A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Since it was the preparation day, the Jews did not want the bodies left upon the cross during the Sabbath. For that Sabbath was a very solemn feast day. So they asked Pilate that the legs be broken and the bodies be taken away. Accordingly, the soldiers came and broke the legs of the men, both of them, crucified with Jesus.
First of the one and then they broke the legs of the second man. When they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side. At once, blood and water flowed out. This testimony has been given by an eyewitness, and his testimony is true.
He tells what he knows is true so that you may believe. These events took place for the fulfillment of scripture. Break none of his bones. There is still another scripture passage which says, they look upon him whom they have pierced. And this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. We are celebrating today the feast of the sacred heart of Jesus. Now, that feast did not come into existence without a lot of trouble and difficulty and controversy, doubts, and apprehension because it is a dangerous sort of focusing. To focus so much upon a bodily organ, which after all is just a muscle. We talk about the heart as if it was well, almost everything.
But all all that it is really is a is a muscle inside here someplace. I take it on faith that I have one. Some people say I don't have one, but I'm told on good authority that all human beings have a heart. It's a thing that keeps your blood pumping along. Now you see, the the danger is that we focus on this and forget the divinity of Christ.
Well, actually, today, it seems to me that in many instances, we're in danger of forgetting his humanity. People are, for some reason or other, shy away from the literal meaning that Jesus Christ, the son of god, became man. They shy away from it. They wanna give all kinds of metaphorical means. For example, the resurrection of our lord.
Yes. It makes no difference whether he physically rose from the dead. It's a matter of the resurrection of our faith. That's the kind of thing I'm it's gnosticism. Goes all the way back to Saint John's day.
It's supposed to be a more ethereal, a more spiritualized outlook. It it it tries to transcend mere matter. Here you have this old Platonism coming in. I'm talking about the present tense. Now we have to be on our guard against it.
We have to swallow, and it's a big gulp. Don't minimize it. That when we're asked to look at that cross and we see a figure on the cross and we say that that man up there was born of a virgin Jewish girl, that's that's that's something in itself, believe me, to swallow. Then we're told that that man in the in the single personality of his being was god, divine. And the son of god in the person of Jesus Christ came down on this Earth, lived for thirty some years, and then went through this passion and death and resurrection.
This is a tremendous act of faith. Let us not minimize. It's a gift of god. A gift. You can't get it by working at it.
You don't get it out of a syllogism. Newman said that, and I Newman was pretty right on a lot of things. Believe me. So that this this etherealizing, this idealizing, this abstracting to to try to formulate, to force ourselves who are human beings with only one nature, Christ had two, to to think in these very abstract terms when god himself didn't want it that way. God himself is the one who made the decision to become man.
It was not an idea of some some descendant of Adam and Eve. That's for sure. And so