Today is June 23, Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time.
We read at today’s Mass, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing” (Gn 12:2).
The day after Corpus Christi often feels like a deep breath after a magnificent procession. Yesterday we carried Christ through the streets; today the Lord carries us with a promise first spoken to Abraham: “I will bless you … so that you will be a blessing.” God’s fidelity to that covenant stretches from Abraham to Moses, from David to the prophets, and reaches its climax in Jesus Christ–our faithful friend.
Sixteenth-century Carthusian Johann Lanspergius urges us to anchor that promise in the Sacred Heart: “Appropriate to yourself in this loving Heart all graces imaginable — you will never exhaust it … Even if every person abandons you, Jesus will be your one faithful friend. He will always keep you in his Heart.”
Fulfillment in Christ
Every covenant of the Old Testament — Abraham’s, Moses’, David’s — finds its fulfillment in Christ, whose Heart is the unbreakable seal of God’s faithfulness. Others may fail us; he will not.
The Sacred Heart is the guarantee that God’s covenant love has a human face and a human heartbeat. When fear or discouragement tempts us to doubt, we need only remember: his Heart holds every grace we need, and his fidelity never fails.
Today, let the simple words “Jesus, I trust in You” become your breath prayer. In every joy and in every need, run to the Heart that will never deceive you.
Let us pray,
Grant, O Lord, that we may always revere and love your holy name, for you never deprive of your guidance those you set firm on the foundation of your love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
