Evening Prayer I - Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Evening Prayer I
Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Church of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe
La Crosse, Wisconsin
26 June 2025
Eph 5, 25-27
Homily
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
As we offer the First Vespers of the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, our holy Mother Church invites us to reflect upon the spousal nature of the love of God for us, as it is most perfectly represented in the glorious-pierced Heart of Jesus. The love of Jesus for the Church is like the love of a bridegroom for his bride: pure, faithful, and enduring. In exhorting the faithful regarding the right ordering of the Christian household, of the love of husband and wife by which the home is generated, Saint Paul proposes the model of the love of Christ, the Bridegroom, for His bride, the Church. Dom Prosper Guéranger, in his commentary on the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, writes:
Jesus saves us, because the Church has won His Heart; and that human Heart could not be won, without the Divinity also being moved to mercy. And here we have the doctrine of devotion to the sacred Heart of Jesus, as far as regards the principle upon which it rests. In this its primary and essential notion, the devotion is as old as the Church herself, for it rests on this truth, which has been recognized in every age: that Christ is the Spouse, and the Church is His bride.[1]
By the Mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation, God the Son took our human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He took a human heart under her Immaculate Heart.[2]
God the Son, in His immeasurable and unceasing love, became man to save man from sin and its fruit, eternal death. From the moment of the Incarnation, His Most Sacred Heart has never ceased to beat with Divine Love for men, even as it continues to do so today, and, according to His promise, will do so until the consummation of His love for us on the Last Day.
His love attained its fullest and most perfect expression in His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. When He had died for our sins, He willed that His Side should be opened by the spear of the Roman soldier Longinus. He desired that His Heart be opened, and that blood and water should flow forth abundantly from His pierced Heart as the most eloquent sign of His abiding loving presence with us in the Church, especially in the Sacraments, pouring forth the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit from His glorious-pierced Heart into our hearts. God the Son is one with us, His Divine Person has a heart like ours. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves, sharing with us the most intimate, pure, and selfless love of His Most Sacred Heart. His love for us is a participation in the Divine Love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as is the love of man and woman in Holy Matrimony with its incomparable fruit: the family.
Referring to the work of love of the Holy Spirit in Creation and in the Redemptive Incarnation, Dom Guéranger refers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the Holy Spirit’s “masterpiece.”[3] He comments:
[I]t is He [the Holy Spirit] who inclines the holy Trinity to those works outside Itself, which produce creatures; and then, having given them being, and to some life, He (the holy Spirit) pours out upon them all the effusion of their Creator’s love for them. And so it is with the love which the Man-God has for God and Man: its direct and, so to say, material expression is the throbbing it produces upon His sacred Heart; and again, it is by that Heart, that, like the Water and Blood which came from His wounded Side, He pours out upon the world a stream of redemption and grace, which is to be followed by the still richer one in glory.[4]
In the words of Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans, “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”[5]
We have come to life in Christ through Baptism. The sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit, given to us in Baptism, has been strengthened and increased in us by Confirmation. It is sustained in us by the Heavenly Bread of the Body of Christ in Holy Communion, which Christ Himself provides to us through His ordained priests who act in His Person as Head and Shepherd of the flock at every time and in every place.
Celebrating the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, as we contemplate “the wonders of his love for us,” we ask that we “may be made worthy to receive an overflowing measure of grace from that fount of heavenly gifts”[6]: His Most Sacred Heart. We thank God for the sanctifying or habitual grace by which we are alive in Christ and also for the many actual graces by which Our Lord draws us to love Him ever more in return for His love. By so many actual graces, He assists us to cooperate more faithfully and fully with sanctifying grace, to grow in His likeness to which we have been sacramentally conformed.
Thanking God for fifty years of priestly life and ministry, I am deeply conscious of what Saint John Mary Vianney expressed so well: “The priesthood is the love of the Heart of Jesus.”[7] Among the heavenly gifts with which Our Lord has blessed His Mystical Body, the Church, is the Holy Priesthood by which He sacramentally conforms certain men to His Person as the Head and Shepherd of the flock at every time and in every place. It is the Sacrament of His Pastoral Charity. Through the Holy Priesthood, Christ personally cares for the souls for whom His Heart beats unceasingly and immeasurably. Completing fifty years of priestly life and ministry, I continue to be in wonder at the inexhaustible richness of grace conferred upon me through the laying-on of hands and prayer of consecration by Pope Saint Paul VI, a richness which has only grown as it has been expended in the care of souls. It has been and is all the work of Christ working through a little brother with all his limitations and faults.
