Entering the Heart of Jesus
Jesus loves us relentlessly. Jesus tells us about God’s extravagant love for us. God pursues us and scatters his abundant graces on us. That is not just a baseless claim.
In several parables Jesus tells us God sows the seed of the Word in us. He never gets tired of scattering that seed. Whether our soil is fertile or rocky, God keeps scattering the seed of his word.
In another parable Jesus says God’s grace is like yeast that a woman puts into three measures of flour. That’s enough yeast to make bread for one hundred people. God trusts that his grace or his word will finally take hold in us and that we will work in his kingdom to impact scores of people.
God is loving us into his kingdom. The expanse of God’s kingdom is as wide as the outstretched arms of the crucified Christ. God’s generosity and mercy keep showering us with that seed and enlivening us with that yeast.
Sometimes we feel that God’s efforts in us are in vain. We may be in despair from pain and suffering. We may be choked by the thorns and rocky ground. Pleasure seems so much easier to pursue. The devil is there to mislead us.
Jesus just keeps scattering the seed, and the yeast keeps growing until our faith begins to show. Maybe it just takes time for us to understand what is happening and for our hearts to grasp the message of of God’s love.
The mystery of God’s love is hard to grasp. When we look at the pierced heart of Jesus, we get a glimpse of the love poured out for us all. Carl Rahner wrote that when we look at the heart of Christ, we may ask, “Do you love me?” Does this love generate a blessed eternity?
Father John Klassen says the answer to that question is the mystery that brushes up against us and invites us into the heart of Jesus. When we enter the heart of Jesus, standing in faith, hope and love, the mystery that is love overwhelms us. “We are submerged in the unquestionable reality of the mystery of God,” Klassen says.
When we enter the heart of Jesus, “We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us,” says John Crowder in his reflection “We are now declared innocent by the love of God.”
Jesus gives us some simpler parables to understand God’s love. God watches and waits for us like the Father in the story of the prodigal son.
In Ezekiel 34:11-16, the Good Shepherd brings back the scattered sheep to their own country. He pastures them upon the mountain. They lie down on good grazing ground, in rich pastures. “The lost I will seek out… The sick I will heal.”
It is hard to grasp the generosity of God’s love. If we “got it,” it would change us. Are we innocent because we don’t know how much God loves us? Like the Roman soldiers crucifying Christ who didn’t get? Yet Jesus cried out in his agony, “Father forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”
God keeps on loving us extravagantly. He sent his son, a God with skin, that we could relate to more easily. The words of Jesus, his life and his humanity help us better understand God’s love. “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” Jesus said. (John 14:9).
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