As we begin our reflections on the various invocations of the Litany of the Sacred Heart, we do so having spent the past several weeks reflecting on the mystery of the Word becoming flesh in the Incarnation.  For that reason, it seems that a good place to start is with the second invocation of the litany: 

Heart of Jesus, formed by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mother, have mercy on us.

This invocation expresses what the Angel Garbiel reveals to both Mary and Joseph, that the child in Mary’s womb was to be conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt. 1:20, Lk 1:35) From Mary’s womb, Jesus, the Word made flesh, receives His human nature.  But this humanity in Jesus is united consubstantially with His divine nature, such that we can speak of Jesus as true God and true man.  Mary’s “yes” to God makes this union possible, as she gives her permission to have her womb be the very place where God joins Himself with our humanity.

As Jesus’s humanity develops in the womb of Mary, it follows the same pattern of every human life, including the development of organs, including the heart.  One of the most exciting moments for a woman who is pregnant is to hear the heartbeat of the child in her womb for the first time.  Unfortunately, there was no ultrasound technology at the time of Mary’s pregnancy, but we know that Jesus’s heart was indeed beating.  Unlike an embryo who is not yet conscious, the beating Sacred Heart of Jesus was already an expression of the love He has for each of us, for the divinity of God, who is love, is constantly loving all whom He has created from all eternity.  As that heart would grow and develop, inside and outside of the womb of Mary, it remained a human heart, while always united with the divine heart of God.  

Trying to understand the mystery of what is called the hypostatic union – that in Jesus, there is one divine Person, who has two complete natures, human and divine – is beyond what we can consider in this brief article.  Yet, it is a mystery that is central to our faith, and central to the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  In the last major document that he wrote before his death, Pope Francis offers the following explanation that makes this point:

Since the heart continues to be seen in the popular mind as the affective centre of each human being, it remains the best means of signifying the divine love of Christ, united forever and inseparably to his wholly human love. Pius XII observed that the Gospel, in referring to the love of Christ’s heart, speaks “not only of divine charity but also human affection”. Indeed, “the heart of Jesus Christ, hypostatically united to the divine Person of the Word, beyond doubt throbbed with love and every other tender affection” (Dilexit nos, 61)

Of all human beings, Mary’s Immaculate Heart was most in union with the Sacred Heart of her son, both physically and spiritually.  We can ask her to help us to better appreciate the gift of the Sacred Heart, and that by our union with Him through grace, our hearts will beat more consistently with His with love for Him and for our brothers and sisters.

Every year as the Church comes back into Ordinary Time after the Christmas season, or later on after the Easter Season, it can feel a bit like letting out a long breath after a strenuous exercise. We’ve just finished celebrating a lot of major feast days right in a row: The Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Holy Family, Mary Mother of God, Epiphany, and the Baptism of the Lord. These are incredibly meaningful feasts and are deep mines of truth for reflection. They console us with their simplicity and reveal to us the humility of God, who came among us as a child born from the pure womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

Still, despite the beauty of these feasts and the joy we experience celebrating them, it can be a real spiritual “exercise,” in every sense of the word, to reflect in a profound way, feast after feast on the mystery of God’s love. There is thus a certain sigh of relief given by the Church in the liturgical rites as we come back into a simpler season. It is with peace and readiness that we enter back into Ordinary Time.

As we breathe this sigh of relief, I think we’re due also for the yearly reminder of the exact meaning of that term, “Ordinary.” Does it mean plain, boring, and monotonous? No! 

While there is a sense in which this season is filled with a simplicity not found in other seasons, that is not the reason this word is used to describe the seasons. 

“Ordinary” refers not to the “feeling” or “vibe” of the season, but rather to the simple fact that the weekends of Ordinary Time are numbered in a way we call “Ordinal.” This is a seldom used word. Its antonym is “Cardinal.” An ordinal number is listed in reference to a list and the number’s place in the list, whereas a cardinal number is simply the number as such. A list of ordinal numbers, for example, looks like: First, Second, Third, etc., and a list of cardinal numbers looks like: One, Two, Three, etc.. 

As we move through ordinary time, then, our weekends are numbered as “The Second Sunday of Ordinary Time,” “The Third Sunday of Ordinary Time,” etc. What we reflect on in this time is deeply profound and exciting yet so varied that it doesn’t fall into its own seasonal designation. We delve deeply into the mystery of the life of Jesus Christ in his public ministry. We hear stories of his miracles, his teaching, his parables, his disciples, and his encounters with the Jewish people and authorities. 

We reflect, in other words, on every action of the life of God made man. There is nothing more exciting than this; there is nothing more extraordinary than this. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us! The evangelists were excited men, and present to us in writing the exciting message of salvation. 

True, the Lord does so often come to us precisely in the ordinary moments of everyday life. True, the life of Jesus was overwhelmingly filled with ordinary human moments. Yet, Ordinary Time is not named so because of that. We enter an ordered time in which to reflect on the most extraordinary occurrence known to man. Rejoice and be glad! Breathe deeply – we have met the Lord at his baptism and now we enter his public ministry. We walk with him toward the cross and receive God’s steadfast love. Jesus, lead us in your love. Teach us your humility!

