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March, 2015


Welcome to the latest edition of Heart-2-Heart!
 
Heart-2-Heart is published on the First Friday of each month by the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We offer this as our gift to you with the hopes that our story and the spirituality of the Sacred Heart will touch your heart as you strive to live the Gospel in your daily life.  
Rend our Hearts

 

Each Ash Wednesday we hear the Prophet Joel ask that we "Rend [our] hearts and not [our] garments" (Joel 2:13). In rending our hearts, we ask God to help us break through the hardness that can encrust our hearts. This requires risk - the risk that, letting go of self-reliance, we will trust the vulnerability of our hearts to God.

In his 2014 Lenten homily, Pope Francis challenges us to engage in a fast that takes this risk: "We must be careful not to practice a formal fast, or one which in truth "satisfies" us because it makes us feel good about ourselves. Fasting makes sense if it questions our security, and if it also leads to some benefit for others, if it helps us to cultivate the style of the Good Samaritan, who bends down to his brother in need and takes care of him." Sometimes, when we give up chocolate or soda for Lent, this act of self-control affirms our own power. What are the fasts that question our self-assurance, our independence, our ability to "go it alone"? What are the fasts that remind us that we cannot do it without God - that we don't want to do it without God? 
This Lent, let us take the opportunity to rend our hardened hearts in order to expose them to the love of God. Let us enter into Jesus' journey through the desert so that we may know his love more deeply and share it with others.

Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus