Bangalore – 7 February 2006

Hos 11,1.3-4.8c-9; Cant Is 12; Eph 3,8-12.14-19; Jn 19,31-37

My dear Confreres,

I am happy to be celebrating this mass here at Kristu Jyoti College with all the community of the Bangalore theologate, which together with that in Shillong represents the most important formation centre for Salesian priests in India. This is already sufficient reason to praise and thank the Lord who continues to love his Church, the Congregation, Salesian India, enriching us with priests who in their own lives prolong the one Priesthood of Christ and complete in their own body whatever is lacking in his Passion. The Eucharist – the central expression of the priesthood – brings us in fact to that eucharistic life and that configuration with Christ by means of the process from celebration to contemplation, from contemplation to adoration, from adoration to communion, from communion to transformation, from transformation to total self-giving. Therefore formation finds its model and its method in the Sacred Heart of Jesus because it leads us to a Christification, that enables us to have the same mind as Christ Jesus (Phil. 2,5), to love as He did to the end (cf. Jn. 13,1), to give our own lives so that the young might have life and have it abundantly (Jn. 10,10). And naturally the method is that of meekness and humility of heart, in other words the pastoral pedagogy of kindness. We are celebrating the mass of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which gives us the opportunity to illustrate the role of this theologate and to examine its mission in the light of the patron of the community.

In the Sacred Heart we are celebrating with the whole Church the exaltation of Love, which is one – and without doubt the most important – of the four fundamental aspects of man: freedom, understanding, love and faith. It demonstrates that in God everything flows from love: the original plan of God in creation, the incarnation of the Son, the redemption of mankind, the fulness of communion in God. Now all of this shines out in a wonderful way in the Heart of Jesus. It is what we say in the first part of the prayer of the mass, the collect: “O Father, in the Heart of your beloved Son you give us the joy of celebrating the great works of his love for us.”

With Pope Paul VI we have to say that the mystery of the Church cannot “be understood as it should be if the faithful do not direct their attention to this eternal love of the Word Incarnate, of which the wounded Heart of Jesus is the shining symbol.” Along the same lines the Second Vatican Council affirms that Jesus loved with a human heart, in this way indicating the object of this sign or mystery: the human heart of Jesus as a sign and symbol of the human and divine love of Jesus (cf. GS 22).

The gospel foundation for this is provided by the text of John according to which all men are drawn by Christ who as the paschal lamb offered himself for the salvation of the world with a wonderful spiritual fruitfulness capable of making possible the birth of a new humanity born indeed from the heart of Jesus. Very rightly many Fathers of the Church have seen in the water the symbol of baptism and in the blood that of the Eucharist. Then in the two sacraments they have recognised the sign of the Church, which – like the new Eve – is born from the side of Christ.

The Heart of Jesus therefore symbolises the immense love with which the Father has so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should have eternal life (Jn. 3,16) and, at the same time, the infinite love of Jesus who “having loved his own who were in the world he loved them to the end” (Jn 13,1). He himself will describe his death in this way, as a supreme expression of love: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15,13).

If it is true that on the biological level the heart has nothing to do with love but rather with life, in a metaphorical sense the symbol of the heart becomes even richer and more significant. In fact, love is the most life-giving force, more even than the heart itself. Love is – as St Paul says in the letter to the Corinthians – the only charism capable of surviving death, precisely because it is stronger than death. This is its greatness, this gives it primacy, this is its absolute value, without which even the greatest charisms are worth nothing: “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing.” (1Cor 13,2).

