Undervalued Heart
Our name is of the Heart of Jesus! When we say Heart of Jesus we mean infinite goodness, love, charity and mercy, St. Hannibal Mary said (Rogationist Anthology (RA), p. 457). Everything of Jesus is love, for God is Love (1 Jn 4:16). He came into the world to gratuitously give his divine Love to his beloved humanity, but his own people did not accept him (Jn 1:11). Nonetheless, he was not disheartened. Instead he insisted on showing his tender, untiring love for humanity suffering from spiritual alzheimer. He understands what human heart is made of because his Heart is of human tissue too. This is true friendship, true brotherhood, an agapic love that does not expect anything in return.
He came to dwell among us because he wants to think like we think and to feel like we feel. He wants to be totally like us and wants to stay with us until the end of time (Mt 28:20). His Heart is with us and for us! He may have left us during his ascension but sacramentally he is in the tabernacles in all churches to wait for us, silently gazing upon us in every moment of our daily ordinary life. By his Incarnation He always desired to be with us. Desiderio desideravi (Lk 22:15) he said when he eagerly wants to give himself in the Eucharist. What a love that the Lord Jesus has for us mortal beings! His Heart is truly in the Blessed Sacrament because he is the Emmanuel, the God with us. Although we see bread instead of a Heart but nevertheless, we feel and experience his infinite Love under the veil of this Eucharistic Bread. He renounced everything - his image of God, to become man. Now he even renounced his image of man to become bread, in order to live and dwell among us that we might live with him forever. What a sacrifice Christ did in the Eucharist; a sacrifice of the cross in our favor St. Hannibal Mary exclaimed.
This supreme self-giving is hidden in the Blessed Sacrament, in the tabernacle of every Church, in every Holy Mass we celebrate. Yet this total self-donation, the invincible proof of God’s love for humanity (RA, p. 457) is still very much unknown and undervalued even by numerous Catholics. Now I ponder in my heart, how many times I have avoided to meet him in the chapel because I was too preoccupied with many things and with deadlines to catch up! But how many times too he longed to tell me thank you for the services I extended to his people that I missed! How many times he desired to console me when I was disheartened but I missed. How many times he wanted to dry the tears in my eyes and the sweat from my brows but I missed it. What a troubled gaze wanting to console his beloved!
Wanting to console the Lord of the Harvest, St. Hannibal Mary once said: Our order will love, honor, and court the Holy Sacrament with such a bliss as to be called a Eucharistic Order (RA, p. 423) because the loving, fecund, dutiful and continuous center of this pious institute of Jesus’ interests is Jesus in the Holy Sacrament (RA, p. 427).
He wants, therefore, that his sons and daughters would become like Mary who knelt at the foot of Jesus to listen intently to him (cf. Lk 10:42); to be like bees around the beehive, making Jesus the one and only aim of their actions and of their lives (cf. RA, p. 53).
Fr. Marcelino Diaz II, RCJ is currently the Responsible of the Rogamina Community of the St. Matthew Province in Mina, Iloilo, Philippines. The Rogamina Community aims to follow Jesus’ call for unceasing prayer, especially for more and holy vocations, in the monastic-contemplative lifestyle.