Today's Thoughts...

Today’s Thoughts: Our focus today and tomorrow is the “heart,” The Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The heart is the center of who we are, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It is the place where we often think of God’s presence within us.
 
Think for a moment, in a physical way the heart is the center of who we are. It is the pump that pushes life through us. Without it we can do nothing. All our other organs, muscles, bones and assorted other things are important but it is the heart that keeps us alive that makes everything we do, say and feel possible.
 
Emotionally the heart is central to what we feel. It is the home of the emotions. On February 14th we do not receive or send a card with a gallbladder on the front that says, “I love you!” No, we send or receive a card with a heart on the front. The heart is the place of feelings and emotions. If we were to write a song, a poem or a story about love we would talk about the heart. A broken heart means we have lost at or been hurt by love.
 
In a spiritual way the heart is important too. The heart in a spiritual sense is the dwelling place of God. In the Old Testament, the psalmists and prophets talked about the community or individual who was without God as having a stony heart. A stony heart has no room for God, is closed to the presence of God.
 
So, we might say the heart sits at the center of who we are as human beings. These two days remind us of just how important the heart is to us. Jesus and Mary had hearts that lead them through their journeys of life.
 
Jesus’ Sacred Heart teaches us about love. It is a heart full of the kind of love and mercy that leaves no one behind. Sometimes that love and mercy seem foolish but not in the eyes and heart of Jesus. Every person is valuable, ever person is important; every person is worth searching for. Now this doesn’t mean that everyone will be found because some of us don’t want to be found and some of us even when found don’t want to return. But the love of Jesus’ Sacred Heart will always look, will always search and will always wait.
 
This Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is about love, but it is also about hope; the hope that God is always searching, looking and waiting for us because we are that special, that important. The question for today is, “Can we believe in our value, can we believe in our specialness, can we believe in God’s love for us, can we hope in the fact that God will find us and through his mercy bring us home?”
 
Have a great Friday everyone!