His Heart is waiting for you
Sacred Heart of Jesus
Friends in Christ, at the very beginning of the 20th century, mankind seemed to be on the way to ‘progress.’ Science and reason would be the hope of everything, and religion – especially the Catholic religion – was seen as outdated and irrelevant – especially by the elites and intellectuals. Darwin had shown us our origins, and man was finally on the march to glory, using knowledge and science – without religion.
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Just before that 20th century started, in May of 1899, Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Annum Sacrum. He asked the bishops to consecrate the world to the Sacred Heart of Jesus – ‘this image of the infinite love of Jesus.’ It was providential that he asked for this consecration, because the 20th century would begin not with man-made success, but with World War I, then the Great Depression, then the horrors of World War II – deaths of thousands in trenches by mustard gas; Christian killing Christian, man against man; racial hatred, Gulags, Auschwitz – bombings, nuclear bombs, torture, Gestapo, KGB, the Cold War and the most Catholic martyrs of any century of history.
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But the Modern Era – having been seen to be a failure at creating human happiness – has led now to the Post-Modern Era, in which people no longer believe in anything, and without God, young people commit suicide, and Europe and the US have near-zero birth rates; no babies, no future – there is an angst on this earth.
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Pope Leo had prepared the world for what was coming; as if to say, ‘On the path you are heading, what you will desperately need is Jesus. The loving heart of this Savior, who, like a father welcoming his child home who has made a mess of his life – this Savior wishes to draw each person back to his heart.
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As if to re-emphasize, to re-iterate this, at the end of the 20th century, and as we head down the fearful path of nihilism – John Paul II pointed the way again for us. As if to say, ‘world, what you are going to need very much, is the Divine Mercy of that Heart of Christ. When you find yourself wrecked from your misguided ideas and your moral experiments, run to the merciful heart of Jesus who is waiting; his love is waiting for you.
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People may not have noticed, but Pope Benedict himself, spoke very often, and emphasized, that we need to have a close friendship with Jesus; so he wrote the book, Jesus of Nazareth – about the humanity of Christ, who came to die for you and for me. Central to Benedict’s papacy, was the need for a personal love for Jesus.
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And these days, our Holy Father – what is he emphasizing for a lost and confused world? The mercy of Christ.
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From Leo XIII to today, Mother Church has recognized that the path that we are on is so destructive and poisonous and noxious, that we have only one recourse: to turn to this loving Heart of Jesus. When Jesus saw the crowds turning away, he asked Peter, ‘What about you?’ And Peter gave the answer for each of us: ‘Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’