Well then, love – of its nature free – is the most demanding of gifts, since it can in no way be bought and can be repaid only with love. This is the meaning of the eloquent passage from Hosea, in which the prophet links together the tenderness and the passion of God: “my heart is moved within me, my inmost being trembles with compassion”. The men loved by God, the people, the object of his love and care, have not responded. But God – “who is God and not man,” according to the prophet’s words – loves them passionately, and with his love will overcome their lack of response and their selfishness. Rather, he will save them by making men reach maturity in love. This basically is the omnipotence and the omniscience of God: opening the doors of the hearts of men so that they may be able to love and so reach the stature of the perfect man and the fulness of life. The love of God breaks the vicious circle of selfishness and our best forces are freed - those that lead us to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

The Heart of Jesus, the sign and symbol of the love of Jesus who “loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5,2), in this way becomes the most sublime and definitive expression of the human and divine love of Jesus for each one of us, just as Paul felt compelled to write: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2,20); and in another passage: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8,35-39). And it was precisely this love that led him later to love his own with the deep affection of a mother and a father and with zealous devotion.

The magnificent page from the letter to the Ephesians following the Apostle’s same line makes the Christians realise that they are all caught up in an immense, tender and strong love, which goes beyond all understanding and fills men with all the fulness of God.

Perhaps devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus will need to change, being purified from every merely sentimental expression and becoming enriched from biblical and theological sources but it needs to be preserved and spread as the supreme expression of the love of Jesus who gave himself to the Father and to us. Perhaps it could become very youthful, able to attract the young who are so open to love and used to the symbol of the heart so as “to draw with joy from the wells of salvation,” which is to be found only in an effective love, which gives oneself and does not seek to possess others.

The thirst for life and happiness in everyone, and especially to be seen in the young, is a thirst for love; but only a love that is true, great, profound, and long-lasting can satisfy and bring happiness. And unfortunately people are made constantly aware of two things: love that is complete does not exist or does not last because death always puts an end to it; and love is always subject to attacks that degrade it, poison it, kill it. At this point faith comes to tell us that in this regard man needs to be freed, reintegrated, restored, redeemed; that man needs to learn to love with sincerity and totally, but that his love will never be like that unless it is integrated in the love of God; and further, that God became man in order to show us God’s tenderness and to teach each one of us to feel that we are loved, valued, and so to respond with the same love.

It seems that for us Salesians this devotion has been so familiar as to have been assimilated to the icon of the Good Shepherd “who wins hearts by gentleness and self-giving” (C. 11), and to pastoral charity (C. 14).

It is in fact what article 11 of our Project of Life says, speaking about the Salesian spirit that “finds its model and source in the very heart of Christ, apostle of the Father”, that is in Christ in so far as he is the full revelation of divine charity. Reflection on the life of Don Bosco allows us to see to what extent our beloved Founder and Father was consciously inspired by the charity of Christ.

It appears appropriate here for us to consider the coat of arms of the Congregation which contains the bust of St Francis of Sales and a heart in flames, and art. 4 of the Constitutions that refers precisely to the “zeal” of St Francis of Sales. Apostolic charity that is at the centre of our spirit, corresponds exactly with what our holy Patron called – according to the language of the time – ‘devotion’. It therefore seems correct to say that devotion to the Sacred Heart is very Salesian, and indications of this are not only the dedication and labours of Don Bosco in undertaking the construction of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and the heart that appears in the coat of arms, but especially the fact that at the centre of our spirit is to be found pastoral charity, that “finds its model and its source in the very heart of Christ”, and that is “an apostolic impetus that makes us seek souls and serve God alone” (C. 10).

Looking at Christ as our model means remembering that the path of sanctification to which we are called is a path of ‘Christification’, the “it is no longer I that live but Christ lives in me.” Our life and our vocation are a continuation of the mission of Christ, in preaching, in teaching, in healing, in saving. I have written about this in a letter: “Looking at Christ through the eyes of Don Bosco” (AGC 384).

This then my dear confreres is your programme, at personal and community and institutional level: forming Christ in the heart of each confrere so as to make God’s love present to the young and to make pastoral charity effective. This is participation in the mission of Jesus the Good Shepherd, expressed in its essential aspects: love of the Father whose Kingdom we want to serve, and love of our brothers and sisters to whom we want to bring the good news of salvation.

I finish making my own for you the prayer of the Apostle who for the Christians of Ephesus asked “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God” (3,17-19).

Don Pascual Chávez V.

Bangalore – 7 February 2006