My friends, we are gathered. We have heard it. We come from different peoples, different traditions, different cultures. Each of us has our own journey, our own life, our own sensibilities, our own struggles. We are welcomed here, in Paray-le-Monial, in this diocese, in this sanctuary, with the community of chaplains, who have organized these celebrations for a long time with great courage, skill, and love. And we are gathered to celebrate the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart in this spiritual center. So, with you, I would like to highlight three aspects. I will try to nourish our meditation to grow in our spiritual life. The readings we have proclaimed invite us to dive into the heart of God. Sometimes, in our ordinary daily lives, when we see situations or people who are a bit complex, we ask ourselves, “But what’s on their minds?” What’s in people’s hearts? The Word of God reveals to us what is in God’s heart. The first aspect I would like to emphasize with you is that God acts with his heart.
The first reading from the prophet Ezekiel speaks to us of a good shepherd. Rooted in Semitic tradition, the image of the good shepherd is not trivial. In ancient iconography, frescoes and mosaics—I’m thinking especially of the Ravenna mosaic—we see this beautiful image of the good shepherd carrying the lost sheep on his shoulders. Even if today we see fewer shepherds and fewer sheep, the teaching is powerful. A shepherd gathers, reassures, feeds, leads; a shepherd leads and directs his flock. And we live, my friends, in a time when we see many coaches around us. They are everywhere. They help us eat well, dress for sports, for our professional lives, for our emotional lives, for our well-being, and so on. We live in a time when texts and websites that talk about personal development touch our lives. And we seek them!
Our humanity reveals the need to be guided and directed. And in the reading from the prophet Ezekiel that we have proclaimed, God is committed, God is not indifferent, God acts, God is not a spectator of human lives, God is not indifferent to human suffering. God is not distant. God loves humanity in its struggles. And you know as well as I do, what is our life? It is to struggle and to love. We have no choice. It seems important to me to highlight two terms that appear often in Ezekiel’s text: “I” and “I.” This is not the “I-I,” sometimes clumsy, narcissistic, or self-centered, of our ordinary lives. It is the “I-I” of God’s commitment to humanity. The Creator acts for His creation. The Shepherd acts for His sheep. The terms “I” and “I” appear 17 times in these few verses. The teaching is simple. God watches over. God saves. God gathers. God nourishes. God consoles. God comforts. This word is precious to us, at a time when many of our contemporaries are asking themselves questions about God’s place. Where is He? What is He doing? We sang the psalm we know by heart. The Lord is our Shepherd. He is our Guide. Faced with the fear of abandonment and the fear of being scattered, the Lord shows us the way to communion. The good shepherd gives us life, joy, and creates unity and communion within us.
A second aspect, as we heard in the second reading, is that God gave us his Son. The heart of God gives everything. Saint Paul to the Romans, a complex and difficult community, recalls God’s infinite love for us. God does not give humanity a recipe, but rather gives his Son. The proof that God loves us is that Christ died for us. The gift of the Son, his death, and his Resurrection bring about reconciliation in us, in our humanity. Through the love of the Father in the Son, we are saved, reconciled, and freed. God gives, and God reconciles. We live in a time in a society where it would be easy to fall into the temptation to take, to have, and to possess. And God tells us, I offer, I give. He shows us the prophetic path of gratuitousness. The Lord reconciles us. Seeing the fractures and divisions in our society, the Word of God invites us to be authentic. If we are not unified and reconciled within, we cannot bear witness to God’s love. The Father gives us his Son. The Son gives us his life. At every Mass, at every Eucharist, we listen to these moving words. This is my body for you. This is my blood for you. This is my life for you. In God, everything is a gift. We Christians have a crucial mission in the world. Our mission is to reconcile.
