HOLY SPIRIT
ORATORY FOR PERPETUAL EUCHARISTIC ADORATION
12th ANNIVERSARY – OCTOBER 21, 2010 - IHM CHURCH -
LANSING, MI
On
Meeting Jesus through Eucharistic Adoration
Talk by Father
Jeff
Thank you very much for
that gracious introduction and welcome from all of you.
I’m so grateful to be here.
Let’s have St. Paul bring
us back. Here’s that reading again from the Mass and
Ephesians. Brothers and sisters, I kneel before the
Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is
named; that He may grant you, in accord with the riches
of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His
spirit in the inner-self and that Christ may dwell in
your hearts through faith so that you, rooted and
grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend, with
all the holy ones, what is the breadth and length and
height and depth and to know the love of Christ that
surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all
the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to
accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine by
the power at work within us, to Him be glory in the
church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever
and ever. Amen.
It’s as if St. Paul were
writing to you about adoring Him. I’ve been looking
forward to this evening especially because we get to
reflect together on prayer, on adoring our Lord in the
Eucharist. I find that often I am encouraging people to
come here and adore Him -- spend time with Him in
prayer. But you all are already doing it, at least most
of you, almost everyone, comes here to pray with Him. So
I should probably really just give a short talk and say
KEEP IT UP!
But of course, what happens there is you love Him,
receiving His Love, sharing in His Love, loving Him in
return. So, because it's love there, there is always
more, always more love. So tonight let’s reflect
together about what happens there in the adoration
chapel. It begins with an encounter, the encounter we
just had in Holy Mass, an encounter that happens every
time you walk into the adoration chapel, you genuflect
to Him, you see Him there, an encounter with a Person.
Pope Benedict [XVI], when he began his pontificate, his
first encyclical Deus Caritas Est, established
the whole church, the whole world, established his
pontificate, his mission right at the heart of that
mission. The first words of that encyclical are God
is Love and he says he acknowledges the centrality
of love when he speaks of this encounter. Being
Christian, Pope Benedict writes, is not the
result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea but the
encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a
new horizon and a decisive direction. So that’s
what happens in adoration. Then what do you do? What do
you do in adoration?
I was visiting my brother and his family. He has two
little daughters, my two nieces. One of them was two
[years old]. I sent them some books at Christmas time,
some picture books, one about the Bible, one about Our
Blessed Mother. That’s what you get for Christmas when
you’re uncle is a priest (CHUCKLES) even though you’re
two.
I took my niece on my lap and we were looking at the
picture book of Our Blessed Mother Mary. I wanted to go
through and make sure she knew her so I kept asking her,
Who is that? But she had a different question
at that time of her life, her favorite question then
was: What doing?
What doing?, she asked my brother, her dad. Her
mother goes into the kitchen, What doing? – She
asks her uncle, What doing? – Well, I’m
reading to you. So I was asking my question,
Who’s that? [She
said:] Jesus! Who’s that?
[She said:]
Mary!
Then we got to the end of the book. Right close to the
end, I didn’t really expect it, but there was Our Lord
Jesus on the Cross and Our Blessed Mother Mary right at
the foot of the Cross and I said,
Who’s that?
She said, Jesus. Then she asked her question:
What doing? I didn’t really know what to say to
a two-year old about what He is doing there, so I said,
He’s dying. Then I realized right away that
that probably wasn’t the right thing to say. (CHUCKLING)
I knew then that the better response was, Ask your
mother. (CHUCKLING) Right after I said he's dying,
I said, He's loving. And that probably confused
her even more, but it was good for me to hear those
words coming out of my mouth. What’s He doing there?
He’s loving.
Tonight, I want to wonder with you if my little two-year
old niece walked into the adoration chapel and saw you
kneeling there and she said, What doing? What doing?
You know what might we say: Adoring? - No. Praying?
- Okay, maybe Reading. What are you doing there?
You’re loving!
