piro on the feast

Undoubtedly the heart is the most important part of the human body. It works continuously to safeguard the health of the human body. At night, when after a full day’s work the tired arms are limp, the eyes shut and the brain paralysed in sleep, the heart works on. It continues to beat, always vigilant in its responsibility to maintain our healthy life.

        Let us now focus on the most perfect person who ever lived on this earth. Jesus Christ chose to unite our human nature to his divinity. In his humanity we also find a heart perfectly fulfilling its functions, pumping through the veins the pure blood it received from the Immaculate Virgin Mary. As we reflect further, we think about the motives that led Jesus Christ to assume this human heart, making him one with us. We discover that the aim of this remarkable action was nothing else than our redemption. Jesus Christ wanted nothing other more than to repay the debts we had contracted with the Divine Justice through our sin.

 It is precisely within this heart, dear brothers and sisters, that we encounter Jesus’ infinitive love for us. Here that we come across a real mystery of love. Jesus himself affirmed this saying: “This is the heart that has loved humanity so much”.

You see therefore that just one voluntary act by Our Lord Jesus Christ has infinite value. He therefore had no need to suffer for our redemption. There was no other need for his Sacred Heart than to keep Jesus alive in order to unite his humanity with his divinity. Yet what do we discover? Jesus was not happy with simply sharing our humanity. He had already chosen to suffer for our sake. He did not choose only to suffer a little pain, but to the point of shedding all his blood. He put no limits on his suffering. He wanted to shed his blood till there was not even a drop left in his Sacred Heart. “This is the heart that has loved humanity so much”.

 In order to be able to somehow understand Jesus’ immense love for us, let us come down and tell a human mother that her lavish care for her sick child is unnecessary and fruitless … Listen to her reply: she will endure sleepless nights; she will be ready for any sort of sacrifice; she will seek all remedies, futile for her child’s cure, but necessary for the child to feel loved, and even more necessary as a declaration of her love.

  The same happens with Jesus. Tell him that he need not have been born in a cave, exposed to the winter cold. Tell him that he need not have suffered – that he need not have suffered so much. Tell him that he could have done something less for us. Tell him that he could have saved at least one a drop of that precious blood with which his Sacred Heart functioned. He would immediately reply that he could not. For the Sacred Heart of Jesus all this was necessary. It was inevitable. It was necessary for him to show us his love, to help us understand his infinite love for us. “This is the heart that has loved humanity so much”.