Sermon on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
La Crosse, Wisconsin
27 June 2025
Epistola: Eph 3, 8-12. 14-19
Evangelium: Jn 19, 31-37
Sermon
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
In the account of the piercing of the side of Jesus immediately after He had died on the Cross, Saint John Apostle and Evangelist makes reference to the words of the Prophet Zechariah:
And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born.[1]
These prophetic words announce the reality of which Saint John, together with the Mother of God and the holy women, was a witness.[2] They announce the reality which we are most blessed to know through our life in the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ: God the Son, having taken our human flesh, gave up His life for us, even to the piercing of His Most Sacred Heart, in order that He might save us from our sins, living for love of us in the Church until the Last Day.
Commenting on the “dogmatic roots” of the devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus “in the deposit of faith,” Blessed Columba Marmion instructs us that the devotion “was contained in germ in the words of St. John: ‘The Word was made Flesh, and dwelt among us… having loved His own… He loved them to the end [Jn 1, 14; 13, 1]’.”[3] Regarding the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, contained in the deposit of faith, Blessed Ildefonso Schuster declared:
What is the meaning of these words: in finem dilexit eos [he loved them to the end]? Love is the great artificer, the gifted artist, whose works are all masterpieces, who never leaves his work unfinished. Jesus then loved us infinitely, we might even dare to say desperately; as his love could have no end or exhaustion in his divine nature, he sought this finis [end] in his human nature, which especially in the Eucharist and on the cross was inflamed and consumed by love.[4]
At the Holy Mass today, we are the witnesses of the truth of the faith which is the inspiration and substance of our devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. In Our Lord’s love for us “to the end,” He, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father, will descend to the altar here to make sacramentally present for us His Sacrifice on Calvary for our happiness already now during our earthly pilgrimage and for the perfection of our happiness, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, in eternal life.
God the Father has sealed a covenant of faithful and enduring love with us by sending His only-begotten Son in our human flesh, in the words of Saint Paul, “to dwell in [our] hearts through faith,”[5] so that we “may be filled with all the fullness of God.”[6] In accord with the great Mystery of Faith, Our Creator Who has no need whatsoever of our love has chosen us as His adopted sons and daughters in His only-begotten Son. The Sacred Heart of Jesus, substantially united to the Word of God, is overwhelmed with love for us. His compassionate love is ever aflame on our behalf. He has chosen to love us, with a human heart, unconditionally, totally and forever.
Out of faithful and enduring love for us, God the Son Himself has come to shepherd us, to rescue us from our sins and to provide for us an earthly home in the Church and our lasting home with Him in the Heavenly Jerusalem. When He had died for us on the Cross, He permitted that His side be pierced by the Roman soldier’s spear. From His pierced Heart, as the Gospel records, “at once there came out blood and water,”[7] the signs of the outpouring of the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit from His glorious Sacred Heart into our hearts. Indeed, the Divine Heart never ceases to beat with immeasurable love for us poor men. Having risen from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father, our Lord never ceases to pour out, in abundance, the grace of the Holy Spirit upon us in the Church, into our hearts, the living members of His Mystical Body,[8] the living branches in Him the Vine.[9] Saint Paul expresses the great truth of our Christian life: “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”[10]
The Sacred Heart of Jesus, the most beautiful sign of God’s love, calls forth from us a response of love in return. That God has loved us so unconditionally makes evident our own sinfulness. Before the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we cannot boast of our own importance that God the Son Incarnate would pour out the very last ounce of His life to save us from sin and death, and to win for us eternal life and communion with Him forever in the Kingdom of Heaven. No, when we “look upon him whom [we] have pierced,”[11] we recognize immediately how unworthy of God’s love we are because of our sins, and we are led to love God in return, repenting of our sins, making daily reparation for them, and striving to place our hearts ever more completely into His Divine Heart. Extolling devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, as the summit of all devotion, Blessed Columba exhorts us:
What a wide perspective this devotion opens out to us! How powerful it is to attract the faithful soul! For it gives us the means of honouring what is the greatest, the highest, the most efficacious in Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word: the love that He bears to the world, the love of which His Heart is the furnace.[12]
When we contemplate the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus, the wound which opened His Sacred Side and pierced His Sacred Heart, we know that the all-merciful love of God for us is not some general and abstract gift. No, it is the most personal and intimate invitation to live in communion with Him always.