St. Therese, she said her mission was to love and to
be loved and to make Love loved. St. Jose Maria
said, We are in love with Love, with the Author of
Love. And we privileged few who know about
adoration, who know we can meet Him there, that we can
encounter Him whenever we want, that He is waiting there
for us to come and visit. We have this great privilege
of going there to love Him and that’s what we’re meant
to do!
Pope Benedict, when he recently visited England, partly
to beatify John Henry Cardinal Newman. He spoke to the
young people in such beautiful terms based on his theme,
the theme for his whole trip was cor ad cor.
It comes from Blessed John Henry’s motto, which
was cor ad cor loquitor, heart speaks to heart.
So when he met with the young people, our Holy Father,
Pope Benedict, wanted to welcome them in that way, heart
speaks to heart, cor ad cor.
So he then spoke of that theme with which he began his
pontificate, the theme of love, the central theme. He
said to them, Think of all the love that your heart
was made to receive and all the love that it is meant to
give. After all, we’re made for love. He said,
We are made to receive love. We are made to give love.
And then he said this which I couldn’t help but think of
adoration, Jesus is always there, quietly waiting
for us to be still with Him and to hear his voice, deep
within your heart. He’s calling you to spend time with
Him in prayer. What do you do in adoration? You go
to love Him.
In his letter on the Eucharist, he calls the Eucharist
the Sacramentum Caritatis,,that’s Latin for the
Sacrament of Love. That’s what the Lord Himself
called the Eucharist when he appeared to St. Margaret
Mary and showed her His Sacred Heart. He called the
Eucharist, the Sacrament of Love, the Sacrament of
Charity. Pope Benedict wrote, The Sacrament of
Charity, the Holy Eucharist, is the gift that Jesus
Christ makes of Himself, thus revealing to us God’s
infinite love for every man and woman. This wondrous
sacrament makes manifest that greater love which led Him
to lay down His life for His friends. Jesus indeed loved
them to the end. Then he continues, In the same
way, Jesus continues in the Sacrament of the Eucharist
to love us to the end, even to offering His Body and His
Blood. What wonder must the Eucharistic mystery
also awaken in our own hearts?
Our Lord comes to us in the Eucharist for one purpose,
Love. That’s the way He loves us, that's the way He
invites us to love. I mentioned that quote in the
sacristy in the Convent of the Missionaries of Charity,
Mother Teresa’s sisters, but then by the crucifix they
have the two words, I thirst. By every
crucifix, throughout the world, wherever the
Missionaries of Charity are, it says, I thirst
there. Of course, that's Our Lord’s words from the Cross
but to St. Margaret Mary He clarified what He meant by
that, I thirst.
Our Lord said to St. Margaret Mary when He was showing
her His Sacred Heart, I thirst but with a thirst so
burning to be loved by man in the Blessed Sacrament that
this thirst is consuming me and I find nobody who would
make an effort to meet my desire to quench my thirst and
respond to my love. He comes to be loved and no one
loves Him!
But we come to adore Him that we might love Him. St.
Therese when she was reflecting about her own mission
talked about how essential it was to make Love loved.
Oh, how little God is loved on this earth even by
priests and religious. No, God isn’t loved very
much, St. Therese said on her deathbed.
Now it’s time to be honest here. For us who have the
privilege of adoring Our Lord Jesus in the Most Blessed
Sacrament, it’s not just about keep it up, no. We all
want more. We know we need more and we might say, how
little God is loved on this earth not even by priests
and religious, that’s sadly true, but we might say even
by those who go to adore Him in the Eucharistic chapel.
And also, many of us have this sense that there is more.
We’re not loving Him as much as we want to, as much as
we need to, it seems as if that’s not always the point.
Sometimes we fall into a mistaken notion that love is
just an extra, not really the whole purpose of our life
as Pope Benedict says. For that we just have to remember
the great commandment to love, that we are there to love
the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul,
with all our mind, with all our strength. Love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
Now if you are going to adoration, you’re loving Him
with your strength, that’s with your body, you’re
putting yourself there. If you’re reading something,
you’re loving him with your mind, you're thinking about
Him. What about your HEART? What about your SOUL?
