Apostleship of Prayer

St. Isidore followed his brother St. Leander as Archbishop of Seville, Spain. During the Middle Ages he was looked upon as “the Master” because of his “Etymologies,” twenty books that brought together all the religious and secular learning of his time. As a result, he has been invoked recently as the patron saint of the Internet and computer programmers.

On this First Friday in the Easter Season, let us ask for the grace to love the Sacred Heart of Jesus more faithfully. Because He has risen, His Heart never ceases to beat with love for us. Knowing this love, may we reveal it to the world by the way we live. Our reflection is from Pope John Paul II’s Angelus Meditation of August 27, 1989.

“Heart of Jesus, our life and resurrection, have mercy on us.” This invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart, strong and persuasive as an act of faith, contains the entire mystery of Christ the Redeemer in a terse phrase. It recalls the words Jesus addressed to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, shall live” (John 11: 25).

Jesus is the life which springs eternally from the divine wellspring of the Father…. Jesus is also the resurrection. Nothing is so radically opposed to the holiness of Christ, the Holy One of the Lord (Luke 1: 35; Mark 1: 24), as sin. Nothing is so opposed to him, source of life, as death. There is a mysterious bond between sin and death (Wisdom 2: 24; Romans 5: 12, 6: 23); both are realities which are essentially contrary to God’s plan for man, who was not made for death but rather for life. In the face of every expression of death, Christ’s Heart was deeply moved, and for love of the Father and mankind, his brothers and sisters, he made his life a “combat stupendous” (Easter Sequence) against death.

Today’s Readings:  Acts 5:34-42;  Psalm 27:1,4,13-14;  John 6:1-15