June 12, 2026
Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Lectionary: 170
Reading 1
Moses said to the people:
"You are a people sacred to the LORD, your God;
he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth
to be a people peculiarly his own.
It was not because you are the largest of all nations
that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you,
for you are really the smallest of all nations.
It was because the LORD loved you
and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn your fathers,
that he brought you out with his strong hand
from the place of slavery,
and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed,
the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant
down to the thousandth generation
toward those who love him and keep his commandments,
but who repays with destruction a person who hates him;
he does not dally with such a one,
but makes them personally pay for it.
You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments,
the statutes and the decrees that I enjoin on you today."
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
103:1-2, 3-4, 6-7, 8, 10
R. (cf. 17) The Lord's kindness is everlasting to
those who fear him.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
all my being, bless his holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul;
and forget not all his benefits.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
He pardons all your iniquities,
heals all your ills.
He redeems your life from destruction,
crowns you with kindness and compassion.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
Merciful and gracious is the LORD,
slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
Not according to our sins does he deal with us,
nor does he requite us according to our crimes.
R. The Lord's kindness is everlasting to those who fear him.
Reading 2
Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also must love one another.
No one has ever seen God.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us,
and his love is brought to perfection in us.
This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us,
that he has given us of his Spirit.
Moreover, we have seen and testify
that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.
Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God remains in him and he in God.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.
God is love, and whoever remains in love
remains in God and God in him.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Take my yoke upon you, says the Lord;
and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
At that time Jesus exclaimed:
"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/061226.cfm
The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Commentary on
Deuteronomy 7:6-11; 1 John 4:7-16; Matthew 11:25-30
There exists a hillside in Los Altos, California where
retired priests and brothers from the Jesuit order go to reside when they have
reached the age of retirement. They rest in this building that bears the name
“Sacred Heart Jesuit Center”. The name is appropriate. Its residents have made
choices about their path in life—decisions that involved passion or
suffering—and the commitment to see it through. As they rest there and
contemplate their life experiences, the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
accompanies them. The readings for today’s feast offer an opportunity to
reconsider what the ancients thought about when using images like the heart and
emotions like love. For the seat of emotions and the seat of thought in the
human person from biblical times differ slightly from modern ways of thinking
about these things.
Love According to the Book of Deuteronomy
In today’s passage from Deuteronomy, Moses speaks as God’s mouthpiece to remind
the people that they are set apart from the other nations. It is not that the
Hebrew people were ‘special’, but rather the point made in this section is that
they are chosen as an instrument and for a purpose.
It was not because you were more numerous than any other
people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest
of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath.
The first part of these verses uses the phrase “set his
heart” to capture the sense of the line. But in the original Hebrew, the word
for heart was never used; instead the author used a verb that suggests choice,
desire, and thought. In the next verse, the actual word ‘love’ was selected,
which also conveys a decision and thought process suggesting to ‘join
together’—to be attached or devoted to someone else. It is the action and process
of choosing by the Lord that is emphasized. In the Hebrew language, words like
love involve a committed decision, and not a romantic emotion. The ‘heart’, as
a metaphorical space in human feelings and thinking, is the seat of thought and
decisions, whereas the ‘bowels’ are the place or seat of emotions. Where modern
westernized people point to the mind for thinking, the ancient Hebrews pointed
to the heart.
Love According to the New Testament
‘Love’ is used frequently in New Testament literature. The Greek word agape describes
a selfless affection unique to the Gospels and Letters of the New Testament. In
today’s Second Reading, we discover a hymn to agape-love:
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from
God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love
does not know God, for God is love.
When the author uses agape to describe a
unique aspect of love’s many faces, it means to love someone more than one’s
own life. This is why we attribute agape-type love to Jesus. We know
that Jesus’ life was given away freely for the world since he loved us more
than holding on to his own life. The image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
captures this reality. Can the ‘heart’ or love of Christ ever be exhausted? In
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we find a helpful reminder to answer this
question. Paul was thinking out loud when he wrote about his ministry to them:
I will most gladly spend and be spent for you. If I love
you more, am I to be loved less? (2 Cor 12:15)
The answer is no; one cannot exhaust one’s love for another
when the action is rooted in Christ. That is why we hold the image of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus so dearly within the iconography of the Church. Christ’s
love is never a diminishment, but rather something that expands like the image
of the mustard seed for faith; it keeps growing slowly and deliberately.
Love According to Matthew
Curiously, ministry, and especially the weight of obligations to one another,
can seem exhaustive to many followers of various faith traditions. This is a
reality from which today’s Gospel does not shy away:
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Jesus allows us to enter into his intimate prayer between
himself and the Father. In the verses above, Jesus personifies the voice of
divine Wisdom itself, a characteristic from the Old Testament. In our first
testament, from the Hebrew Scriptures, the law could be seen or described as a
‘yoke’. It was both necessary for life and flourishing, but also a burden. Only
a fool would neglect the work and labor required to take up the yoke of the Law
of Moses. In today’s verses, Matthew does not speak about love as in the First
and Second readings. Instead, the Evangelist shares an image of the heart of
God as one who shares the load with us. In Matthew, Jesus is called
‘God-with-us’, which we sing in Christmas carols calling upon Emanuel. But
Jesus shows that love in deeds, rather than words. He walks with us and in the
obligations that we owe to God and to our neighbor. This is a yoke made
bearable because we share in the life of Christ.
