Union: The Feast of the Sacred Heart

As the liturgical year wraps up and the churches go into what they called Ordinary Time, the witch goes into Extraordinary Time. But as Ordinary Time comes and the season of Easter ends, we come to Trinity and Pentecost, the season overlapping Easter and the Ordinary. We have seen Ascension, followed by Pentecost or Whitsunday and then followed by Trinity and next Corpus Christi, and finally, at the very in of Trinity Time, and at the dawning of Extraordinary, we arrive at the Feast of the the Sacred Heart. It is only now that I am beginning to see that these separate holidays are not desperate attempts to keep liturgy going, but an ongoing celebration of the relationship between the devotee and the Lord, between the lover and the Beloved.

Ascension was where Jesus, the single, fleshly, incarnated God, living in a particular time and place and a particular body left this world. Jesus who came from God returns to God and in seeing this we remember that we have come from God and will return to him as well.  Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit is the new relationship the lovers have with the Beloved when he is gone in the flesh and present in all of them through his powerful Spirit. Trinity tells us about the relation of God to God and celebrates the great multiplicity of the Divine, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Corpus Christi reflects this on earth, God present as Bread, Wine and People, The people offer bread and wine and all they have, their flesh and spirits, and in return God offers God. The communion is not only the people with each other, but the above with the below. This feast of bread and wine is really a reiteration of Pentecost, for it is a spiritual feast. Christ *becomes among us in the most common of things. There is no Eucharist and no real presence in the bread and wine without Pentecost. The Catholic preoccupation with the bread and wine being the actual skin, meat and blood of Jesus fails to understand that no one’s flesh and blood is very helpful if we eat it unless it is spiritual. And such flesh and blood serves us no good as devotees unless we are spiritual as well.

The entire mystery of the Holy Grail revolves around this. The chalice and dish which cannot properly be seen but which is the grace of God, which gives all good things and is the abundance of God, which is born by the veiled Grail Maid, the lady of wisdom who is Sapientia, who is Mary Magdalene, who is the Blessed Virgin, the High Priestess, the right minded soul. The Grail Story tells us that Body and Blood and Pentecost are the same as is Ascension where Jesus breaths the Spirit upon his people and then departs in the flesh.

So now we come to Sacred Heart, which is the celebration of the burning heart of Jesus and his endless love for the world. The original patron of this day was Saint Lutgarde of Aywieres who asked for insight and wisdom from Jesus and was given it, but found it not enough and so asked for the heart of Jesus. Jesus replied that he in turn wished to have her heart. He placed his heart in her and placed her heart inside of his own. Here is the conclusion of all these feasts. It is not enough to worship, but to be devoted and not enough to be devoted but to be in love, that is to exist in love. It is not enough to merely wish to look upon God, but to enter into God, not to think of God, but to love God, and not to love God, but to love with the very heart of the Beloved. What we first saw at Ascension is complete. The riddle is now explained. Jesus breathes upon his disciples and departs, but the Breath is the Spirit, but the gift of the Spirit is not only breath. The gift is total, it is all of Him, Body and Blood. And such a gift is not complete until our Body and Blood is the Body and Blood of the Beloved. As Jung says in the Red Book, it is not enough to be Christian, one must become Christ. We not only look at the sea, but are like fish in the sea and not only like fish in the sea, but the drops of water in the sea, the Spirit, the Body, the Blood, the Holy Heart not only  being that in which we live and move and have our being, but our very being. This much is celebrated in Corpus Christi where we learn the Beloved is everywhere and concludes in Sacred Heart where we love the Beloved everywhere because that endless sea is his heart, and his heart is our heart and words and explanations must not fall into silence while love is all that remains.

Last two images: Sri Hanuman bearing the Sri Ram and Sita in his sacred heart.

*becomes: this was originally a typo, but it seemed right because in Eucharist Christ does not simply come, he becomes. This specific statement applies to all housles and communions where, in any name the Holy God is called, which is why he is often called The Holy Child.