Authentic Love

​The Saviour's Heart invites us to return to the Father's love, which is the source of every authentic love: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins" (1 Jn 4:10). Jesus ceaselessly receives from the Father, rich in mercy and compassion, the love which he lavishes upon human beings (cf. Eph 2:4; Jas 5:11). His Heart particularly reveals the generosity of God towards sinners. God's reaction to sin is not to lessen his love, but to expand it into a flow of mercy which becomes the initiative of the Redemption.

Contemplation of the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist will spur the faithful to seek in that Heart the inexhaustible mystery of the priesthood of Christ and of the Church. It will enable them to taste, in communion with their brothers and sisters, the spiritual sweetness of charity at its very source. By helping all to rediscover their own Baptism, it will make them more aware of having to live their apostolic dimension by spreading love and participating in the mission of evangelization. Each person needs to be more committed to praying the Lord of the harvest (cf. Mt 9:38) to grant the Church "shepherds after his own heart" (Jer 3:15) who, in love with Christ the Good Shepherd, will pattern their own hearts on his and be ready to go out into the highways of the world to proclaim to all that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life (cf. Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores dabo vobis, n. 82)....

The entire devotion to the Heart of Jesus in its every manifestation is profoundly Eucharistic: it is expressed in religious practices which stir the faithful to live in harmony with Christ, "meek and humble of heart" (Mt 11:29), and it is intensified in adoration. ​​It is rooted and finds its summit in participation in Holy Mass, especially Sunday Mass, where the hearts of the faithful, fraternally assembled in joy, listen 

to the word of God and learn to offer with Christ themselves and the whole of their lives (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 48). There they are nourished at the paschal banquet of the Redeemer's Body and Blood and, sharing fully the love which beats in his Heart, they strive to be ever more effective evangelizers and witnesses of solidarity and hope.

St. John Paul II on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart