The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
In the 17th century, unworthiness was a major concern of the French faithful. Confusion wrought by the Jansenist heresy made people afraid to approach God, to receive Him in the Eucharist, and to adore Him in the Blessed Sacrament lest they do so unworthily.
In the midst of this confusion, Jesus appeared to Sr. Margaret Mary Alacogue, a Visitation nun, over the course of two years (1673-1675) and revealed to her His Sacred Heart. On one of these occasions, Jesus appeared in “a blaze of glory - His five wounds shining like suns, flames issuing from all parts of His human form, especially from His divine breast which was like a furnace.”
Today, we often see the Sacred Heart in statuary and stained glass, surrounded by the crown of thorns and capped with a flame. It looks docile and gentle, like a candle or lantern, but the Heart of Jesus is not a flickering wick. It churns like a red-hot furnace: ardent, passionate, and bursting with love - a love for you. The Sacred Heart is an image of the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love which surpasses all knowledge and all understanding.
The French faithful feared the fiery judgment of Jesus, as if the Lord could not distinguish between the sinner and the sin, as if His Sacred Heart burned only with judgment and no mercy. Yet, when gold passes into a furnace, only the impurities need fear their destruction. The furnace stresses but does not destroy the gold. Instead, the intense heat remakes it, reshapes it, and the gold emerges more truly itself than before.
Jesus, at times, I run away from you because I am afraid to be weak. I am embarrassed that I’m not perfect. I don’t want you to see me naked or to know that I have loved another whose name is Sin. I would rather clean myself and approach you worthily than admit my frailty and submit to your purifying love. Lord Jesus, give me the courage to hand myself over to You, to cast my whole self into the fiery furnace of Your love and mercy. Lord, I hand over to You my past, my present, and my future. Take and receive, Lord, my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will. All that I am and possess is from You, and I surrender it all to You in return. Grant me only Your love and Your grace, which are my true riches, my true desire, and my true destiny. Amen.