Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart : Message from Sr Joyce Meyers PBVM

Hello everyone, I am glad to be with you even at a distance and share a few reflections on Jesus as the Sacred Heart of God on Friday.  It is a perfect week to celebrate our evolving future. I know Nano is present because she chose this image of Jesus as the name her new community. It was her desire that her sisters including all of us would all be followers of Jesus, as human, loving, passionate and joyful. And even though our name got changed it was said we would always carry this identity in our hearts and minds. Of course we know too that Mary at her presentation joyfully danced her zeal to become a follower of the heart of God and as Jesus’ mother helped shape his heart in this zeal for God’s love.

At the time of name change the sisters were given rings to remind them of this vocation of passionate love of God and of all those kept poor. 

So, I decided to reflect on the vocation that our ring calls us to. For our Presentation people you may have seen that our rings are engraved with the cross, and erupting from that cross is what we call an effulgence, a brilliant radiance, a flood of light energy, joy and love. Amazing. It may seem a contradiction.  But contrary to what we often hear, God did not send his son to suffer and die for us.  God sent his son, Jesus to preach God’s love and to be a human witness that when life brings suffering and death, God’s passionate love for  life will always have the last word.  

Jesus spent his entire life enduring all kinds of human suffering starting with traveling being bounced around on the donkey and then born in the cold, being a refugee, enduring temptations, living an itinerant life, being ridiculed, falsely accused and libeled.  Through all this he endured with a spirit of zeal, and joy.   How was this possible? Because he experienced in his personal human relationship with God a passionate joyful love that kept him going and fired his zeal to have others experience this same love. It is our relationship with God that gives us our zeal for this mission. “Take my yoke upon you and Learn from me”.

For three years he tried to help people understand and be open to this passionate love God had for them and all of creation, but People resisted -It seemed too good to be true. It wasn’t practical. What about the law? Isn’t Getting control, having power over enemies the way to peace and freedom.  Jesus wept over his seeming failure. Even his disciples and apostles didn’t quite get it.

He also knew deep down that this resistance was leading him to his death, just as it had his cousin, John. As he prayed It became clear that he had to accept the consequences of his mission. He feared the suffering, humiliation, torture and abuse he would probably endure, even begged God that it might not happen. But in the end he willingly surrendered, hoping and trusting that God’s life-giving love that he had been preaching would have the last word. He even died feeling abandoned, not knowing that his death would be a way that God’s unimaginable love would be manifested and that we would all participate in it.

Each of us sitting here is called to witness to this same truth - that all evil, darkness or suffering we might endure can and will be overcome by love. God’s love refuses to be chained or destroyed by anything.  It always finds a way through or around resistance..

Nano believed this and when dying asked  two things of her sisters: “love one another as you have been doing” and spend yourselves for the poor. These are the only things that really matter.  She was quoting from the first rules of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart: “walk in love, as Christ loves us, preserving a bond of love above all things, fervently loving one another”. (a quote from the first rules the earliest Sisters of the Sacred Heart).

Our Chapter decided that as we move into a new phase of our life as a congregation, four women seated among us would lead us in this vocation of love, (at least for a couple of years) reminding us that God’s loving, joyful power will continue to bring new life and flourishing. The power of our  love for one another cannot be thwarted or stopped no matter what the future brings.  

Our Presentation Movement will also flourish so that this mission we with share with the Sacred Heart to spread the truth of God’s love with zeal, compassion and justice will grow stronger and stronger by each person who takes it up especially by attending to those kept poor among us. 

I have no doubt that what I have shared is nothing new and that resonates deeply within your own hearts because you have lived it so many years. May it always be. Amen.