The word love is such a powerful word.
Logically there are many definitions of love, but emotionally, the implications are far and wide and deep.
Love that is offered and accepted is beautiful.
In 1 Cor 13, love is expressed as patience, kindness, generosity, humility and forgiveness.
Love that is offered and accepted is truly beautiful. On the other hand, love that is offered but rejected is really sorrowful.
Unrequited love is one of the themes for TV soap operas and sob stories.
But in reality, unrequited love has the consequence of everything that is the opposite of what is expressed in 1 Cor 13, and that is selfishness, jealousy, pride and conceitedness.
In other words, unrequited love results in a heartbreak and a heartache.
One of the revelations of Jesus to St. Margaret Mary is this when He said: Behold the Heart that loves humanity with so much love, but in return what I received is ingratitude, coldness and contempt.
But the Sacred Heart of Jesus continues to burn furiously with love and mercy for humanity.
The 1st reading expresses that love like this: I myself taught Ephraim to walk, I took them in my arms. Yet they have not understood that I was the one looking after them. I led them with reins of kindness, with leading strings of love. I was like someone who lifts an infant close to his cheek, stooping down to him I gave him his food.
But as the 2nd reading tells us that the love of Christ is planted in our hearts, and build on that love, we are able to respond with love.
And that is what we have done for the past 3 days and that is what we are doing as we celebrate the Feast of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
We give thanks and praise to Jesus for His love. We offer prayers of reparation and atonement for our sins and the sins of the world.
We offer petitions to Jesus for His love to be poured out on our prayers so that we will feel His great love for us.
We offer roses as a humble sign of our love for Jesus.
And speaking of roses, we didn't have the offering of roses for Jesus on the Feast of the Sacred Heart last year.
Well, last year, the churches were closed for public worship so we can't come to church for Mass or to offer roses to Jesus to express our love.
In fact, there were no floral decorations in church.
Even when public Masses were resumed in church, floral decorations were deemed as non-essential.
After all, the floral decorations will wither in a couple of days and had to be discarded.
So, pragmatically speaking, and to save costs, the floral decorations can hold on for a while.
But the roses at the Statue of the Sacred Heart and the floral decorations at the altar and around the church have something to tell us.
Though these flowers will wither in a couple of days, we use them to show our love for Jesus, and Jesus accepts them with love, just as parents will accept any simple gift from their children.
The flowers are also an expression of the frailty and fragility of our love and our lives.
Yet Jesus accepts us in our frailty and fragility because He loves us.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux is also known as the Little Flower of Jesus.
As a child, she was difficult to please and to appease, but her father knew how to make her happy.
He gave her a flower. It made her happy. But it also began to make her think.
If she can be happy with just a flower, then she also wanted to make Jesus happy by being a little flower offered to Jesus.
And then came another reflection. She can make others happy too, by being a little flower for them and also by doing little things with great love.
St. Thérèse was also afraid of the dark. But she managed to overcome that by thinking of offering flowers to Jesus, and that helped her to overcome her fear of the dark and to sleep well.
So the humble flower has a lot to tell us and also a lot to teach us.
Like the flowers in the field, we will bloom and fade away, just like these flowers will wither in a couple of days.
We are frail, we are fragile, we too are like a flower.
But we are not just like flowers that will wither away. We are flowers at the foot of the Cross of Christ.
And from the open Heart of Jesus Christ, the blood and water will cover our frailty and fragility, and make us into flowers of beauty for God's glory.
The truth about people is that they are like flowers. They are fragile and they must be handled with care.
Some people may seem to be like cactus, but cactus can bear flowers too, and their flowers can be quite beautiful.
Like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, let us also be that little flower for Jesus, and let us be that little flower for others.
Let us be little flowers offered to the Heart of Jesus to show our love and gratitude.
Let us be flowers of God's love and peace, so that we can bring beauty to this world and offer this world as a bouquet of flowers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
(Join us 'live' on Youtube for the Mass of the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Link to broadcast is https://youtu.be/Xmlev7BIZWc )