Love is repaid by
love alone, St. John of the Cross says and St.
Therese after Him, Love is repaid by love alone,
and He comes to love you there. I’m not going to tell
you to love Him. Let's talk together about how you love
Him. You all know how to love. You’ve learned lessons of
love in your life. You’ve learned them most of all from
HIM.
How do you love someone? Our Lord Jesus shows you. First
and foremost, you go to Him. You learn it from looking
at Him. How does He love you? He comes to you. He comes
to you in the most profound way, completely,
unbelievable. Even with all the prophesies, we could not
have imagined He would come in this way to be one with
us, that God would become man in the womb of the Blessed
Virgin Mary. He comes to us on the Cross to be with us
in our suffering. He comes to us to be with us in our
death, in the tomb. But that wasn’t enough, He wanted to
be with us in an even more profound way, God with us,
Emmanuel; God with us, in the Eucharist.
He was going up to Heaven to reign with His Father, just
to come and get us, bring us to reign with Him, to be
with Him in heaven, but we were going to be left alone
down here. And He knew we couldn’t bear it, not to be
alone, not to be without Him, and He loved us. He didn’t
want to be apart from us and so He found a way to be
with you by becoming the Eucharist. How do you love
someone? You go to BE with them. So, that’s the first
thing we do and really it’s the most important thing,
whether you’re signing up or whether you’re just showing
up. You go to Him. You go to Him. It means so much to
Him. He knows Love, He is, as St. Jose Maria said,
the Author of Love. We’re going to love Love and He
knows everything about love and how much it means to Him
that you go to be with Him.
St. Therese said, I go to be with Him, not because
it pleases ME but because it pleases HIM. I know who God
is. He’s a Father who wants me on his knee. If
you’ve ever held a child on your knee and felt the joy
of loving that child, felt the joy of that child letting
you love Him, then you know just a little about what Our
Lord feels when you come to Him. All you have to do is
walk in that door, a little glance at the Host there,
Our Lord’s Sacred Heart exposed to you, and you care to
come! That’s LOVE! That’s love! But we know there's
more. When you love someone, there is something about
the way you look at them. When I was in college, I dated
just a little bit… just a little bit. (CHUCKLE) And I
was sitting at the coffee shop with this young woman and
she said, Why are you looking at me that way?
And I said, You know, I think I’m in love with you.
And she said, Oh. (CHUCKLE) Not quite the
response I was hoping for. (LAUGHS) Yeah. You won’t be
surprised that it didn’t work out. (CHUCKLE) Love, love
did something to my eyes though. I looked at her
differently. It kindled something in my heart.
When you walk in that chapel, the first thing is you're
going to Him. That's love. You look at Him. You LOOK at
HIM. He’s exposed to you there. You look at Him. Why?
Because you love Him. Okay, so because you love Him,
while you look at Him, just gaze at Him for a moment.
Look at Him and love Him.
When you love someone, you go to be with them and you
look at them with love and then you talk to them in a
loving way. St. Jose Maria said, For me the
tabernacle (we could say the adoration chapel as
well) has always been another Bethany, the quiet and
pleasant place where Christ resides, a place where we
can tell Him about our worries, about our sufferings,
our desires, our joys with the same sort of naturalness
as Martha, Mary and Lazarus.
Do you ever feel like you only go to the adoration
chapel to complain to Him? I can tell you with great
confidence, He doesn’t mind that. If He loves you, He
wants to hear the matters of your heart and how it would
break His Sacred Heart if you kept that to yourself.
St. Jose Maria again says, There’s only one way to
become more familiar with God, to increase our trust in
Him, we must come to know Him through prayer. We must
speak to Him and show Him through a heart to Heart
conversation that we love Him. If you love Him,
you’ll talk to Him about whatever is on your heart.
