Commentary on Deuteronomy 7:6-11; 1 John 4:7-16; Matthew 11:25-30

There exists a hillside in Los Altos, California where retired priests and brothers from the Jesuit order go to reside when they have reached the age of retirement. They rest in this building that bears the name “Sacred Heart Jesuit Center”. The name is appropriate. Its residents have made choices about their path in life—decisions that involved passion or suffering—and the commitment to see it through. As they rest there and contemplate their life experiences, the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus accompanies them. The readings for today’s feast offer an opportunity to reconsider what the ancients thought about when using images like the heart and emotions like love. For the seat of emotions and the seat of thought in the human person from biblical times differ slightly from modern ways of thinking about these things.

Love According to the Book of Deuteronomy
In today’s passage from Deuteronomy, Moses speaks as God’s mouthpiece to remind the people that they are set apart from the other nations. It is not that the Hebrew people were ‘special’, but rather the point made in this section is that they are chosen as an instrument and for a purpose.

It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath.

The first part of these verses uses the phrase “set his heart” to capture the sense of the line. But in the original Hebrew, the word for heart was never used; instead the author used a verb that suggests choice, desire, and thought. In the next verse, the actual word ‘love’ was selected, which also conveys a decision and thought process suggesting to ‘join together’—to be attached or devoted to someone else. It is the action and process of choosing by the Lord that is emphasized. In the Hebrew language, words like love involve a committed decision, and not a romantic emotion. The ‘heart’, as a metaphorical space in human feelings and thinking, is the seat of thought and decisions, whereas the ‘bowels’ are the place or seat of emotions. Where modern westernized people point to the mind for thinking, the ancient Hebrews pointed to the heart.

Love According to the New Testament
‘Love’ is used frequently in New Testament literature. The Greek word agape describes a selfless affection unique to the Gospels and Letters of the New Testament. In today’s Second Reading, we discover a hymn to agape-love:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

When the author uses agape to describe a unique aspect of love’s many faces, it means to love someone more than one’s own life. This is why we attribute agape-type love to Jesus. We know that Jesus’ life was given away freely for the world since he loved us more than holding on to his own life. The image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus captures this reality. Can the ‘heart’ or love of Christ ever be exhausted? In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we find a helpful reminder to answer this question. Paul was thinking out loud when he wrote about his ministry to them:

I will most gladly spend and be spent for you. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? (2 Cor 12:15)

The answer is no; one cannot exhaust one’s love for another when the action is rooted in Christ. That is why we hold the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus so dearly within the iconography of the Church. Christ’s love is never a diminishment, but rather something that expands like the image of the mustard seed for faith; it keeps growing slowly and deliberately.

Love According to Matthew
Curiously, ministry, and especially the weight of obligations to one another, can seem exhaustive to many followers of various faith traditions. This is a reality from which today’s Gospel does not shy away:

I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Jesus allows us to enter into his intimate prayer between himself and the Father. In the verses above, Jesus personifies the voice of divine Wisdom itself, a characteristic from the Old Testament. In our first testament, from the Hebrew Scriptures, the law could be seen or described as a ‘yoke’. It was both necessary for life and flourishing, but also a burden. Only a fool would neglect the work and labor required to take up the yoke of the Law of Moses. In today’s verses, Matthew does not speak about love as in the First and Second readings. Instead, the Evangelist shares an image of the heart of God as one who shares the load with us. In Matthew, Jesus is called ‘God-with-us’, which we sing in Christmas carols calling upon Emanuel. But Jesus shows that love in deeds, rather than words. He walks with us and in the obligations that we owe to God and to our neighbor. This is a yoke made bearable because we share in the life of Christ.

All of this is tied to the mystery of today’s solemnity for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s like the fathers and brothers who rest at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Altos. They have labored and been burdened through a life of service. Held in the heart of Christ, may they at last discover true rest in their souls—souls now at peace at the end of their earthly abode.