First Holy Communion of My Daughter, Mariana Mahal (w/Homily #135 for Solemnity of Sacred Heart of Jesus & Msg. For My Daughter)

Mariana receives her First Communion from her deacon-dad.

(photo by my mom)

(video of Mariana's First Holy Communion by C. Ramos)

Thank you, Father Resti!!!

Homily #135

In the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” after a Roman solider took his lance (or spear) and pierced the side of Jesus on the Cross, this unnamed soldier touched his eye and fell on his knees.  According to a popular legend, this soldier was St. Longinus.  He touched his eye because he was blind in that eye, and his eye was healed when the blood and water that gushed out of Jesus’s heart touched it.  He was immediately converted, and some have said that he was the one who said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”  Legend continues that he was eventually baptized, later ordained a deacon, and died a martyr by beheading.

Today’s Gospel from John 19 describes the meek, humble, sorrowful and broken Heart of Christ that loved us all the way to his death on the Cross.  The prolific St. John Chrysostom wrote about today’s Gospel, QUOTE “Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning…”  END QUOTE St. John Chrysostom the Golden Mouth said that the water and blood that flowed from Jesus’s side represent Baptism and the Eucharist.  The waters of Baptism and the Blood of Christ that we drink are the life of the Church.  In today’s Responsorial Psalm we sing, “You will draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.”  The side of Christ, his pierced, Heart are the springs of salvation!  It was from Jesus’s side, from his pierced broken Heart, that the Church his Bride was fashioned.  It was here at the foot of the Cross that she shares and participates equally in the mission of the Redeemer, even to the point of the Church being a type of Co-Redeemer or a Co-Redemptrix.  The two are one flesh. 

Just as God took the rib from the side of Adam as he was asleep and fashioned Eve, his equal and his beloved bride, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, so too God took the pierced side of the Second Adam as he slept the sleep of death on the Cross and fashioned the Second Eve from his side.  The Second Eve, the Church, shares equally in the mission of Redeemer.  This is the correct sense of sub-missio in Latin—to be under the mission of the Redeemer, the Church is sub-missive to Christ’s mission to die for the world.  She too will undergo her passion in a death like his.  Below the foot of the Cross was the Second Eve, Mary, which Vatican II called an icon of the Church, in her perfection participating once again in the salvation of the world.  It was Mary who said in “The Passion of the Christ” to her Son, “Son, let me die with you” because her perfect Heart was so united to Jesus’s sacred heart that she shared in his sufferings and death.  As Simeon predicted in the Presentation at the Temple, “And a sword shall pierce your Heart.”  This pure and immaculate Heart, this Heart of the Theotokos which we shall celebrate tomorrow, is inseparable to the Heart of her Son.  They are the Twin Hearts of Jesus and Mary.  

Mary, and thus the whole Church, you and me through the springs of salvation, baptism, share in the passion of Jesus.  All our labors, sufferings, and hardships endured for love of God, all our labors to promote consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the 12 promises of Jesus and the Nine First Fridays and consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, are so joined and united to Jesus that you and I today participate in our time in the salvation of souls in some mystical way as the Mystical Body of Christ.  As St. Paul wrote in today’s Second Reading to the Ephesians that the plan of the mystery was hidden in ages past but the “manifold wisdom of God is now made through the Church”.  Just as Jesus laid down his Heart for his Bride, so too we the Beloved Bride lay down our hearts for Him, our Beloved!

Finally, this love of God the Father for his daughter, the Church, is reflected in the First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Hosea.  “I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks.  Yet though I stooped down to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer.”  As a homeschooling family, I too will have the joy of feeding my child, my daughter, Mariana Mahal, with the blood and water that gushed out of the Heart of Christ for the first time in her First Holy Communion.  Today, on this solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mariana, may your heart remember how your father fed you too with the Heart of Christ.  In a few moments, my daughter, you too after much preparation will share in the adorable Sacrament of the Altar where Jesus Christ will forever be the Bridegroom of your soul.  

Your mom, Tove Ann, and I, your earthly father, with the blessing of the spiritual father of our parish, Fr. Resti, have prepared you for this day in many ways.  Some of those ways involved not just teaching you your daily Catechism which we did through the Faith & Life Series and the St. Joseph’s Catechism for First Communion, and not just in having you memorize your 10 Commandments or memorize your Act of Contrition for your First Penance, but it also involved your attending daily Mass as a family over the years with us, to our family going to devotional Confession every week or so, to our daily family rosary which you frequently lead, to daily spiritual reading and mental prayer, esp. the Bible, to our enthronement of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and our consecrating you to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to teaching you the virtues in our parish, which we sacrificially serve and every day in our domestic church family, where forgiveness is learned and what St. John Paul the Great calls the “school of love.”  You who are named after the theological virtue of love, Mahal, our message to you is this: Be a great saint!  Don’t just be a saint, but be a great saint!  

May the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus be adored and loved in all the tabernacles of the world to the end of time.  Amen.