The love to which we are called is demanding. It asks us to be restless, to step outside of ourselves, to recognize that we are not alone—and that others, too, have needs and questions.
There can be no true love when our own interests take center stage and become the measure of our choices. Love is a communion that strips us of ourselves and invites us to give freely, to remain vulnerable and open.
During the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we want to allow ourselves to be challenged by His love so that, through His teaching, He may form us—and so that we may overcome our sadness and loneliness.
1) Love Is Patient
Love has been poured into our hearts (Rom 5:5), but perhaps we have not noticed it—or we prefer to keep it to ourselves. This is because love, in our lives, also involves tribulation, suffering, and weariness. This is the love we find most difficult to accept; yet it is precisely here that patience begins to take root within us (cf. Rom 5:3).
Love is not found primarily in the grand, heroic sacrifices that life occasionally asks of us, but in everyday patience—in carrying the weight of the ordinary. This patience, this daily love, urges us to grow in virtue, sanctifies us, and helps us not to lose hope or the meaning of our existence, which can sometimes seem so small.
2) Love Is Overflowing
Love exists within authentic relationships; therefore, God, who is love, cannot be an isolated being. God, who is love, is not solitude. He is Love constantly reaching out to us, and as the ultimate sign of that love, He gives us His own Son, Jesus.
In Christ, Trinitarian love becomes flesh—pierced and exposed. It is an overflowing love that goes out of itself and gives itself entirely for us: a love without competition, revenge, or envy. It is the Love that burns as the fire of His Sacred Heart.
3) Love Is Always Good
We discover the goodness of the Lord when we gaze upon His exposed Heart—a Heart that is good, always inclined toward humility and mercy.
As Pope Francis reminds us, the love of the Heart of Jesus “is a love whose tenderness we can experience and savor” in every season of life: in joy and in sorrow, in health and in sickness, in consolation and in desolation. It is a love that always seeks our good and never abandons us.
During this month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us ask Him to teach us to have a heart like His, so that we may truly learn how to love.
And let us turn to Him with Pope Leo's prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus:
Lord, I come to your tender heart today,
to you who have words that set my heart ablaze,
to you who pour out compassion on the little ones and the poor,
on those who suffer, and on all human miseries.
I desire to know you more, to contemplate you in the Gospel,
to be with you and learn from you
and from the charity with which you allowed yourself
to be touched by all forms of poverty.
You showed us the Father’s love by loving us without measure
with your divine and human heart.
Grant all your children the grace of encountering you.
Change, shape, and transform our plans,
so that we seek only you in every circumstance:
in prayer, in work, in encounters, and in our daily routine.
From this encounter, send us out on mission,
a mission of compassion for the world
in which you are the source from which all consolation flows.
Amen.