Just about every holiday we have about love is about how much you love someone else. On Valentine's Day, Mother's/Father's Day, Sweetheart's Day, Sadie Hawkins Day you are supposed to go out and get a card or some chocolates or flowers or something to show someone how much you love them.
The complete opposite of this is the Feast of the Sacred Heart, which we celebrate today. It is all about recognizing how loved we are by the very source of love, Jesus' heart which is on fire for us. It is his ardent desire that we be united to Him and that we might be one in Him. That is the same love that He and the Father have, the Father and the Son being one.
We kids are not so great. Like all children we are willful and often disobedient. When there is a rift between some people and their parents as there is between us and the Father (original sin), we give it a name like defiance syndrome or something and prescribed all manner of things to repair the gap. Jesus is doing much the same.
There is a rift between us children and our Father. Jesus' mission might be summed up with the idea that he wishes to make us one; one with each other, one with Him, and one with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. No place is this most evident than at the Mass. We go through the whole remembrance of His great love for us (no greater love is there than this, that you lay down your life for your brother) and are witnesses to His great love and unity with His Father when He is lifted up to His Father in that single event that comes to us through the ages when the Blessed Sacrament is lifted up, the priest intones, "Through Him, and with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is Yours Almighty Father, for ever and ever."
The congregation breaks out (hopefully) in the great three fold, "AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!" Right there, right in that moment, we are not only celebrating that Jesus and His Father are one in the love of the Holy Spirit, but that in that same Spirit, we are too are one in Christ and through Christ then, are once again one with our Father. What else can we do? We, humble creatures, dare to cry out to our Creator, not calling Him overlord, or great dictator, or even master, but in this most intimate of moments we say, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hollowed be Thy Name." We ask Him to heal us and make us holy; to forever heal the rift between us. And then we ask that He give us the spiritual nourishment that we need to accomplish this. "Give us THIS DAY our daily bread . . . ". What is the next thing that happens? We are fed with the Body and Blood of His most beloved Son. The unity is complete. (GIRM 81)
What left is there? What more can be said or done? How can you top that? You can't. So we say thank you (prayer after communion) make a few announcements, and then tell people to, "Go, the Mass is ended!"
Thanks be to God!
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