Finding Myself Inside the Sacred Heart

I've never been much of a devotional kind of gal.  Devoted? Yes.  But devotionals? Not so much.  I don't know why.  It's not that I'm opposed to them, but my faith life has just found expression in other ways, in other tenements of our tradition.  

So honestly, I've never really recognized the Feast of the Sacred Heart before.  I know about the Sacred Heart.  I know the image: Jesus' physical heart - wrapped in sorrow and suffering, yet burning with love - as the representation of his divine love for all of humanity.  But I never paid much attention to when the Church celebrates the solemnity or chose to celebrate it myself.  Nor have I ever found myself praying to the Sacred Heart.  Although it's one of the most popular devotions in the Catholic Church, it was never one I found myself turning or relating to.  

Until this year.

This year is different.  Because this year is all-too familiar.   

After three previous miscarriages, we prayed this time would be different.  But before we knew it we found ourselves in that familiar situation - the series of appointments, the scans, the blood tests, the tears.  This time would be the same.  

The difference is that this year, while still numb from the heart-breaking news, my body would move much more quickly into the physical part of the loss.  And on the eve of the Sacred Heart, I found myself having labor pains for a child I will not labor for.  This feast day was spent awaiting the birth of a child who will never have a birthday.  We find ourselves preparing to deliver a child who has already been delivered to heaven's gates. 

Already been delivered right into the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Into his pure love!  Into pure joy, complete unity, absolute beauty, utter peace.  This Feast day, my child knows the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the most true way. 

Meanwhile, I too am discovering its depth.  Though in a different way.  While our little angel is being invited into the burning love of Christ's Sacred Heart, I find myself being invited into the thorns, into the sorrow and suffering of Christ.

Our faith, and this devotional that strives to represent it, remind us of the suffering and death that Jesus underwent on Calvary's hill.  But more than that, it speaks to the sorrow that Christ continues to feel each and every day he loves us.  The sorrow of watching a world he loves turn away from him, of watching his beloved children suffer, of wanting goodness for a people who continues to know darkness.  His heart aches with our aches, he suffers when we suffer, he takes our pains and burdens upon himself.  And sometimes, when we don't recognize or return the love, it seems it could all be in vain.  That to me is the true crown of thorns Jesus wears.  

But Jesus' suffering was not - is not - suffering for suffering's sake.  It is suffering for the sake of love.   

GOD created our world out of love, all the while knowing full well that we would turn away, that we would make mistakes, that we would cause him pain.  Yet he made us nonetheless.  He knew our humanity would struggle.  Yet he chose to be in utter solidarity with us.  GOD knew that we would never be able to return the fullness of the Love by which we were created.  Yet we were made and loved from the start (from before the start).

What must it be like to bring about life that you know cannot, will not, serve you?  To love someone so deeply and completely that you ask absolutely nothing in return?  In which your only return will be pain and sorrow, but when done for the sake of the one you love so deeply and completely, that is enough?  

That is the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  It is self-less and true.  

Today, I am suffering.  I hurt, emotionally yes, but in particular this day physically.  And like Christ's pain, mine is for a child I know full well will not be with me, will never be able to return the Love in which they were created.  I made a life that now causes me pain, I am laboring one who cannot bring me any other return in this world.  And in this physical suffering, I am beginning to see the depth of the Sacred Heart. 

For each measure of pain is worth it.  

Though it aches my heart to know that each body ache is in vain, that no life will come from it, it does not diminish the love I feel for this baby.  Nothing can diminish that!  

I don't know how to explain it.  But when you love someone - love them from long before they are even on the horizon of present reality - that love can't be taken away from you.  There may be sorrow.  There may be pain.  There may be suffering.  And all of it because of them.  But you don't stop loving them because of it. 

If anything, your love grows.  Even in death.  

When you join the Divine in the creation of life, you also join Him in the self-less giving of your comfort, of your return, to that life - like it or not.

I will admit, I don't like it.  There is not a single part of me that "likes" this!  This is not how I would have chosen to discover the Sacred Heart.  But this is the invitation I have been given nonetheless.  It is the invitation to find myself inside the Sacred Heart, and all that that means.  

And inside the Sacred Heart I see not only the depth of Christ's suffering, but how the thorns and the flame are completely inseparable.  That is the depth of the Sacred Heart.  That like it or not, when you love, when you create, you take them both.     

And while mine is far from the selfless and true extent of Christ's, I too am invited to offer my heart today - with its thorns and its flame - for my little one.  

Today, I am crawling inside the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  My heart too wears a crown of thorns, a suffering for a life I have loved that causes me great pain, a life that will never be able to love me in return.  And yet my heart wears a flame, a burning love for a life that is worth every ache, every tear, every ounce of sorrow, a life that was destined to be loved - regardless of all else - from the very start. 

On this Feast of the Sacred Heart, my newest child gets to see firsthand the selfless and true love of Christ (one of the only consolations I find).  But their Momma, she gets to offer it.

And like it or not, it is perhaps the closest I will ever come to the Divine.   

"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light."

(Matthew 11: 28-30, Gospel reading for the 
Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, June 23rd 2017)

For Baby #7, who would have been 11 weeks this weekend, may you always know how loved you are on Earth, until the day when I can share with you in the full extent of Christ's Sacred Heart in heaven.