Mercy is the practical extension of love in the face of suffering and pain.

In the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we can easily visualize the tender mercy of God who sent His only Son to rescue us from the clutches of sin and death.

In the contemplation of the Lord’s Heart, we clearly realize that God is not distant, impersonal, or uncaring.

His love for us is infinite, fiery, practical, and present in the details of our lives.

His open Heart

The Gospels help us understand how often the Lord’s Heart was moved with compassion for the needs of the people He encountered.

In the Last Supper discourse, Jesus tells His disciples, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

The entirety of Jesus’ life, mission, and purpose is this laying down of self, this radical surrender, this death to self so that others can live.

At the very heart of God is this self-emptying love which pours out the last drop of Precious Blood for you and me.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:28-29).

If anyone would have the right to be proud or lord it over others, it would be Jesus.

He is the King of Kings, the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world, the center point of human history.

Yet, He is the absolute opposite of vainglory and arrogance.

Meek and humble, He puts His loving attention and healing power always on the other.

In this passage, we see that the Lord wants us to come to His open Heart, with our love, problems, questions, struggles, but also our joy and praise.

“Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds, His Heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:35-36).

All of us have experienced the movement of compassion in our hearts when we see a loved one in great pain, a homeless person lying in the street, the victims of war on the nightly news, or starving children.

If our hearts, which are limited in their capacity to love, can be so moved, how much more does the divine and perfect Heart of Christ suffer when He sees the children of His Father in misery?

He works through us

When we reach out in love and service to those in pain, Jesus uses our actions to unleash His healing power, and He imprints our acts of charity with the image of His face, as He did on Veronica’s veil.

In Luke 7: 11-17, Jesus stops the funeral procession of the widow of Nain’s son, as the mourners make their sad way out of the village to bury this young man.

The Lord knows that the widow will now be completely bereft of support and sustenance, so He steps forward, touches the casket, and raises the dead man back to life.

In this miracle, we encounter both a foreshadowing of His own Resurrection and an act of mercy to a grieving mother. The Lord is always interrupting funeral processions!

Without Jesus, our whole human existence would simply be a sad and slow march to darkness and death.  Christ interrupts this downward pull towards eternal despair and inserts His mercy, life, and power to restore us to the glorious life of Easter and eternal union with God.

Accept His Heart

As the bishops of the United States consecrate our nation and we consecrate our diocese to the Sacred Heart of Jesus next month, I invite everyone to enthrone the Sacred Heart in their homes, to consecrate themselves to the Lord, to deepen our love for Him who has loved us to the end, to perform acts of charity, and to offer hours of Eucharistic Adoration.

In this opportunity of grace, the Lord is calling us to enter more deeply into His Heart, and there discover the infinite depths of His merciful love. This mercy is the living expression of the Gospel, the Good News of Christ who has “come so that they may have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).