6 October 1989
Medellin, Colombia

In celebrating Mass with you today, I am conscious of the fact that it is the first Friday in the month of October. All over the world many Catholics recall and honor in a special way the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the first Fridays of the month. Both the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the thought of Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, bring to our minds the immense love which both Jesus and Mary have for each one of us. When we see so much suffering, so much poverty, so much pain in the world, we are tempted to doubt if God or Jesus Christ cares for us. In such dark moments, it is good for us to think that God said that even if a mother could forget the child of her womb, He could not forget us. (cf. Is 49:15). Each time your eye catches the crucifix, each time you look at a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, God is saying to you through His Son, Jesus Christ, that He cares. An infant, sleeping in the arms of its mother, may not be conscious of the care that it is receiving. So, too, with us in this life, we are sleeping, very often unaware of the unceasing care and love which God has for each one of us.

When we pray to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we try to make ourselves more conscious of that personal love which Jesus Christ has for each of us. Remember, He knows us all by our Christian names and thinks of us as individuals.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart, however, does not stop at that. Jesus Christ has said to us: "This is My commandment; love one another as I have loved you." (Jn 15:17). Jesus Christ had a very big heart. We know many big-hearted people. Devotion to the Sacred Heart means that we, in turn, must try to be big-hearted persons. To be big-hearted means to be generous to others. When we think of generosity, we think of money, but there are many things other than money with which we can be generous. We can be generous in forgiving. We can be generous in trying to understand others. We can be generous with the time we give to others, and I am sure you can think of many other ways in which we can be generous to those whom we meet in life. Jesus Christ was generous with all that He had to give and He had little or no money. He was generous in the end in giving His life for all of us.

Reflecting on the generosity of Christ, I often think of an observation made by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, Haurietis Aquas, on devotion to the Sacred Heart. He said that the three great gifts of the Sacred Heart to us were: the Eucharist, the Priesthood and His own Mother. When I reflect on this, I feel that if Pius XII were writing today, he might say that there are five great gifts, corresponding to the five wounds of Christ. Since the death of Pope Pius XII, the Church has become more conscious of the importance and place of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church, and we have during the past two decades come to perceive more clearly the mission of the Church in today's world. So the Spirit of God and the Church itself are two further gifts of the Heart of Christ.

These five gifts of the Heart of Christ are like five pieces of a beautiful mosaic. Take away one and the beauty of the masterpiece is spoiled. We cannot be truly devoted to the Eucharist without reverencing the Priesthood, Our Lady, the Church and the Holy Spirit. If we do not see Christ in the Eucharist and show reverence to Him there, we will find difficulty in seeing Him in a poor man and, consequently, we will have difficulty in showing that deep reverence which our Founders ask us to show to the poor. It is appreciation of the five gifts of the Heart of Christ which will lead us to the center of God. St. John the Evangelist, who in his Gospel writes of each of these gifts in turn, had at the end of his life only one message to give to the Christians, which he repeated over and over again. "God is love--God is love." May each one of us be convinced of that truth and, because we are made in the image of God, reflect it in what we do and say to those with whom we live and to the poor.