MEET OUR SACRED HEARTS FAMILY!
(By Sr. Mary Dolorine Pires, SS.CC.)
The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joeseph
A blessed New Year to you! As a new year dawns, I am pleased to announce good news to all our readers, especially the members of the North Shore Roman Catholic Community!
Very soon, in both St. Michael's Church and in St. Peter and Paul's Mission Church you will be given a visible sign of God's love for you. Fr. Paul's dream is finally going to come true, as the Sacred Hearts logo is placed in your places of public worship.
We have already reminded you that, as parishioners in a Sacred Hearts parish and a Sacred Hearts mission church, you belong to the worldwide Sacred Hearts Family. You know, too, that belonging to this Family has gifted you with it a rich legacy-a special relationship with the Loving Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of His Mother.
The logo, a mosaic created by one of our Sacred Hearts Sisters will, therefore, highlight those loving Hearts in brilliant color. Red, we well know, has always symbolized love, passion, self-sacrifice, and heroism; consequently, these Hearts in vivid crimson almost literally cry out that Jesus and Mary have loved us and continue to love us with steadfast love and incredible self-sacrifice. We will note that the logo is circular--a symbol of the non-beginning and non-ending eternity. Indeed, God has loved us from all eternity! We will also note that the Sacred Hearts themselves are surrounded by a large circular wreath of thorns, reminding us that the love of Jesus and Mary for us cost them a great deal of pain and sorrow.
This week we will concentrate on the symbolism clearly visible in the mosaic's representation of the Heart of Jesus. The flames rising from that Heart are surmounted by a cross. We can easily recognize the symbol of the passionate love of Jesus for us all, a love that has already proved itself in His redeeming death on the cross. As if these were not enough to remind us of the self-sacrificing love of Jesus, His Heart is also encircled by its own crown of thorns. Since the shedding of one's blood for another is the ultimate proof of one's love, some drops of blood issue from His Heart, testifying that Jesus loved us unto His death. A heroic, incredible divine love—for us!
Visualizing the Sacred Hearts logo in our mind's eye now will help us appreciate the mosaic and understand its meaning when it is finally in our churches. The reality of what the Sacred Hearts mean in our lives can help us decide on a New Year's resolution well worth making: that each day of 2007 we will recall how dearly God loves us and we will offer at least a brief prayer of praise and gratitude. In this way we can make the New Year a joyous one for the God who continued to love us so intensely. Doing this, we know, will in turn make our own New Year joyous, peaceful, and richly blessed. As members of the Sacred Hearts Family, we can count our many blessings...and our logo will keep reminding us of just that!