Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and 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.’

On my parents’ wedding day, a close family friend gave them a large framed print of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It has hung in our family home for more than sixty years. Since infancy, that image has simply been part of the furniture, so familiar that I never stopped to ask what it meant.

Only now am I beginning to see how women of the Church, including Julian of Norwich, Faustina Kowalska, and Margaret Mary Alacoque, quietly challenged a legalistic image of God that set Jesus and the Father apart. Today’s Gospel shows us that the Son reveals the Father. In Dilexit Nos, (He loved Us) Pope Francis writes that when we encounter the burning, wounded heart of Jesus, we are brought into the very depths of the Father himself. (DN 1, 77, 84, 90) Jesus’ heart does not shield the Father from us, but rather reveals the Father. To rest in the “gentle and humble” heart of the Son is to rest in God the Father. And it is the beauty of this heart that draws us, awakening the kind of childlike trust by which we come to God.

I invite you simply to take a moment to rest in God and know, in the words of Saint Margaret Mary, “the ineffable wonders of his pure love and to what extremes it had led him to love mankind” (Dilexit Nos, 120). Bask in this divine Love.