Brothers and sisters, with this triduum? Eighteen months of jubilee are coming to an end. Eighteen intense months, as those who were able to see the video made during the events and broadcast Friday evening during the Thanksgiving Vigil were able to appreciate. Eighteen months of pilgrimages, thematic jubilees, major meetings, conference sessions, and three magnificent days, ablaze with sunshine, marked by the consecration offered to individuals and families and by the renewal of France’s consecration to the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary. What will remain of all this? The works of art created for the occasion, perhaps a few installations, a few theological or spiritual insights gathered, notably from the conference held in Rome on reparation and, of course, from the secrets of hearts and the fabric of lives, the memory of graces received. Concluding a time of commemoration is sometimes delicate. Moving from the intensity of key moments to the ordinary course of life can sometimes be frightening. Let us remember that this was the case for Saint Margaret Mary. The apparitions lasted from the end of December 1673 until June 1675, and Saint Margaret Mary lived until October 17, 1690, another fifteen years. She, even more than we, had to live with the mark that these fiery years had left on her soul.
*******
What should we remember then? What should we keep? We have often heard the expression “enter into the heart of Jesus” these days. Yesterday, Bishop Rivière invited us to understand that Jesus wanted to enter our Nazareths as much as he invites us to enter his Heart. What will we leave with, what will we take away when we have left this “city of the Sacred Heart” and the exciting haven of this busy year and a half? What will we keep in our “Nazareths”? The most essential thing is given to us in the Gospel we have just heard. Father Étienne Kern had the opportunity to remind us that this was the only time in the four Gospels that Jesus speaks of himself: “For I am gentle and humble of heart.” Jesus, “gentle and humble of heart.” It is for him that we are here. It is he, Jesus, “meek and humble of heart,” whom the encyclical Dilexit Nos calls us to contemplate attentively, to allow ourselves to be transformed by him. It is to join him, “meek and humble of heart,” more closely, that Pope Francis rereads the entire Tradition around the Heart of Jesus and proposes Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, Saint Thérèse of Alençon and Lisieux, as the one who gives us the best understanding of the Heart of Jesus. For Jesus does not come to us to overwhelm us with things to do. He does not come to us to make the burden of life even harder. He comes to give us the only impetus for living: to let ourselves be loved and to learn to love in turn, “returning love for love.”
*******
Brothers and sisters, let us hear the call that the Lord addresses to us, and that he wishes, through us, to all human beings: “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 gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” All of us, as Cardinal Bustillo said so remarkably on Friday, all of us have burdens. They crush us or encumber us to a greater or lesser extent. They make our journey less easy, they cut off our best impulses, they deprive us of the strength we need to go further. We can entrust them to Jesus. Often, too often, we add to each other’s burdens, through our demands, through our demands, through our lack of kindness, as the cardinal reminded us, through our expectations of one another, which we find very difficult to adjust to. Jesus calls us to a completely different attitude, and as Pope Francis explains, he is not content with words: he comes to us, he draws near to us, he makes the most interior mystery, that of his heart burning with love for us, perceptible, he makes it tangible to us in the simple yet moving gestures of the Eucharist, so that we feel touched by his love, by his outpouring toward us, and so that we thirst to respond by loving in turn. Why us? There is no more reason than there was, as we heard in the first reading, in the book of Deuteronomy, in the choice of Israel. Why did God choose us to know him and try to love him a little? Why did God choose Israel to be his covenant partner? This has been proclaimed to us: neither pbecause it would have been the best, or the most numerous, or the noblest of all peoples. Simply because he chose it to “keep the commandments, the laws, the decrees, the customs.” Is this a terrifying burden? It is indeed a yoke, a series of prescriptions that encircle everything in human life. But, for us Christians, it is something else entirely. It is the double commandment of love, that of God and that of neighbor. It is a law that surpasses all laws. Not commandments to be scrupulously respected, one by one, until we are free from them, but a wonder at the extent to which we are loved and our free, joyful, necessary attempt to fulfill it as much as possible. Of course, by this very fact, it raises the moral or ethical level at which we are called to live. We can no longer, faced with it, come to terms with ourselves, obliterate the work of our conscience, or self-justify everything we do. But the driving force is not the fear of God or the fear of punishment. Our driving force, if we understand correctly, is the fear of failing in our love for God, the fear of not responding to love with love. We fear responding to that love only with a pale copy, or even a guilty distortion of the best that is given to us, diverted to satisfy our fears or our predatory needs. Our true driving force, beyond all fear, is what Saint John affirms in such simple and burning terms: “This is what love consists in: It is not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.”
*******
Three hundred and fifty years ago, here in Paray-le-Monial, the risen Jesus revealed his most loving heart to a nun from the Visitation convent. Why her and why this place? For Paray is not a capital city, Paray is not Jerusalem or Paris or Washington. But there was a soul there capable of receiving it: she needed it to be freed from all scrupulous rigidity. There was a Visitation community that needed interior transformation and could be made capable of it, and there was undoubtedly a whole set of predispositions that we cannot all see or know, but whose combination allowed the contemplation of the Heart of Jesus to spread throughout society. Here, the simple words of the Gospel: “For I am gentle and humble of heart” were seemingly tinged with bitterness: “This is the heart that so loved the world and is loved by it so little.” France at the time was entirely Christian, or almost. It even claimed to be entirely Catholic. But it was pervaded by indifference. The religion of Jesus had become mired in a moral and social order, and the fear of hell was the ultimate defense against those who turned away and tried to find other paths in life. Publicly professed religion readily accommodates social injustice and mutual domination. Here, not at the heart of cultural movements but in a small provincial town that was nevertheless not without cultural and spiritual riches, it pleased God to identify and awaken a human heart that He could ignite without fear and that could share its renewed ardor with others. It pleased God to identify an entire society in which little-known hearts were ready for the adventure of love as a gift of self, these “simple” ones, these spiritual “little ones” who understand what escapes the wise and learned, blinded by their own enlightenment. Paray-le-Monial could become one of those confidential centers of the world that human powers ignore, but from which, infinitely better than from the nuclear sites that states seek to keep secret, emerge the forces that transform minds and hearts into truth. In reality, brothers and sisters, it is not bitterness that must be heard in the words of Jesus coming to Margaret Mary, it is the ardor of desire. It is the hope, if one can speak thus, of the almighty God who awaits from humanity a free and joyful aspiration, not so much to belong to him, if one understands this as a slave’s submission, but to love as he himself loves: “I received from my God excessive graces of his love, and felt touched by the desire for some return and to return love for love.” » 3 4
*******
This, brothers and sisters, is a way to leave these three days of closure and these eighteen months of Jubilee with bread for each day’s journey. Jesus, “meek and humble of heart,” comes to me so that I desire to love as he loves. There will be no shortage in the days of my life to come for me to reach the end of this journey, and that’s so much the better. Let us not be afraid of ourA world that is easily hardened, easily shielded, where everyone is concerned about their rights and quick to assert their claims. We, brothers and sisters, can touch the truth of this word: “God is love” and draw from it, each for themselves and for all others, this call: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God.” We can whisper it every day: “Heart of Jesus, meek and humble, make my heart like yours. Immaculate Heart of Mary, be our refuge.” Amen.
Monsignor Eric de Moulins-Beaufort