Saint John the Evangelist at the conclusion of his account of the piercing of the Divine Side tells us that he, an eyewitness to the events of Our Lord’s Passion and Death, has recounted them “so that [we] also may come to believe.”[13] Believing in the mystery of Divine Love is necessarily living the same mystery, living in Christ, one in heart with His Most Sacred Heart. Our love of Our Lord Jesus, expressed in devotion to His Most Sacred Heart, is not some static state or some sentimental feeling. It is, rather, a relationship with God the Son Incarnate, in which we, with His Virgin Mother, take up with Him the mission given to Him by the Father, so that all men may be saved and our world may be prepared to welcome Him at His Coming on the Last Day. Blessed Columba Marmion reminds us of the dynamism of the union of our hearts with the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus:
If we truly love Christ Jesus, not only shall we rejoice in His glory, and hymn His perfections with every impulse of our soul, not only shall we be saddened at the injuries made to His Heart, and offer Him honourable amends, – but, above all, we shall strive to obey Him in all things, we shall accept readily all the dispositions of His Providence towards us, we shall work to extend His reign in souls, to procure His glory, we shall gladly spend ourselves, we shall go so far, if necessary, as to “be spent,” according to the beautiful words of St. Paul: Libentissime impendam et superimpendar [I will most gladly spend and be spent] [2 Cor 12, 15]! The Apostle is speaking of charity towards our neighbours; applied to our love for Jesus, this formula wonderfully sums up the practice of devotion to His Sacred Heart.[14]
Placing our hearts into the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we are necessarily engaged in His kingly mission, in which to serve is to reign.[15] Christ the King is to reign in our hearts, as He reigned perfectly in the Heart of His Virgin Mother from the moment of her Immaculate Conception.
As she did in an extraordinary manner at Tepeyac in 1531 and continues to do through her miraculous image on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego, Mary Immaculate, the Virgin Mother of God, inspires us and accompanies us in remaining faithful, generous, and pure in our covenant of love with God. Given to us as our Mother by her Divine Son, as He died upon the Cross for our eternal salvation,[16] the ever-Virgin Mary draws us with maternal love to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, under which God the Son took a human heart.[17] She leads us to place our hearts, with her Immaculate Heart, totally into His Sacred Heart. She guides us to trust in God’s never-failing mercy, to trust, as she trusted, that God’s promises to us will be fulfilled.[18]
Anticipating the Golden Jubilee of my ordination to the Holy Priesthood on this coming Sunday, June 29th, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, I give witness to a most beautiful gift of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in our midst: the priestly vocation to be a “fisher of men,”[19] priestly ordination by which a man is conformed to the person of Christ Head and Shepherd of the Father’s flock at every time and in every place, and the mission of bringing the pastoral charity of Christ to the world. It is a gift essentially connected with Christ’s greatest act of love: His Sacrifice on Calvary made sacramentally present in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered on the altars of churches and chapels throughout the world. Through the Rite of Ordination, Christ consecrates a brother to exercise His pastoral charity on behalf of all the faithful. In the words of Saint John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars: “The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus.”[20] The fullest and most perfect exercise of Christ’s pastoral charity by a priest is his daily offering of the Holy Mass for the salvation of the world.
Rejoicing that Christ has called and consecrated me to share in His high priestly ministry for the salvation of souls, the ministry which flows directly from His glorious-pierced Heart, please pray daily that I will continue to cooperate with divine grace for His glory and the salvation of many souls. Let us gratefully pray for all those who have assisted me in hearing Christ’s call, in presenting myself for ordination to the Holy Priesthood, and in carrying out the priestly mission over fifty years: my parents and family, my friends, the priests who have inspired and assisted me, especially the priests charged with my priestly formation and the priests for whom I have been their Bishop, and all who have helped me in any way to respond to Christ’s call: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”[21]
Let us now, through the Eucharistic Sacrifice, place our poor and sinful hearts, one with the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, into the glorious Sacred Heart of Jesus. May the Virgin Mother of God and our compassionate Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe,[22] guide us and protect us always, drawing us unceasingly to make our hearts, like her Heart, one with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. Thus, “when [we] look on him whom [we] have pierced,”[23] may we grow in an ever more ardent love of Our Lord and an ever purer and more selfless service of Him and of our neighbor for whom His Heart was inflamed and consumed on the Cross and now in the Eucharistic sacrifice.[24]
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] Zech 12, 10. Cf. Jn 19, 37.
[2] Cf. Jn 19, 34-35.