I am also deeply conscious of the many actual graces which have come to me from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, “that fount of heavenly gifts,” for the response to the call of Christ to become a fisher of men,[8] in the reception of priestly ordination, and in the exercise of the priestly mission. In a particular way, I am deeply conscious of the unfailing help of the Virgin Mother of God over these many years. Given to us as our Mother by her Divine Son, as He died upon the Cross for our eternal salvation,[9] the ever-Virgin Mary draws us with maternal love to her Immaculate Heart. She leads us to place our hearts, one with her Immaculate Heart, totally into the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, God the Son and her Son. With maternal care, she draws our hearts to her glorious Immaculate Heart and takes them to Him, to His Most Sacred Heart, instructing us: “Do whatever he tells you.”[10] 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.[11] It pleases me that our prayer tonight is offered in this holy place of Our Lord and His Virgin Mother, Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Reflecting over my thirteen years in the seminary and fifty years of priestly ministry, I have been thanking God, too, for the many helps which I have received from fellow seminarians, and brother priests and Bishops. For that reason, I wanted to have this privileged time with you, my brothers, as I celebrate the completion of fifty years of priesthood on this coming Sunday, June 29th, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, to thank God for the Holy Priesthood which we share by Christ’s call and His anointing, and for the many ways in which we have helped one another to carry out the mission of pastoral charity, confided into our hands through priestly ordination. We are all sons of the Blessed Virgin Mary and brothers in Christ the Eternal High Priest and will remain always so, thanks be to God.
I have wanted also to pray with you for those whom Christ is calling now to be fishers of men and to ask for the grace to help them to respond to Christ’s call with a pure and undivided heart, one with His priestly Heart. May our time in prayer and fraternity this afternoon and evening confirm us as special instruments of grace for those whom Our Lord is calling now to the Holy Priesthood but who have not yet entered the seminary and for our seminarians who are responding to Our Lord’s call.
May our hearts, one with the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the glorious-pierced Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ the Eternal High Priest, be filled with faithful, generous, and pure love of the Church. May they be tireless in the care of souls, in pastoral charity, that, through our priestly life and ministry, Christ may “present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she [may] be holy and without blemish.”[12]
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE
[1] “Jésus nous sauve, parce que l’Église a ravi son Cœur, et que ce Cœur humain ne peut être ému et dompté, sans que la divinité elle-même soit fléchie. Telle est, quant au principe sur lequel elle s’appuie, la dévotion au Sacré-Cœur ; elle est, dans cette notion première et principale, aussi ancienne que l’Église, puisqu’elle repose sur cette vérité, reconnue de tout temps, que le Seigneur est l’Époux et l’Église l’Épouse.” Prosper Guéranger, L’Année liturgique, Le temps après la Pentecôte, Tome I, 11ème éd. (Paris : Librairie Religieuse H. Oudin, 1901), p. 493. [Hereafter: Guéranger]. English translation: Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, Time after Pentecost, Book I, tr. Laurence Shepherd (Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2000), p. 422. [Hereafter: GuérangerEng]
[2] 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.
[3] “… le chef-d’œuvre.” Guéranger, p. 488. English translation: GuérangerEng, p. 417.
[4] “… [M]oteur sublime inclinant au dehors la Trinité bienheureuse, c’est par lui que s’épanche à flots sur les créateurs avec l’être et la vie cet amour éternel. Ainsi l’amour de l’Homme-Dieu trouve-t-il dans les battements du Cœur sacré son expression directe et sensible ; ainsi encore verse-t-il par lui sur monde, avec l’eau et le sang sortis du côté du Sauveur, la rédemption et la grâce, avant-goût et gage assuré de la gloire future.” Guéranger, pp. 488-489. English translation: GuérangerEng, pp. 417-418.
[5] Rom 5, 5.
[6] “Collect, The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Solemnity.” The Roman Missal, Renewed by Decree of the Most Holy Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, Third Typical Edition (New Jersey: Catholic Book Publishing Corp., 2011), p. 356.
[7] “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.
[8] Cf. Mt 4, 19; Mk 2, 7.
[9] Cf. Jn 19, 26-27.
[10] Jn 2, 5.
[11] Cf. Lk 1, 45.
[12] Eph 5, 27.