Whenever you go into that chapel, you’re coming, you’re
loving, you’re looking at Him, you’re loving Him and you
can always love Him by the way you talk to Him. You can
always talk to Him about what’s on your heart. Talk to
Him as St. Jose Maria invites, as you would talk to your
dearest friend. What’s on your heart? Is there some
worry there? Some suffering? Some desire? Some joy? If
you’ve ever had a friend, you know how to pray to Our
Lord present in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
When you love Him, you go to be with Him, you look at
Him with love, then you talk to Him, but then something
starts to change. I want to talk about this shift in
prayer. It’s the shift from meditation to contemplation.
You don’t have to get too technical about the terms
there. I would just call it a shift to merely loving
Him, simply loving Him.
They asked St. Therese (she was on her deathbed),
talking about prayer: What do you say to Him, what
do you say to Jesus when you pray? She said, I
don’t say anything to Him. I simply love Him. She
said, talking about prayer, For me prayer is a
movement of the heart. It is a simple glance towards
Heaven. It is a cry of gratitude and love in times of
trial as well as in times of joy. Finally, it is
something great, natural, which expands my soul and
unites me to Jesus, a cry, a glance, a movement of the
heart.
Blessed Columba Marmion, the great spiritual master
said, A single glance of the hearts can hold an
intensity of love. This is something all of us can
do the next time we go to the adoration chapel. We can
sigh and we can glance at Him with love. I want to
encourage you to do that to try it and see what happens.
If you can remember that the reason why you’re going
there is to love Him, you want to look for opportunities
to do that loving. And sometimes love gets purified and
it becomes merely loving. Now you lovers know that. When
you are with your beloved, and I’m thinking of you who
are in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony especially, when
you are with your beloved and you don’t need to say
anything, just to be with them, that’s that moment of
loving. When you just look at your beloved, that’s the
kind of love that Our Lord wants and it’s something
powerful that happens in prayer.
Now it happens in a couple different ways. I could say
maybe in two different time frames. It happens in our
life of prayer. St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of
Avila talk about this and all of you who are pray–ers
should be aware of this, as people who pray, you should
be watching for this movement of your heart. It’s meant
to happen this way for all of us. We’re all invited to
this love, very simply love.
I mean sometimes people
talk about mysticism and contemplation and it gets
really complicated. It’s very simple. It’s about loving.
If you’ve ever loved someone, and you all HAVE in your
weak and feeble way. That's how we do it. You’ve loved.
How He might draw you into love is that eventually when
you go to pray, He’ll stir something in your heart and
draw you beyond your own intentionality. It won't be
what you’re doing, what you’re thinking about, what
you’re planning. It will be about what you do. It will
be about what He does. It won’t be about your prayer
time. It will be about His time. It’s a move from a kind
of activity to passivity, but it's not a mere passivity
as if you were kind of lying there and doing nothing.
No, it’s a kind of ACTIVE RECEPTIVITY. He’s stirring in
your heart. This is where the heart gets engaged.
Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind,
soul, and strength.
So your strength
is there, your mind is there. How does He get the heart?
He does it. He draws you.
You’ll notice that you're going to pray because He's
inviting you. Not just, I need to pray more.
No, He's stirring you. He is drawing you. You want to
go. Some desire happened in you. You didn’t choose that.
He planted it there. Watch for that. Respond to it. This
is when love becomes FALLING IN LOVE.
Do you ever notice that word we use: falling in love.
When you fall in love you don’t choose it. It
happens TO you. That leads you to a deeper love. It
engages the whole of your person. You feel like you’re
out of control. And when it comes to prayer, that’s a
beautiful thing because then you are in His control and
that can lead you into a deeper love.
I just share that with you so that all of us know that
this is something that might happen in our lives and we
want to watch for it and be aware of it, so we can
respond to it. It is not something that we can choose or
do, just like you can’t choose to fall in love but you
can prepare your heart and be ready for it when it
happens. So that’s one kind of time-frame over the
trajectory of our whole spiritual life.