Society sometimes judges and condemns. Social media sometimes breeds division. And we have become harsh, uncompromising, and merciless. In a hostile social ecosystem, instead of despairing and lamenting because it’s so basic, we Christians must take on greater depth and meaning in our choices. Let us be artisans of peace and reconciliation, through our words and our attitudes. Let us be signs of God. This is what God tells us. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. God gave everything. And us? God’s provocation is for us. And us? What do we give? What do we offer to others? Our frustrations? Our fears? Our anger? Or life? Faith? Joy? Hope? Third aspect. God seeks us. The heart of God is a heart in perpetual motion. It is not unstable, it is itinerant. And the gospel we have proclaimed is astonishing. Jesus speaks to the scholars and religious figures of his time, the doctors of the law, the scribes, the Pharisees. He does not choose the speculative, intellectual, or conceptual path. He does not enter the realm of theological science. He chooses theological practice through simplicity and experience. He tells a parable. In the parable of the lost sheep, there are important verbs for our spiritual life: To lose, to seek, to find. To take, to gather, to rejoice. The good shepherd is not indifferent to his flock, to an absent, missing member. The lost sheep weakens the family, the flock. The flock is amputated of one of its members. And if a member is missing, communion is not perfect. The absence of a member is a suffering. Every member counts for unity. At the origins of consecrated life in the Church, the importance of the Quaerere Deum, seeking God, was often emphasized. Modern exegetical studies remind us that, since the beginning, God has sought man. The question of youth is still relevant today. God asks, “Where are you, Adam?” He also asks, “Where is your brother?” In Genesis, we have these two questions, and they are still relevant today. God seeks us. The Lord goes out to find us. The Lord wants to repair the lost communion. From the pain of loss to the joy of encounter, the Lord invites us to come out of ourselves to rebuild the communion of the flock. As Saint Luke says, after the Resurrection of Jesus, in chapter 24, in the story of the disciples at Emmaus, we are all called to move from a slow heart to a burning heart. This is the movement of life, it is the movement of joy, it is the movement of the Resurrection. It is comforting for us to know that God will never be impassive to our estrangement. In discretion, through these ways of His, these mysterious ways, God seeks us. Jesus sought and found lost sheep, like the Samaritan woman, like Zacchaeus, and gave them joy and dignity. When we use the term “lost” too easily, we give it a moral interpretation.
Now, a lost person is a person in suffering. To be lost means to lose one’s direction, to lose one’s dignity, to experience loneliness, fear, darkness, and cold. The Prodigal Son, in Luke’s Gospel, chooses to leave but not to lose himself. But, by distancing himself from the Father, he loses himself. He finds himself alone, empty, unhappy. We live in an exciting time. It lends itself to experiencing a reunion with God. The hippie generation, 60 years ago, dreamed of peace, love, and freedom. This generation has given way to their children. A new generation that has inherited disenchanted worlds, less peaceful, less kind, less free. “Neither God nor Master,” it was said at one time. “God is dead,” some told us. God was cast out by a generation, by a Western society, believing itself to be free and autonomous. At that time, God and the Church aroused indifference or hostility. Today, we have new generations. Almost virgins, in the spiritual realm. They are seeking fathers and guidance. In a world centered on possessions, knowledge, and power, a new generation wants to care for their being, their heart. This generation has a heart, a heart that is sometimes fragile, but thirsty for love, for freedom. This new generation wants to live without fear, in complete freedom, with an open, dilated, and loving heart. The parable of the lost sheep is still relevant today. The Lord seeks, and we too seek and find, wounded, distant people, sometimes with complex journeys, but they want to be happy. They want the communion of the flock, the strength of the family, guidance toward happiness. They want the Good Shepherd to take them on his shoulders to reassure them, to console them, to relieve their pain. Under theThe open heart of Jesus continues to irrigate consciences and minds. He makes life spring forth from his inexhaustible fountain. He gives himself to those who thirst, and our world thirsts for peace, love, and unity. So, let us listen to the world’s thirst. Let us offer the luminous, open heart of Jesus, like a beacon to all those who are going through dark nights. Yes, our God desires the unity and happiness of his children.
Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation, watch over us. Amen.