At that time, Jesus said, father, lord of heaven and of earth, to you, I offer praise. For what you have hidden from the learned and from the clever, you have revealed to the merest child. Father, it is true. You have graciously willed it to be so. Everything has been given over to me by my father.
No one knows the son but the father, and no one knows the father but the son and anyone to whom the son wishes to reveal the father. Come to me, all you who are weary and find life burdensome, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. Your souls will find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light. And this is indeed the good news of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Just two days ago, I had the privilege of having a distinguished gentleman sailing with me on the magnificent Chesapeake Bay. And as usual, our conversation was on a very high level. And his his he was he's a good Catholic gentleman, a professional man, and he said he could never understand why God created the world. Said, why did he do it?
Well, first of all, that's a very sensible question. That's point number one. So we take it for granted. You say God created the world? Fine.
Why? Why would he do it? He surely didn't need the world if he's God. And what does the world contribute to God? And the answer is nothing.
We can't add to God in any way. So why did he do it? Well, I I I I I'm not the best person even to ask that question of. I don't know. I haven't had any direct communication lately.
But I know some of the answers that are given, and the one answer, the only answer that makes any sense, is what we call love, whatever that is. That God created the world, the universe. You're not just talking about our old little old earth. You're talking about the universe. You're talking about everything which is not God.
And we're saying it's a product. It's a consequence. It's an it's an effect. It's the outcome. It's the product.
It's the result of his love. Love. For centuries, centuries, way, way back going back into the Greeks, if you read Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, and I'm not acquainted with the Nordic myths, but you find love, human love, courage, fidelity, virtue symbolized in this organ, this little muscle in here called the heart, which we've heard a lot since Doctor. Clark died, or was kept alive for a while. It's just an old it's just a muscle through which fluids grow and it keeps pumping, and as long as it pumps regularly we feel pretty good, all things considered.
And then when it stops, we stop. So the heart isn't any more isn't anything more in the realm of the spiritual, or the intellectual, or the rational, or the emotional, or the sentimental than my hand, or my foot. But there has always been this relationship, this metaphor, this allegory, this symbolism of the heart representing man's deepest and women's deepest, profoundest emotions and sentiments. Notice the word courage comes from the word heart. And so from the earliest times in the church, we have had some attention given to the heart of Jesus Christ as a symbol of love.
Scholars today think they can find evidence of it in the old and the new testament. We had evidence of it today. In the old testament, Deuteronomy, the reference to the heart, the reference to the love at Saint John, and then our blessed Lord referring to the heart in his wonderful, wonderful, and most encouraging words, come to me all you who are weary and who is not weary at times. And so the church has it's been a long process, has gradually developed, expanded, emphasized a special feast to concentrate on the love of Jesus Christ as the son of God from which comes forth his graces to save us. Now it's taken all kinds of symbolism, and some of the symbolism has not been of the best.
But thanks to great pontiffs like Pius the eleventh, Pius the twelfth, and Leo the thirteenth, the church has given its authoritative declaration, its authoritative explanation, its authoritative concept of this feast of the sacred heart. And we can't go wrong if we are with the church of Jesus Christ. And so it is today that the church, the universal church, emphasizes the heart as a symbol of God's love expressed through Jesus Christ and the heart of Christ as it expresses its love for man, overflowing from the cross. You see, we we don't realize enough the love of God. Francis Thompson, in his worst days, when he was wallowing in the gutter, and that's no figure of speech, he wallowed in the gutter, Tom Francis Thompson.
And out of that came his hound of heaven, which as being no poet, I it's one of the greatest things I think that I know of, the hound of heaven. God loves me and he's on my tail. He is pursuing me. I'm not running after god. In many instances, I'm running away from him, but he's always behind me, always pursuing me because he knows I need him.
In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.