“I Will Always Love You”
It always amazes me how many of the most influential songs in our history have ‘love’ as their central theme. One of the most popular songs of all time is sung by Dolly Parton and Whitney Houston, “I Will Always Love You.” Although the meaning of the song is not relevant for our discussion today, the name of the song, “I Will Always Love You” can speak a lot about the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Whether we are steeped in sins, brokenness, fears, trials, temptations, wounds or if we are filled with joy, consolation, freedom and peace…wherever we find ourselves, the Heart of Jesus says to us, “I will always love you.” This is a very comforting truth because there is nothing that we can say or do that is going to make God stop loving us. There is no sin too great in the eyes of God that would somehow make us less loveable to Him. We already have His Heart.
Love is the reason we were created and love is what sustains us into being. We cannot survive without the love of God…it is that essential. Pope Benedict XVI says in his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, “Love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed “ecstasy”…a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus toward authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est. 6). When we love, we discover in a deeper way who we are and who God is, and love frees us to the point that we must give of ourselves.
When we look at the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we see a Heart that burns with love for us. Do we long to console the Sacred Heart of Jesus? We can oftentimes take for granted God’s generous outpouring love for us. It can be very simple for us to conclude that since God’s love for us is so great, we can continue the life that we are living with all of its sins without a desire to change. We can think, “Oh well, God loves me anyway” without desiring for our lives to reform. However, when we truly love someone, we no longer want to offend them. If that is true for our earthly relationships, how much more this should be true in our relationship with God! Somehow, we believe the lie that when we give our love to God, He is going to take something away from us, our lives will be miserable, and we will no longer be able to have fun! This is very far from truth! The more we love the Lord, the freer we become and the more we become who God has created us to be. Jesus says, “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10 RSV)
What consoles the Heart of Jesus is that we are open to receive His mercy and offer mercy to others in return. We can only know and sincerely love the Heart of Jesus when we spend time with Him in the Holy Eucharist. Offering up Holy Hours and making prayers of reparation for sins committed against His Sacred Heart can be beautiful acts of love towards our Lord. We also know living a life of obedience to the commandments of God, engaging in acts of service and meditating on the Passion of Jesus can be a great source of consolation to Jesus. Let us make it our aim to console the Heart of Jesus and respond to Him in all confidence, “Jesus, I will always love you.”