But then there’s the
time-frame of our time of adoration, our time of prayer.
It can happen in a very simple way there, if we remember
what we’re going for. We’re going there to love. If I’m
going there to love, if I’m going to the adoration
chapel to love, I’m going to try to love as simply as I
can. I’m going to look at Him for a moment at the
beginning. Just look at Him as I would look at the woman
I go to pick up for the prom, just look at her and say,
Oh, you look beautiful. And then I might talk
to Him about what’s on my heart but then if there’s
nothing to say, I won’t say anything. So often we go to
pray and we wrack our brains, What am I supposed to
pray about? What am I supposed to pray about? If
nothing comes to your mind, don’t say anything. Just
look at Him, love Him. Maybe there will be a sigh or
glance.
Now, what about reading
at adoration? Now if what we are about is loving, then
sometimes you read. You know, sometimes lovers will
exchange letters. People have described the Bible as
God’s love letter to us. There are other letters and
sometimes if your lover gives you a letter, then you
want to read it in their presence. That’s how I look at
reading in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. You
might glance up at Him every once in a while to remind
yourself that it’s about Him. It's about you and Him.
It’s about an encounter. It’s about Love here. You might
read for a little bit and put the book down. Look at
Him. Love Him. If there’s nothing stirring in your
heart, pick the book up again. Read a little bit more.
Some spiritual reading, some reading from Sacred
Scripture, and so we might see that trajectory of
the whole of the spiritual life as that moment that
comes in your life when you kind of put the book down in
your prayer and you just go to love Him.
But it happens in a little way for all of us when we go
to pray. Something stirs in your heart, you respond to
it and you look at Him, you love Him. When it’s not
happening, you read. Worst case scenario, you’re
spending an hour doing some spiritual reading. Best case
scenario, you’re love gets purer and purer, more and
more of a deeper encounter, less in your control, more
of falling in love.
Now, I’m finishing with what I should have started,
which is receiving His love. I’m finishing with it
because that’s what I want you to hold on to most of
all. We return love. We try to love Him back but it
ALWAYS starts with receiving. In his great letter,
Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict describes this
dynamic beautifully that we always return to the font,
we always return, constantly he says, return to the
font, whenever we’re trying to love. Sometimes when
we’re getting frustrated with our own ability or
inability to love, we look at our own hearts as if we're
supposed to conjure it up here. No. No. We receive it
from Him first, then we share in that love. So every
time you go to pray, every time, let Him remind you how
much He loves you. Our Lord said to St. Margaret Mary,
Behold this Heart which has loved humankind so much
that it has spared itself nothing, even to the point of
exhausting it and consuming itself in order to show them
its love.
Ask a two-year old question when you go to the adoration
chapel: What doing,
Lord? What are you doing there? What are you
doing in that Host? Why? Why would you make yourself
bread for ME? Why would you let me consume you? WHY
would I take you as my food? Ask that question, and let
Him remind you that it’s for love. There could be no
other reason. Then you’ll be looking at the Host and
you’ll glance over at the Crucifix there.
St. Francis of Assisi in
his Stations of the Cross says of the Crucifix,
Behold, Jesus crucified. Behold His wounds received for
love of you. His whole appearance betokens love. His
head is bent to kiss you. His arms are extended to
embrace you. His heart is open to receive you. Oh, what
Love.
When you forget what your time in adoration is about,
it’s about loving. Think of those words of St. Francis.
