God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son, so that we could have life through him.
I once saw a little wooden cross - maybe it was in our shop here, I don’t recall - the sort people wear unostentatiously around their neck, or perhaps on a lapel. This one was quite plain, except for the figure of a heart outlined, very simply, at its centre. I thought that a fine expression of the great truth of our Faith we celebrate today. There, at the nodal point; there where height and depth and breadth and length intersect; there at the centre of human history, and of the created Universe - of all time and all space - there is the Heart of Jesus. And this Heart radiates love, for God the Father and for each of us. The alternative Collect we had at the beginning of Mass just now speaks of “infinitos dilectionis thesauros” - “the infinite treasures of love” found in this Heart. Infinite because divine as well as human; infinite because inexhaustible, all-powerful, limitlessly available; always open to sinners, always open to us. The Sacred Heart is set on a Cross, because the suffering of Jesus for our sins, and his sacrificial death for our salvation, are central to the meaning of today’s Feast. The Heart is set on a Cross also because here supremely is the place of its revelation. Here we see God’s meaning, his plan, his attitude to us. Here at last also we see the demonstration, the truth of St. John’s teaching, that God is love (1 Jn 4:8,16).
These days each evening at Chapter we are reading little quotations or selections from the works of St. Irenaeus. Irenaeus is regarded as the first great theologian of the Church. He was born round about the middle of the Second Century. In his youth he saw St. Polycarp, who had seen the Apostle John.
The text of today’s Gospel was frequently cited by St. Irenaeus. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father... No one knows the Father except the Son. Jesus both perfectly knows his Father, and perfectly reveals him. Jesus is the true and perfect image of his Father. He is the one, in the words of St. John’s first letter, who is born of God and knows God (cf. 4:7). St. Irenaeus loved to echo St. Paul’s teaching that Jesus was sent by the Father into the world in order to recapitulate the human race in himself (cf. Eph 1:10). “He became what we are”, says Irenaeus, “in order to make us what he is.” “He assimilated himself to us, and us to himself, so that by resemblance to the Son, we might become precious to the Father.” Irenaeus constantly insists on the coherence and the beauty of God’s plan of salvation: on the divine “economy”. Nothing in human history escapes this loving plan, centred in Christ: let us even dare to say, centred in the Heart of Jesus. Everything in Creation was made through him and points towards him. The whole of the Old Testament points to him. Even the pagans are unknowingly directed towards him.
When Adam sinned, he separated himself and all his descendants from God’s love. So Jesus came to expiate our sins (1 Jn 4:10). He had to do that in order to fit us to receive God’s love, and enable us to respond to it. Sin is the opposite of love: un-love, or non-love; a block to love’s freedom and growth. In Jesus God overcame our sins, not by an act of violence or injustice, but gently; not by coercion, but with a free invitation. Accepting that invitation, and freed at last from sin, we can be drawn by Jesus, without impediment, into the love shared by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. St. Irenaeus defines love as “the most excellent gift, more precious than knowledge, more glorious than prophecy, superior to all the other charisms”.
No one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him (Mt 11:27). It’s of first importance to St. Irenaeus that the love of God in the Heart of Jesus be revealed, manifested, made known. Jesus wants us to share his own knowledge of the Father, and the Father wants us to know of the human love in the Heart of Jesus. Irenaeus says: “The Father is invisible to us, but was made visible through his Word. The Father is inexpressible, but the Word expresses Him to us.... The Father is the invisible of the Son, and the Son is the visible of the Father... We are truly able to know God the Father, when we are taught by his own Word”.
The name “Irenaeus” means “man of peace”, but the context of nearly everything St. Irenaeus wrote was his war against the Gnostic heretics. This war had already been joined by St. John the Apostle, and perhaps in its beginnings also by St. Paul. These sects constructed fantastic mythologies of their own. They claimed secret knowledge of God, reserved to those in their inner circles. They could be both harshly ascetic and sexually promiscuous. An enduring feature of their ever-changing doctrine was a contempt for marriage, and for all that is naturally human. Against them Irenaeus stood on the tradition of the Apostles. He stood on scripture also of course, but the heretics also cited scripture: though always twisted, bent, perverted to their own will.
Still in our own day the gnostics are flourishing, and busy, and doing very well. They have a modern face of course. They are learned and clever, and their business is to conform the Gospel to the spirit of the age. Many of them claim to venerate Jesus, but he’s a different Jesus from the one we know. Against them, with Irenaeus, we stand on the unchanging, unchangeable tradition of the Catholic Church. With him, we reject whatever is incompatible with what the Catholic Church teaches and has always taught. And we proclaim that the truth is much better than all this phoney philosophy. Irenaeus demonstrated so well, once again, that the authentic Gospel really is Good News; thrilling, uplifting, life-giving; better by far than anything that could ever be dreamed up by men.
Whenever we think that non-love, un-love, anti-love is winning, or has won, we need to look to the Heart of Jesus, as he hangs on the Cross. That seems to be love defeated, love powerless, love rejected, love crushed. But we know that in truth it’s love already triumphant; love enduring forever; merciful love whose power is infinite; divine love calling to us, and inviting our own heart-felt response.