THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS
Solemnity
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is devotion to Jesus Christ Himself, but in the particular ways of meditating on his interior life and on His threefold love — His divine love, His burning love that fed His human will, and His sensible love that affects His interior life.
Entrance Antiphon: Ps 32: 11, 19
The designs of his Heart are from age to age, to rescue their souls from death, and to keep them alive in famine.
Collect
Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who glory in the Heart of your beloved Son and recall the wonders of his love for us, may be made worthy to receive an overflowing measure of grace from that fount of heavenly gifts. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
First reading: Deuteronomy 7: 6-11
Moses said to the people: “You are a people consecrated to the Lord your God; it is you that the Lord our God has chosen to be his very own people out of all the peoples on the earth. If the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, it was not because you outnumbered other peoples: you were the least of all peoples. It was for love of you and to keep the oath he swore to your fathers that the Lord brought you out with his mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know then that the Lord your God is God indeed, the faithful God who is true to his covenant and his graciousness for a thousand generations towards those who love him and keep his commandments, but who punishes in their own persons those that hate him. He is not slow to destroy the man who hates him; he makes him work out his punishment in person. You are therefore to keep and observe the commandments and statutes and ordinances that I lay down for you today.”
Psalm 102 (103): 1-4, 6-8, 10
R/ The love of the Lord is everlasting upon those who hold him in fear.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord all my being, bless his holy name. My soul, give thanks to the Lord and never forget all his blessings.
It is he who forgives all your guilt, who heals every one of your ills, who redeems your life from the grave, who crowns you with love and compassion,
The Lord does deeds of justice, gives judgement for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses and his deeds to Israel’s sons.
The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy. He does not treat us according to our sins nor repay us according to our faults.
Second reading: 1 John 4: 7-16
My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love. God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another. No one has ever seen God; but as long as we love one another God will live in us and his love will be complete in us. We can know that we are living in him and he is living in us because he lets us share his Spirit. We ourselves saw and we testify that the Father sent his Son as saviour of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him, and he in God. We ourselves have known and put our faith in God’s love towards ourselves. God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him.
Gospel Acclamation: Mt 11: 29
Alleluia, alleluia! Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.
Alleluia!
Gospel: Matthew 11: 25-30
Jesus exclaimed, “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.”
Prayer over the Offerings
Look, O Lord, we pray, on the surpassing charity in the Heart of your beloved Son, that what we offer may be a gift acceptable to you and an expiation of our offences. Through Christ our Lord.
Communion Antiphon: Cf. Jn 7: 37-38
Thus says the Lord: Let whoever is thirsty come to me and drink. Streams of living water will flow from within the one who believes in me.
Prayer after Communion
May this sacrament of charity, O Lord, make us fervent with the fire of holy love, so that, drawn always to your Son, we may learn to see him in our neighbour. Through Christ our Lord.
Meditation The feast of the Sacred Heart opens our hearts to the infinite love of God, revealed in Jesus Christ. From him is born the hope that this love will penetrate the hearts of all humans to build a world of peace, justice and freedom. Only “hearts of flesh”, filled with love, can unify and make happy individuals and groups. A new heart, open to the heart of Jesus, is what John Paul II recommended on the occasion of this same feast: “It is from the Heart of Christ that the heart of man learns to know the true and unique meaning of his life and his destiny. It is from the Heart of Christ that the human heart receives the capacity to love. With the heart of Jesus, everything appears as a possibility of connection, of relationship. This is the heart of a child. It is free, it breathes, and nothing locks it up. It can always return to the One who entrusted it with everything. It is to this attitude that he invites us by proposing that we come to him. ‘Come to me’”