Feast of the Sacred Heart, 2013
You might remember twenty years ago that in the movie, Star Wars, the characters would constantly say to one another “may the force be with you.” This of course was the Hollywood way of teaching everyone that very smart humans would be allowed to believe in a god as long as they believed that he was some sort of huge—all encompassing—omnipresent impersonal force that surrounds us and keeps us in existence, but doesn’t really know us or make any demands of us or of our loyalty or of our love or of our obedience. No more than electricity would. The Force is just out there.
Many of the founding fathers of the United States believed in a similar god—they were Deists. God for them was a Being who created the Universe, all its laws and movements, and then just walked away. Once he created it, he was no longer involved with it. Everyone and every thing would be on its own Obviously, the god of the Deists makes no demands of anyone.
That creepy eye
There are no Ten Commandments—no Two Great Commandments about love. There is no need for a church or priests or Bible or prayers. And no need to worry since there is no heaven or hell. It is all very scientific, reasonable—and pretty easy. And remember this American god is symbolized by the creepy All-seeing eye at the top of the pyramid on our money.
The Enlightenment god is not a Person—or three Persons for that matter. He does not deal with us personally, and we really don’t have to deal with him. We don’t have to love him or obey him or talk to him—because he doesn’t love us or talk to us or ask us to follow him. If America has any official set of beliefs, this is it: We are Americans. We can do whatever we want to do—and even God goes along with us.
But this is wrong and leads to terrible consequences in our lives and in the life of the world. If we do not know who God truly is, we will not know who we are—or what we must do—and how we must respond.
Our God also loves
Yes, the God of the Christians, the God of the Catholics is all-powerful. He is omnipresent and in every corner of the universe and in every corner of our lives. He is the Force that holds everything in existence. He did create the universe with immutable laws that we need to discover. But our God—and this is what the moderns and the masons and liberal democrats and the rationalists cannot accept—our God also loves. Our God is a personal God who knows us individually and personally. Our God establishes a relationship with each of us—a relationship based on love and friendship and loyalty.
Look at the Old Testament. You will see on every page a God revealing Himself to His people as a God who is concerned with these humans—worried about them—angry with them—broken hearted for their infidelities to Him and ready always to forgive them their sins.
Look at the New Testament—a whole beautiful story of how the omnipotent and omnipresent Creator of the universe becomes a mere human, and spends all His time and efforts on sorrowing widows and poor beggars. God—Jesus— actually worries about us poor creatures. He actually loves us.
No God like ours
And even at the end—as He hangs upon a cross dying for the very creatures who are executing Him—He forgives them—for He knows that they know not what they do. In all the recorded history of religion—there is no God like this One—for whom Love is as much a part of his identity as is power.
A lot of people believe in an all-knowing God—in an all powerful God—The Force—The Watchmaker—Allah. We are the only ones who believe in a God who loves us and worries about us. To show us how deeply He cares about us, He has given us His Law—a Law of love to be sure—but a law that also makes demands of our lives. God wants us to know, that if we follow this Law, we will be following Him and our lives will bloom and prosper unto eternity. His laws are meant not to bind us and hurt us—but to free us into His love.
I mention all of this because Friday was the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and June is the month of the Sacred Heart. And if you want to know who God really is—look to the Image of the Sacred Heart. There is our God— with that beautiful face and large limpid eyes—offering to us His open broken heart. —and look! His heart is aflame— aflame with love and the desire that we be one with Him. This is a God who cares—and who is desperate for us to respond to Him.
Ignore our atheist government
And we respond by our prayers—by our love—by the practice of our lives.
We follow His will in our lives. And that means we must pray every day and go to Mass every Sunday. We must confess our sins and do our penance. We give a cup of water to the beggar gladly and food and love to our families faithfully. We must observe the Ten Commandments and believe all the truths that the Catholic Church teaches.
We must ignore whatever our atheist government tells us—especially whatever it decrees about life and love, marriage and children, family and friends. Just assume it is wrong and evil. The god of the rationalists, the god of the politicians, the god of Hollywood, the Force, the Watchmaker—he doesn’t care whether we live or die—he just doesn’t care.
But the True God does—And that is the God you see when you look into the eyes of the Sacred Heart.