Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Homily)
June 20, 2021 5:30 pm · Sergio Muñoz Fita
Last weekend we began speaking about devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to which the month of June is dedicated. We said we were going to focus on three Gospel pages in particular. Last Sunday we focused on the passage in which the Heart of Jesus appears as the place of our rest and as the root of the interior life of Jesus Christ that we are all called to imitate: This is to say, the imitation to which Christ invited us was not an imitation of the material aspects of Jesus’ life, but an imitation of the virtues and affections of his Heart. He also invited us to go to him when we are tired and in need of love and understanding.
Today, I invite you to consider a second page of Scripture. In this case, from the Gospel of St. John: “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and let he who believes in me drink. As Scripture says: ‘Out of his heart there shall flow rivers of living water.’” (Jn 7:37-39) and St. John further comments: “He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” This text usually appears punctuated in the wrong way. It must be punctuated as Pope Pius XII did in the Encyclical Haurietis Aquas, the authentic Magna Carta of devotion to the Heart of Jesus. The words of Scripture that Jesus quotes -"out of his heart there shall flow rivers of living water"- do not refer to the person who believes in Jesus - they refer to his own Heart! The Lord invites the thirsty to drink from his Sacred Heart, from which flow torrents of living water.
St. John tells us that the torrent of living water that Jesus promises is the Holy Spirit, which He communicates to those who draw near to Him. This torrent flows from within him. The Greek word, koilia, means interior, but it has behind it a Hebrew word that properly translated means heart.
Throughout life, as the years go by, we have the impression that our heart is dry. In spite of our efforts, how few flowers and fruits of good works embellish it! It is dry. Let us appropriate the prophecy of Ezekiel, in which he speaks to us of the river that gives life to the desert. We have a fountain, Jesus’ Heart, and all we have to do is drink from it. It is an inexhaustible spring, which, as it flows through the arid desert, can turn a wasteland into a paradise, an orchard, a garden. When I approach the Heart of Jesus, I go to the fountain. If in the text of St. Matthew that we contemplated last week, the Heart of Jesus appeared as a place of rest, in the Gospel passage of St. John we are considering today we see it as a source of life capable of transforming our soul, which is arid and dry, so that it becomes a paradise, a "new creation," as St. Paul tells us in the second reading.
Yes, the Heart of Jesus is the source through which the Holy Spirit is communicated to us. He is strength in our weakness and a torrent of living water that can transform the heart of every person, transforming it from a desert and a wasteland into a garden that is never dry, that constantly produces the flowers of virtue and the fruits of good works.
The Heart of Jesus exists today as the living heart in the Risen Christ. The Risen Christ is close to us in the Eucharist, in the tabernacle. We can have direct, close, daily contact, which allows that torrent of living water to pass from his Heart to mine. The privileged moment of contact with this fountain of life is Holy Communion, when his Heart is placed next to mine, the fountain next to the desert, and in this closeness, He can water my soul and give it life, give it the Holy Spirit.
Let us ask the Lord to help us to thirst always for that personal, daily, intimate encounter with the Heart of Jesus, especially in personal prayer, the Sacrament of Penance, and Holy Communion. May He thus give us, as we will say in the Prayer over the Offerings of this Holy Mass, “a heart pleasing to Him”. May the Holy Spirit unite us to the Heart of Christ and make us new creations. May we live urged by the love of Jesus so that from now on, we no longer live for ourselves, but for him who, for our sake, died and rose again.