All of this is tied to the mystery of today’s solemnity for
the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s like the fathers and brothers who rest at
the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Altos. They have labored and been
burdened through a life of service. Held in the heart of Christ, may they at
last discover true rest in their souls—souls now at peace at the end of their
earthly abode.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/the-most-sacred-heart-of-jesus/
Friday,
June 12, 2026
Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
Opening prayer
Holy God,
we often turn our hearts into
houses of pride and greed rather than into homes of love and goodness where You
can feel at home.
Destroy the temple of sin in us, drive out
all evil from our hearts and make us living stones of a community in which can
live and reign Your Son Jesus Christ, our living Lord for ever and ever.
Gospel Reading - Matthew 11: 25-30
At that time 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 little 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 labor and are
overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder My yoke and learn from Me, for
I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, My
yoke is easy and My burden light.'
Reflection
Today we celebrate the feast of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. In the Gospel we will listen to the invitation of Jesus:
“Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart”. The Gospel shows the
tenderness with which Jesus welcomes, accepts the little ones. He wanted the
poor to find rest and peace in Him.
The context of chapters 11 and 12 of Matthew.
In this context is stressed and made evident the fact that the poor are the
only ones to understand and to accept the wisdom of the Kingdom. Many people
did not understand Jesus’ preference for the poor and the excluded.
•
a) John the Baptist, who looked at Jesus with
the eyes of the past, had doubts (Mt 11: 1-15)
•
b) The people, who looked at Jesus with a
purpose of their own interests, were not able to understand him (Mt 11: 16-19).
•
c) The great cities around the lake, which
listened to Jesus’ preaching and saw the miracles, did not want to open
themselves to His message (Mt 11: 20-24).
•
d) The wise and the Doctors, who judged
everything according to their own science, were not able to understand Jesus’
preaching (Mt
11: 25).
•
e) Not even his relatives understood Him (Mt 12:
46-50).
•
f) Only the little ones understood Him and
accepted the Good News of the Kingdom (Mt 11: 25-30).
•
g) The others want sacrifice, but Jesus wants
mercy (Mt 12: 1-8).
•
h) The reaction against Jesus impels the
Pharisees to want to kill Him (Mt 12: 9-14).
•
i) They said that Jesus was Beelzebul (Mt 12:
22-32).
•
j) But Jesus did not draw back. He continues to
assume the mission of Servant, as described in the prophecies (Mt 12: 15-21).
This is why He was persecuted and condemned to death.
•
Matthew 11: 25-26: Only the little ones
understand and accept the Good News of the Kingdom. Jesus addresses a prayer to
the Father: “I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these
things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to little children.
Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased You to do!” The wise, the doctors of
that time, had created a series of laws which they imposed upon the people in
the name of God. They thought that God demanded this observance from the
people. But the Law of love, brought by Jesus, said the contrary. What is
important is not what we do for God, but rather what God, in His great love,
does for us! People understood Jesus’ words and were filled with joy. The wise
thought that Jesus was not right. They could not understand this teaching which
modified the relationship of the people of God.
•
Matthew 11: 27: The origin of the New Law: The
Son knows the Father. Jesus, the Son, knows the Father. He knows what the
Father wanted when, centuries before, He gave the Law to Moses. What the Father
wants to tell us He handed to Jesus, and Jesus revealed it to the little ones,
because they opened themselves to His message. Today, also, Jesus continues to
teach many things to the poor and to the little ones. The wise and the
intelligent do well if they become pupils of the little ones!
•
Matthew 11: 28-30: “Come to me all you who labor
and are overburdened, and I will give you rest”. Jesus invites all those who
are tired to find rest in Him. These are the people who are tired under the weight
of the impositions and the observances which the law of purity demanded. And He
says, “Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart”. Many times this
sentence has been manipulated to ask people to submit themselves, to be
passive. What Jesus wants to say is the contrary. He asks people to leave aside
the professors of religion of that time, to rest and to begin to learn from
Him, from Jesus, who is “gentle and humble of heart”. Jesus does not do like
the Scribes take pride in their own science, but He is like the people who live
humiliated and exploited. Jesus, the new teacher, knows from experience what
happens in the heart of the people and how much the people suffer.
•
The invitation of divine wisdom to all those who
seek it. Jesus invites all those who are oppressed under the weight of the
observance of the law to find rest in Him, because He is gentle and humble of
heart, capable of relieving and consoling the people who suffer, who feel tired
and depressed (Mt 11: 25-30). In this invitation resound the beautiful words of
Isaiah who consoled the people who lived in exile (Isa 55: 1-3). This
invitation is bound to divine wisdom, which invites people to the encounter
with her (Wis 24: 19), saying, “her ways are filled with delight; her paths all
lead to contentment” (Prov 3:17). And He adds: “Wisdom brings up her own
children and cares for those who seek her. Whoever loves her, loves life, those
who seek her early will be filled with joy” (Sir 4: 11-12). This invitation
reveals a very important characteristic of the feminine face of God: tenderness
and acceptance which consoles, which gives life to persons and leads them to
feel well. Jesus is defense, the protection and the maternal womb which the
Father offers to people who are tired (cfr. Isa 66: 10-13).
Personal Questions
•
What produces tension in you and what gives you
peace? For you, to live in community, is it a source of tension or of peace?
•
How can Jesus’ words help our community to be a
place of rest for our life?
Concluding Prayer
Yahweh is tenderness and pity, slow to anger and rich in
faithful love;
His indignation does not last for ever, nor His resentment
remain for all time. (Ps 103: 8-9)
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