[3] “… racines dogmatiques dans le dépôt de la foi… était contenue en germe dans la parole de S. Jean : « Le Verbe s’est fait chair et il a habité parmi nous… Il a porté à ses limites l’amour qu’il avait pour les siens [Joan. I, 14 ; XIII, 1] ».” Columba Marmion, Le Christ dans Ses Mystères. Conférences Spirituelles Liturgiques, 8ème éd. (Namur, Belgique: Abbaye de Maredsous, 1922), p. 444. [Hereafter : Marmion]. English translation: Columba Marmion, Christ in His Mysteries, tr. Mother M. St. Thomas of Tyburn Convent, 9th ed. (Stamullen, County Meath, Ireland: The Cenacle Press at Silverstream Priory, 2022), p. 359. [Hereafter: MarmionEng].
[4] “Che significa: « in finem dilexit eos » ? L’amore è il grande artefice, l’artefice geniale, il quale non fa che dei capolavori, e non lascia mai l’opera incompiuta. Gesù perciò ci amò infinitamente ; direi quasi, perdutamente ; il suo amore che non poteva sacrificarsi nella natura divina, ricercò questa fine o immolazione nella natura umana, che massime nell’Eucaristia e sulla Croce avvampò e si strusse d’amore.” A. I. Schuster, Liber Sacramentorum. Note Storiche e Liturgiche sul Messale Romano, Vol. V (Torino-Roma: Casa Editrice Marietti, 1930), p. 97. English translation: Ildefonso Schuster, The Sacramentary (Liber Sacramentorum): Historical & Liturgical Notes on the Roman Missal, Vol. IV (Parts 7 and 8), tr. Arthur Levelis-Marke (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1929), p. 207.
[5] Eph 3, 17.
[6] Eph 3, 19.
[7] Jn 19, 34.
[8] Cf. 1 Cor 12, 12. 27.
[9] Cf. Jn 15, 5.
[10] Rom 5, 5.
[11] Jn 19, 37. Cf. Zech 12, 10.
[12] “Quelles larges perspectives nous ouvre cette dévotion ! Comme elle est de nature à attirer l’âme fidèle ! Car elle lui donne le moyen d’honorer ce qu’il y a de plus grand, de plus élevé, de plus efficace dans le Christ Jésus, Verbe incarné : l’amour qu’il porte au monde et dont son cœur est la fournaise.” Marmion, p. 448. English translation: MarmionEng, p. 362.
[13] Jn 19, 35.
[14] “Si nous aimons véritablement le Christ Jésus, non seulement nous nous réjouirons de sa gloire, nous chanterons ses perfection de tout l’élan de notre âme, nous nous attristerons des injures qui sont faites à son cœur et lui en offrirons des amendes honorables, – mais surtout nous nous efforcerons de lui obéir en toutes choses, nous accepterons avec empressement toutes les dispositions de sa Providence à notre égard, nous nous emploierons à étendre son règne dans les âmes, à procurer sa gloire, « nous nous dépenserons avec joie, nous irons, s’il le faut, jusqu’à nous épuiser », selon la belle parole de S. Paul : Libentissime impendam et superimpendar [II Cor. XII, 15] ! L’apôtre l’a dit de la charité envers le prochain ; appliquée à notre amour pour Jésus, cette formule résume à merveille la pratique de la dévotion à son Cœur sacré.” Marmion, pp. 452-453. English translation: MarmionEng, p. 365.
[15] Cf. Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Litterae encyclicae Redemptor Hominis, “Pontificali eius Ministerio ineunte,” 4 Martii 1979, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 71 (1979) 316, n. 21.
[16] Cf. Jn 19, 26-27.
[17] Cf. “Angelus Domini: La giustizia si rivela come amore infinito,” 14 luglio 1985, Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, Vol. VIII, 2 (1985) (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1985), p. 125.
[18] Cf. Lk 1:45.
[19] Cf. Mt 4, 19; Mk 1, 17; Lk 5, 10.
[20] “Le sacerdoce, c’est l’amour du Cœur de Jésus.” A. Monnin, Esprit du Curé d’Ars, Saint J.-B.-M. Vianney dans ses Catéchismes, ses Homélies et sa Conversation (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 2007), p. 90. English translation: St. John Vianney Curé of Ars, The Spirit of the Curé of Ars (Coppell, TX: Ivory Falls Books, 2018) p. 54.
[21] Mt 4, 19.
[22] Cf. “Apéndice A, El Nican Mopohua,” Carl A. Anderson y Eduardo Chávez, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Madre de la civilización del amor, tr. Gerardo Hernández Clark (México DF: Random House Mondadori, 2010), p. 214, n. 29. English translation: Carl A. Anderson and Eduardo Chávez, Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love (New York: Doubleday, 2009), p. 174, no. 29.
[23] Zech 12, 10.
[24] Cf. note no. 4.