As we speak, June 7, 2024, we rejoice the feast of the Sacred Coronary heart of Jesus, one of many basic axes of SSCC spirituality and on this context we share this textual content to accompany this ecclesial solemnity.
The Gospel of the Day of the Sacred Coronary heart of Jesus (Jn 19, 31-37) relates that, when Jesus was useless and crucified, “one of many troopers pierced his aspect along with his spear, and instantly blood and water flowed out.” The interpretation of the Fathers of the Church noticed there a logo of the Eucharist and baptism, whose energy flows from the useless and risen Christ.
As we speak, when one thinks of blood, the wars that ravage Ukraine and the Gaza Strip instantly come to thoughts, with hundreds of useless and displaced. And when one thinks about water, on the one hand, the large floods in southern Brazil and different locations on this planet the place local weather change recurrently causes torrential rains, river overflows and flooding of populations, additionally with monumental losses, deaths and hundreds of victims, and then again, the droughts that devastate one area or one other of the planet with rising frequency. That’s, blood and water that don’t evoke one thing optimistic, a supply of life and pleasure for us, just like the sacraments of the Church, however relatively the darkish aspect of the human being, able to limitless barbarism, and of nature, examined to the purpose. excessive by predation and human neglect.
What’s going to the pierced Coronary heart of Jesus inform us immediately, with that signal of the blood and water that circulate from his wound?
Maybe it is going to remind us that that blood – that life – was shed for all, not for some or for a lot of: for all. For the useless Ukrainian grandmother hugging her grandchildren and for the younger Russian soldier who left his life within the bloody subject; for the Palestinian mom screaming over the physique of her useless son and for the younger girl who went to a musical occasion and was murdered by Hamas fighters. And she’s going to shout to us – her blood is hers –: Could it not be in useless! Could the insistence on peace be extra persevering than the obsession with conflict!
Maybe it is going to additionally remind us that water is, on the identical time, the start of all life and, by ironic distinction, a horrible agent of dying; which, channeled to water meals or poured over a new child at his baptism, is a needed and life-giving factor, however pressured to maneuver by way of inhabited locations as a result of there isn’t a earth to soak up it, it might probably destroy every thing in its path, creating panic, destruction and dying. And he’ll remind us that, ahead of we wish, water might be – and is already! – the thing of human greed when it turns into scarce to fulfill the rising inhabitants of the globe and is the reason for new conflicts.
Blood and water: pure lifetime of God and, when the human being loses the horizon of affection, pure dying. Could the Hearts of Jesus and Mary shake us once more in these celebrations, in order that the blood solely evokes the Eucharist, sacrament of utmost love for one’s neighbor, and the water solely evokes baptism, sacrament of full life, immediately and tomorrow; in order that the Gospel doesn’t fall into the void of human selfishness, nor into that of hopelessness.
William Roses sscc / June