He knew how to pray. He knew how to ask that two-year
old question: What are
you doing? His whole appearance betokens
love. His head is bent to kiss you. His arms are
extended to embrace you. His heart is open to receive
you. Oh, what Love.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa, said,
When you see the Crucifix, you know how much Jesus loved
you. When you see the Sacred Host, you know how much
Jesus loves you now. I don’t take it for granted
that this happens automatically. It seems to me that
there is something in us, well, it’s original sin. It's
concupiscence the twisting that happened in us, that
wound in our heart from original sin. Even though we’re
baptized and we've had the original sin washed away,
still it left its mark and one of the deepest marks, I
think the deepest lies, the lies one priest I know calls
the lie of unlovability. I can tell you that, that he
loves you, that He's loving you. What’s He doing? He’s
loving YOU. But somehow it doesn’t sink in.
I was talking to a young
woman who is discerning her vocation. She thinks that
maybe God is calling her to be a religious sister. So I
was talking with her about how much God was loving her,
especially when she would go to adoration. And I just
could see and feel even in my heart this love of Christ
for her, how much it meant to Him that she would come to
Him, especially this one who was ready to give her life
completely to Him, how much He LOVED her, how much His
love was pouring out for her, but just because she would
go to pray and He was loving her. And, after talking to
her, I went to pray and I thought just for a moment and
I was surprised to realize that, that He felt that way
about ME too. I mean as I look around this room and I’m
kind of surprised but he feels that way about YOU too.
When you go to Him, He falls in love with you all over
again.
I don’t take it for
granted that this sinks in, because of all the things in
the spiritual life, this has been the hardest to sink in
for me. I mean, I have to look in the mirror every day
and it’s hard to believe, He’s in love with me! Really?
What about if? No, that doesn’t matter to him. What if I
could only I get my act together? No, no, no, He doesn’t
want to have to wait for that or He’d be waiting a long
time. (LAUGHS)
I wonder how the lie stirs in you, that lie of
unlovability? I think of a couple in our young adult
group at the cathedral. I mean, I know that you all know
that He loves you if I would ask any of you: Does He
love you? You'd say, Oh yeah, of course,God
loves me. No, no, HE’S IN LOVE WITH YOU. That’s
what I’m talking about. I think of this young wife. I
think of them because we were out for dinner one time
and I heard her husband say, Beloved, he said.
Beloved and I knew he wasn’t talking to me.
(Laughs) He was talking to his wife and he calls her
that all the time, Beloved, Beloved. And, if I
were to say to her, You know Katie, um, Justin loves
you a lot and she were to say, Yeah, he loves
everybody. – No, no, Katie, he loves YOU a LOT.
He loves YOU. – Oh, he’s a very loving person.
– No, Katie, HE’s IN LOVE WITH YOU!! I
mean, that’s how YOU are. I know it. I just know you’re
like that with Him. – Oh yeah, He loves me. Of
course, He loves everybody. – No, no, He loves
YOU in a particular way! –
Yeah. Jesus, He’s a
very loving God.
There’s a little song, a beautiful song by Danielle
Rose. She wrote a song for every mystery of the rosary,
all twenty of them, including the luminous mysteries.
The fifth luminous mystery, the Institution of the
Eucharist, she sings beautifully in the words of Jesus
singing to us. And He has her sing, Hold me in your
hands. Kiss me with your lips. Enter into Love’s
Communion in this Eucharist.
This makes me think of another song, probably the first
song I learned, Jesus Loves Me. Do you know
that song? When I was a Protestant kid growing up,
that’s another long story. (LAUGHS) But, um, Jesus
loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
But I remember the first time I celebrated Mass for the
Feast of Corpus Christi. No, no, no, His BODY tells me
so. His BODY tells me so. I didn’t know it until I met
Him there. I learned so much about God's love until I
met Him in the Eucharist. There I could see it. Maybe we
could sing that little song but we’ll say BODY instead
of BIBLE. (HE LEADS ALL IN SINGING) Jesus loves me,
this I know, because His BODY tells me so, little ones
to Him belong, they are weak but He is strong. Yes,
Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves
me, His BODY tells me so.
