Sacred Heart of Jesus
H. César Adrián Hernández Morales, L.C.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Christ, our King, Thy Kingdom come!
Preparatory prayer (to put me in the presence of God)
Jesus, make my heart like yours.
Gospel of the day (to guide your meditation)
From the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew 11:25-30
At that time, Jesus exclaimed: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to the simple! Thank you, Father, for so it has seemed good to you.
The Father has put all things in my hands. 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 who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.”.
Word of the Lord.
Meditate on what God tells you in the Gospel
The heart of Jesus is the heart of a son. It is a heart that loves his Father, with whom he lives permanently united. Jesus and the Father live united in their love for each other.
Christ has come to reveal to us this love for the Father. He has come to reveal to us his heart as a son in order to transform ours into that of a beloved son of the Father. He wants to reveal to us the love of the Father. He wants to make us experience the Father's concern for us.
Only in the love of the Father can we find true refuge and rest. But in order to feel ourselves children and to feel loved by the Father, we need a humble heart like that of Jesus, a childlike heart.
We need the simple heart of a little child who recognizes that he needs his Father's help, not that of an adult who thinks he is independent and capable of doing everything on his own. In order to experience the Father's love we need to be humble, following the example of Jesus. We have to be humble and recognize that we cannot do it alone, that we are weary and burdened, that we need our Father's help.
If we live united to the Father, with a childlike heart, we will never feel alone and abandoned, because the Father's love will always be with us. Then we will never again feel overwhelmed, because the Father's love sustains us.
«Jesus praises the Father because he hid the Gospel from the wise and learned and revealed it to the little ones. The little ones confess their sins in a simple way, they say concrete things because they have the simplicity that God gives them. We too must be simple and concrete and confess our sins with concrete humility and shame. And the Lord forgives us: we must name our sins. If we are abstract in confessing them, we are generic, we end up in darkness. It is important to have the freedom to tell the Lord things as they are, to have the wisdom of concreteness, because the devil wants us to live in gray, neither black nor white. The Lord does not like the lukewarm. The spiritual life is simple, but we complicate it with nuances. Let us ask the Lord for the grace of simplicity, transparency, the grace of freedom and of knowing well who we are before God.»
(Homily of H.H. Francis, April 20, 2020, in Santa Marta).
Dialogue with Christ
This is the most important part of your prayer, prepare yourself to talk with much love with the One who loves you.
Purpose
Propose a personal one. The one that involves the most love in response to the Beloved... or, if you believe that this is what God is asking of you, live what is suggested below.
To make a spiritual communion or visit to the Blessed Sacrament thanking Jesus for revealing to me the love of the Father and asking Him to give me a childlike heart like His.
Farewell
We thank You, Lord, for all Your benefits, You who live and reign forever and ever.
Amen.
Christ, our King!
Thy Kingdom come!
Most prudent Virgin, Mary, Mother of the Church.
Pray for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
