Homily:
Have you all ever seen Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark? It has one of the most famous action scenes of all time in it. Indiana Jones is fighting all these goons in the marketplace, knocking them out one after the other in comic fashion. After what seems like the thousandth goon, the scene pauses and you think it’s over. Then this big buff guy comes out with a huge sword and starts waiving it all around and laughing. You’re left thinking: man, now Indy has to fight this guy, too. How’s that going to go down? But in one of the best movie moments ever, Indy just shrugs, whips out his pistol, and blasts the guy. Bang.
It’s the same unexpected sort of comic moment that happens in the Gospel we just heard. Jesus is verbally fighting the Pharisee goon squad, challenging their self-satisfaction. Woe to you! After knocking ‘em all out, the big boss comes up and says “Hey, you’re hurting our feelings!” Translation: Hey, you’re making us respectable people feel bad. You’re only supposed to challenge people we don’t like. Now, at this point, you’d expect Jesus to backtrack and say “Oh, now, I didn’t mean it” or “You’re right. I’m sorry. I was too harsh.” Jesus turns and verbally bops that guy in the nose too. It’s the equivalent of the Indiana Jones pistol scene: Bang! “Woe to you also, Scholars of the law!”
Why does Jesus do this? To be rude? To put people in their place? No. Jesus does it because he actually really and truly loves even the scribes and the pharisees, and he realizes the only way to save them is to rattle their cages. Sometimes real love means telling hard truths. Sometimes, real love rattles people’s cages and makes them uncomfortable. Sometimes it doesn’t. But real love, the love of Jesus who is God, always meets people where they’re at, reaches into their lives, challenges them, and changes them. That same love that boldly challenges in the Gospel today is the same love that boldly forgives sins. It saves people from hell and gives them heaven.
I mention that for a reason, and that the first idea I want you to hold on to this morning. God’s love is bold. It enters our life with a challenge and leaves us transformed. We’ll come back to it in just a minute for the takeaway. But for now, I also want to talk about our Saint we celebrate today, Saint Margaret Mary Alaqoque. She was a nun who lived in the 1600’s and had a number of visions where Jesus revealed to her a number of things. The most important of them was the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. You’ve probably seen a picture of it before: Jesus with a fiery heart in the middle of his chest. It’s a famous image, and might even be in some of your houses. That was revealed to Saint Margaret Mary.
It’s worth asking: Why the devotion to the Sacred Heart, but not the Sacred Eyes or Hands or Brain of Jesus? It’s because of what the heart meant to the Jewish people in Jesus’ time, and what it means for us today. For the Jewish faith, the heart was the source of blood, which was a powerful symbol of life and love. Think about the Old Testament Sacrifices: blood was always required, because you were making an exchange of life. So the heart is the source of life and love. But we also know today more about what the heart does: it receives blood, allows it to be purified and re-oxygenated, and then pumps it out to nourish the rest of the body. The heart receives life and love, refreshes it, and then gives it out. So, when we devote ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we’re devoting ourselves to the source of God’s own life. When we try to make our hearts more like Jesus’ heart, we learn to receive the life and love of God, and then to pass it on to all aspects of our life. Receive, be nourished by, and pass on the life and love of God, be like the Sacred Heart.
Bring this together with Indiana Jones and Jesus from just a minute ago. You’re here on a retreat day today. It’s meant to spur you through service today and through the rest of the year, to live with a love that’s better than mediocre. How do you bring that dramatic, courageous, life-giving and life saving love of God to the rest of your life? That love that speaks the truth in tough spots and doesn’t back down, that love that forgives sins? Start today. Ask Saint Margaret Mary to pray for you. Right here, right now. Ask the Holy Spirit to slowly make your heart like the Sacred Heart of Jesus today and throughout this year. Commit to prayer, Mass and confession throughout the year to help it happen.
Why does this matter? Because all too often it can seem like Christianity is about doing more things, different things. C.S. Lewis, the guy who wrote Chronicles of Narnia, said that when he converted to Christianity (which happened when he was an adult), he expected to stop doing normal things, like buying groceries or gas or going to work, but now do only “holy things”, Church stuff. What he found out was that really being a Christian meant that he did much of the same stuff as before, but with a different spirit. By making your heart like Jesus’ Sacred Heart, you’ll like with that different life, love with that different love, so that even when you do ordinary things like your service today, or school tomorrow or the next few years, you’ll do them better than they could ever be on their own. You’ll do them with a different spirit, the Holy Spirit, as someone alive in the live of God.
Conform your heart to Jesus’ Sacred Heart, be filled with the life and love of God at this Mass, be nourished by it, and then let transform your actions both today and beyond, so that what you do is not just another service hour or another class, but is really something small and powerful, done in love and for love, boldly, for the salvation of the world.
Homilies of Father Rich Miserendino 