Our Hearts As Bethany

James Tissot's Jesus at Bethany

This is a post I wrote as one of my Sunday Meditations about a year ago on my personal blog, Daughter of the King. The Gospel for that Sunday was the account of Jesus visiting the home of His friends Lazarus, Mary and Martha. I thought I would share that post here in celebration of both St Martha, whose feast we celebrate today, and St Mary Magdalen, whose feast day was last Friday.
These two beautiful saints, it has often been said, represent the image of the Contemplative (Mary) and the Active (Martha). Choosing the better part, I believe, comes when we learn how to be both, often simultaneously!

Our Hearts As Bethany

I would like to look at today's Gospel (Luke 10:38~42) from a slightly different perspective. It is one related to an experience I had about a month ago while listening to and reflecting on a meditation I had heard on this very reading.
Martha, Mary and their brother Lazarus were friends of Jesus. The house in Bethany was a place Our Lord often visited during His earthly life. Scripture tells us that: "foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of man has no where to lay his head." (Luke 9:58) But Jesus knew that He would be welcomed at this home of His friends at any time.
In today's reading we hear how the two sisters related very differently to Our Lord. Martha was always busy with the details of showing hospitality to their Divine Guest, while Mary, as always, was content to sit at His feet and hang on His every word. I sometimes imagine Lazarus in this scene in the background just rolling his eyes at the two of them. Our Lord gently but firmly rebukes Martha in her complaints about her sister's refusal to help; He tells her that Mary has chosen the better part. We never find out Martha's reaction to Jesus' rebuke.
During the evening of reflection in which I heard the meditation on this reading, we were given some quiet time for personal prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. It was during this time that the thought occurred to me that our hearts should be Bethany for Our Lord. He desires each of us to welcome Him, give Him a place to rest, and simply sit at His feet.
I don't think Jesus was all that upset with Martha; he realized that the preparations she was making were necessary, but He also desired her company.
He desires ours as well. Our hearts being a Bethany for Jesus is a thought that has remained with me since that prayerful evening. It helped me to realize that preparing my heart for Jesus in Holy Communion is important, but once I have done that, He simply desires my loving attention to His Presence. The same holds true for my visits with Him during my holy hours. I don't have to spend every one of those hours in formal prayer; sometimes it is just enough to sit quietly and prayerfully gazing at Him in the sanctuary (Psalm 63:2).

Prayer
My Dear Lord Jesus,
Come Divine Guest and find my heart a place of welcome rest. May You always find my heart and soul ready to receive You. May I never again neglect Your Presence within me because my head is too busy with the details of my day. You always felt welcomed at the home of Your friends in Bethany; may my heart be like Bethany, always ready to receive and welcome You.
May I prepare it as Martha did, then choose the better part, and sit at Your feet as Mary did.
Help me to be content in gazing upon You in prayerful adoration as You gaze lovingly upon me.
Thank You for desiring to be with me always.
Amen.

The Blood Of The Lamb

Today is a grace filled day. Not only do we celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but the month of July also is the month dedicated to His Most Precious Blood. As I reflected on what this means to some extent, for I will never be able to wrap my earth~bound mind around it completely, I began to see the deep connection between these two feasts. The precious blood of Christ that spilled from His own human, Sacred Heart~all I can see in that is His profound love for each of us.
This thought was made even clearer and became more humbling when I read a transcript of a  conference given by Fr. John Hardon. In his opening remarks, he explains what Christ being the Lamb of God means for us, that because Jesus was God and without sin, the only way He was capable of dying was to be slain; He would not otherwise have died a mortal death because He was sinless! I am not sure this is something we often realize or reflect on, at least I haven't until reading Father's words.
Today is also the First Friday of the month (more grace!)which is part of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. As we celebrate today's feasts with grateful and joyful hearts, let us also perhaps meditate on Jesus' Passion and Death~the Lamb of God who was slain not because of His sin, for He was sinless, but ours. During His Passion and Death He shed every last drop of His Precious Blood from His Sacred Heart for love of you and me.
Here is a brief excerpt from Father Hardon's conference:

Is Jesus as the Lamb of God. He is the Lamb of God not only because He sacrificed Himself, He is the Lamb of God because He continues sacrificing sacred heart precious bloodHimself in an unbloody way in every Mass He offers. And while His sacrifice is completed, ours must go on...Having said that, Father Gerald identifies the second primary foundation for the imitation of Christ as the Precious Blood of Jesus. The moment we say that Christ is the Lamb of God and explain that the Lamb of God was slain for our redemption, having further recognized and this is crucial - we further recognize that Christ, though Man, would not have died naturally because, unlike us, He was not a sinner. His death had to be inflicted outside of Himself. In a word, the Lamb of God - watch the verb - had to be slain in order to die. Moreover, Christ being the sinless Lamb of God, having no sin on His soul which would have deserved death, his mortal Body, mortal because He wanted it to be mortal, could only die by the Blood separating from that Body. Christ's Body was deprived of its Soul when the Blood left the Body. All of this, therefore, is locked up in realizing that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who by shedding His Blood, redeemed the world. 

Read more of the conference here.

Loving the Sacred Heart of Jesus

On the third Friday after Pentecost, which is July 1 this year, the Church celebrates the feast of the Sacred Heart, a devotion that was propagated in the Church from the 13^th to the 16^th centuries and came into full bloom in the late 17^th century when St. John Eudes honored it with its own Divine Office and Mass propers and feast day. As often happens, what begins in one region, eventually, if it is worthy, spreads throughout the world to the whole Church and so we have this feast in the universal Church today.

To prepare for this feast, I wrote this post to share some new thoughts I've had about living with and loving Jesus.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance at the Crucifixion, is a symbol of His great love for us. We have this feast because devotion to the love (heart) of Jesus is a way we love Him back, heart to Heart. It reminds us that Jesus has feelings for every human being ever created without exception, and that those feelings are so strong he burns with the desire that we love Him in return. What lover does not burn with the desire to be loved by his beloved?

One of the beauties of different cultures is how language conveys meaning uniquely. In Korean, if a man is attracted to a woman and wishes to get to know her better (and vice versa), he will say he "likes" her, which means he wants to spend time with her, to interact with her, to find out if he should build a relationship with her.

If a man loves a woman (or vice versa) he says "she is in my heart." That means his feelings are so deep he carries his love with him always, is willing to make sacrifices for her or die for her if necessary because she is the most precious person to him in all the world. He seeks to please and delight her in simple ways because she is always, at some level, on his mind. This is not some infatuation, which the word "like" can account for. It is a permanent state that endures throughout the daily demands of his occupation, an attachment that never wavers, a love that places the loved one at greater value than self. It is both romantic and real. Our western use of "love" is overused and misapplied to such an extent it seems a lame expression for something so profound as "in my heart."

Jesus has us in His heart all day every day. He died for us. We are each of us most precious to Him. Our human hearts can't begin to fathom the love He gives to us because we can't imagine what infinite love is. Yet Jesus understands our creaturely limitations and desires that we "hold Him in our hearts", thinking of Him each day and loving Him in all we do. He may ask us to give our lives for His sake as He did for us and if we truly have Him in our hearts, we will do it with generosity and joy, no matter how horrifying the circumstances.

Grace allows us to grow in love of the Sacred Heart, to carry Him in our hearts. If we make a habit of saying this little prayer often during the day we will begin to return love for Love: "Most Sacred Heart of Jesus I implore that I may love Thee more and more." He will do the rest with the delight of the Beloved.