Now you’re going to need a little reminder like that
because this truth, which is so essential, does not come
automatically. And I don’t want Fr. John to have to call
the police when people keep singing in the adoration
chapel. (LAUGHS) So maybe that’s not the way. But,
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta used to teach this little
prayer to people, especially to people that were
struggling with their faith. She would teach them to
pray, Jesus in my heart, I believe in your tender
love for me. I love you. Jesus in my heart, I
believe in your tender love for me. I love you.
There’s a movie where she has a young woman with tears
in her eyes, she’s holding her cheeks and teaching her
that prayer. Jesus in my heart, I believe in your
tender love for me. I love you.
And now we know so much more about Mother Teresa. We
know that she must have prayed that prayer countless
times when she wasn’t feeling that love. I’m not talking
about a mere feeling. Now I want you to feel it
sometimes and He does too. We feel love, it stirs in our
hearts. It’s not just that. That’s not the most
important thing. It starts with you going to Him. You go
to Him there. It means so much to Him. You look at Him
with a little bit of love in your eye, even just a
little bit means so much. You talk to Him. All it means
to share love with someone is to share the matters of
your heart. You can all do that. You might read about
Him. Like you would read about someone you love. Then
maybe you’ll put the book down and just love Him. All of
that, every single one of us can do. We want to let that
love stir with that motivation.
So I encourage you to learn that little prayer of Mother
Teresa: Jesus in my heart, I believe in your tender
love for me. I love you. Say it with me: Jesus
in my heart, I believe in your tender love for me. I
love you. Why in my heart? Because you received Him
in Holy Communion. He’s in you, loving in you. So, let’s
say it together again. Jesus in my heart, I believe
in your tender love for me. I love you.
So it’s LOVE. But she had to remind herself that it was
a tender love. She knew it was a severe kind of love, it
was a tough love sometimes but it was always tender. And
even in its toughness, it was a tenderness. He was
tending to her, tending to her dear heart in a very
loving way. What does tender mean? It means He’s tending
to you, like you would care for someone who is wounded,
and our hearts have been wounded by sin, by suffering.
He's tending to us. It’s a tender love. Let’s say it
together again: Jesus, in my heart, I believe in
your tender love for me. I love you. I BELIEVE in
your love whether I feel it or not in this moment. It’s
an act of faith. That little prayer contains an act of
faith and an act of love. I believe in your tender
love for me. Let’s pray it again: Jesus, in my
heart, I believe in your tender love for me. I love you.
And then in a very little way, in the simplest way
possible, with the three words that mean the most it
ends with an act of love, I love you, I love you.
Every time, every time you go to adoration, tell Him
that. You don’t have to feel it all the time because you
mean it, you’re showing it, by going there. Love isn’t
spoken, it’s shown, but sometimes it has to be spoken to
be shown. Let’s say it together one more time:
Jesus, in my heart, I believe in your tender love for
me. I love you. If we can do these simple things,
which we can all do, then this unrequited love which
pains the Sacred Heart of Jesus will be just a little
bit less unrequited. We’ll return it in our little way.
We are little children just like in that song says. But
it will mean so much to Him that Love is loved, and more
and more people can be drawn into that Love as we
surrender to it.
Why don’t we conclude in
prayer. In the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit. Loving Lord Jesus, thank you for
the gift of Your love. Thank you for making love the
foundation of our faith and the purpose of our lives.
But you know how little we are, you know how weak and
feeble our loving is. We can’t do it without Your help.
You come to us, not to stand at a distance and demand
that we love you. No, You come into our hearts and
enkindle in them the fire of Your love. So, we ask you
to send your Holy Spirit now, especially to all those
who adore you at the Holy Spirit Oratory. Send your Holy
Spirit and enkindle in us the fire of Your love. We go
there to love You. Help us to love You more and more.
Mother, Mary, you’re the only one who always responded
to His love, with love, perfectly. And so we ask your
prayers. (HE LEADS) Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and
blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary,
Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour
of our death. Amen.
Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to share
with you and reflect on such a beautiful topic. I look
forward to seeing you there at the Holy Spirit Oratory.