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been asked by a few people if I had plans for the next series for my bulletin articles.  I answered that nothing specific had come up, but I was certainly open to being nudged by the Holy Spirit, as happened with the last two series.  Well, that nudge came the week after Christmas while I was with our seminarians for their annual Christmas gathering.  It has been our practice to have Bishop Paprocki meet with them as a group the morning before they depart.  This year, he brought up a few different topics, one of which piqued my interest.  He shared with the men that at November’s gathering of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the bishops voted to consecrate our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 2026 as a part of our country’s 250^th anniversary.  This will likely take place in June, which is the month of the Sacred Heart.  The idea that formed in my mind as Bishop mentioned this was to focus on the Sacred Heart for the next several months as a way of preparing ourselves for this important moment in the life of the Church here in the United States.

In 1846, the Bishops of the United States had approved the decision to place our country under the patronage of the Immaculate Conception, which was approved by Blessed Pope Pius IX in 1847.  In this most recent decision to consecrate our country to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the bishops do not see any conflict, for Mary is intimately united with Jesus, and it was in light of the Incarnation of Jesus that she was given the special privilege of the Immaculate Conception.  This mystery only makes sense in light of Christ, the Word made flesh, who came to us through the humanity of Mary.  Therefore there is no problem with this proposed consecration.

Personally, in addition to devotion to Mary, especially in the Rosary, my other favorite devotion is to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so I was very excited to hear about this decision.  I have always been fascinated by the heart, having grown up making regular visits to the cardiologist to check on my heart which had been affected by a congenital defect to my aorta, the major artery that delivers oxygen-rich blood to the rest of the body.  When I discovered devotion to the Sacred Heart in my mid-twenties, it was something I immediately was drawn to and has continued to be a rich source of reflection for my spiritual life.

In particular, I love the Litany of the Sacred Heart, a prayer which includes 33 invocations that describe various qualities of the Heart of Jesus.  The number 33 is intentional as it corresponds to the 33 years in which Jesus lived among us from His birth in Bethlehem to His Ascension into Heaven following His Resurrection.  Each of these invocations offer an image that invite us to reflect more deeply on the gift of Jesus’s love for us.  

Here is what I am proposing.  Each week, I would like to reflect on one of the invocations from the Litany of the Sacred Heart.  The number of Sundays between now and the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart (June 12) is less than 33, so I will not be able to touch on all of them.  I need to do some more praying about which ones to include, to see if there is a pattern I want to follow, or if I want to just choose the ones that I like the best.  We will see what the Holy Spirit has in mind, but in the meantime, we can pray the final invocation, which is technically not part of the 33, but which, in some ways, summarizes the whole prayer, and it just happens to be my favorite part of the prayer:

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like unto Thine!

One of the most well-known Psalms is Psalm 23, beloved for its first words: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” These words and the imagery of the rest of the Psalm remind all of us that Jesus is watching out for us in every part of our lives. He is there in the good times and in the bad times, and he leads us to himself into eternal life. That is one of the reasons this Psalm is so often used at funerals – it gives us a chance to remember how Jesus shepherded us throughout our lives and continues to do so into death. 

One of the primary ways that our Good Shepherd, Jesus, leads and guides us is by bringing us to the sacraments. A shepherd leads his sheep to food, water, and shelter, and nourishes and heals his sheep when they need medicine of any sort. Jesus works similarly with us. He brings us to life-giving water in Baptism, feeds us with his body, the Eucharist, brings us into the shelter of the life of the Church, and offers us healing through Penance and Anointing. 

The sacraments can be seen in the different imagery used throughout the Psalm, but because today is the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I will focus on the first image used – water. In verses two and three of the Psalm, we pray, “He leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul.” One may interpret this in many ways regarding the various comforts that God gives to his faithful people in this life – the consolations in the soul during prayer, good people he places in our lives to be refreshing streams, good books, good scenes in nature, actual cool springs of water when we find ourselves thirsty, etc. – God refreshes us because of his goodness and even brings us a solace of his presence while we are suffering, or, at the very least, a recognition that we are not alone whether we feel it or not.

One way to interpret these verses that we find in the tradition and which is arguably the best interpretation in terms of its messianic fulfillment, is that the Good Shepherd leads us beside the restoring waters of Baptism. This interpretation is the one used by St. Augustine in his very short commentary on this Psalm. St. Augustine notes, “He has nurtured me beside regenerating water: this means that he nurtured me beside the water of baptism, where those who have lost their soundness and strength are made new” (Expositions of the Psalms, 22.1-2, translated by Maria Boulding). In the sacrament of baptism, our souls are restored to new life and filled with the life of God!

Really, as St. Augustine explains elsewhere, “God could have granted no greater gift to human beings than to cause his Word, through whom he created all things, to be their head, and to fit them to him as his members” (ibid. 85.1). It is the grace of Baptism that causes us to be joined into that body, which is the greatest gift God could give us. To be joined to the body of Christ is to share in his divine life – his relationships with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Before baptism, a human being is a child of God in the sense of being created by him and loved as such. After Baptism, however, a human being is a child of God as one adopted into the Son, the second person of the Trinity. This is a far greater sonship or daughter-ship than before. The Father looks on us and loves us as he does Jesus. That is a great gift. 

We call this grace “filiation” – from the Latin, filius, meaning “son.” We also call this gift, “divinization.” In the sense that we are drawn into the life of the Trinity, we share the divine life of God. We don’t become God himself, but he gives us a share in his divinity by adoption (see 2 Peter 1:4). Today, we celebrate the institution of this great sacrament of new life. We thank Jesus for the gift of this adoption and our ability to call out “Our Father!” Praise be Jesus Christ. Amen!