Firstly, the primary lens to view our relationship with Jesus is marriage. That is why the Sacrament of Marriage plays such an important role in mirroring what it means to have a relationship with the Lord. Christ’s association with the Church is described through the nuptial relationship between a man and a woman. But it does not stop there. The vocations of priests and religious too can be seen in the light of marriage. A priest is married to the people he serves. A religious nun is the spouse of Christ.
In the light of these nuptial relationships, we could perhaps begin exploring a reality crucial to our well-being. And it is happiness. How can we characterise happiness? According to St Therese de Lisieux, “true happiness on earth consists of being forgotten and in remaining completely ignorant of created things. I understood that all we accomplish, however brilliant, is worth nothing without love”. Such a spiritual notion of happiness runs counter to our understanding because our concept of happiness can be narrowly materialistic. It is largely centred on the triple criteria of success, money and power.
Such is observable in JB which in a way embodies this notion. On one level, families struggle financially. Many face the difficulty of making ends meet. From this perspective, chasing for money is not evil. Jesus said, when Satan asked Him to turn stones into bread, “Man does not live on bread alone”. That quip may be true, but man still needs bread for the strength to worship God. What is also true for many who have made a life in JB is the improvement in the quality of life. This is where the snare of materialism can catch us unawares. The constant drive to “improve” may be based on the model of “not having enough”.
Whenever we operate under the principle of inadequacy, our happiness will depend on accumulating. Enough is never secure with the result that one is left hungering for more security. The race for material sufficiency is one that many have no control over and even if they feel that it is futile, they have no power to stop running.
Perhaps we can learn the truth about “not having enough”. There is a God-gap in our heart. Even sins can be understood from the perspective of the emptiness created by this God-vacuum in our lives. By God’s intentional design we are left with this incomplete part and the only way to fill this void is with God and not with material goods.
If we do not recognise this, we will be condemned to search for God in all the wrong places. Have you ever suffer an addiction? Gaming or gambling, texting or sexting, substance abuse or shopping compulsion. Our hunger for completion is immense and any kind of disorder, physical or behavioural, that leads to sins is really a symptom of our God-search gone wrong.
Some of us struggle each day to make sense of our lives. And many despair that they can ever be saved. The usage of the words like sinner or sinful is not a condemnation that we are bad. Such words only point to the symptoms that our search for God has gone wrong. We are searching for love in all the wrong places instead of turning towards God.
But Pope Francis did say that “Tears are the lenses we need to see Jesus”. With an incomplete heart seeking fulfilment, it makes a lot of sense for us to turn to a Heart that breaks itself for us. Instead of searching desperately amongst unsuitable fulfilment, we would be better served by turning to the Lord because He is our answer.
Imagine that our names, your names and mine have been inscribed onto the Broken but Sacred Heart of Jesus. His Heart pulsates with love for each one of us, for you and for me. No one is ever unwanted by Him, not even the greatest sinner and it is never too late to turn to Him.
The greatest material well-being, psychological equilibrium and spiritual fulfilment we can think of or we can ever achieve pales in comparison to the joy of being love by Christ. The Heart of Christ speaks to the aching heart that longs for completion and that cries out to be loved. Happiness or earthly well-being can only do so much. We may be happy for a while but it is never forever because after a while, we will always feel dissatisfied. It is Jesus Christ who is the sole answer all our eternal longings.
Our family cannot do without Him. He must be at the centre of your marriage. Perhaps we can end with a prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Blessed are You Lord God, Eternal Father.
Our marriage comes from your goodness to us,
You are the one who brought us together and you lead our life.
We place the Most Sacred Heart of your Son Jesus at the centre of our marriage:
to foster a heart free from sin
to nurture a heart giving to the other
to nourish a heart burning with love
to sustain a heart open to your will.
Dispel from our marriage and our family Satan our enemy, the spirit of evil, and send your healing remedy, the ArchangelRaphael, to guide us and defend us.
Amen.
