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Published on:

18th May 2020

Many are open.

Monday, May 18th, 2020

Part of being holy - which is what being a saint is - is being a witness to Christ. Specifically that each of us is called to evangelise. When we start talking about this, we can feel the urkh of discomfort in our heart - for many reasons.

One way to quieten this feeling, and put it in its place, is to remember that people out there want to believe in God. The general data has shown that the majority of those around us want to be in a real relationship with God. We see this in today’s first reading: Lydia “listened to us”. She was interested in what the apostles had to say. And it satisfied her so much that she invited them round to hear more. She, a lady who was not thought of in relation to Christianity till that day. There was a real openness there: “The Lord opened her heart to what Paul was saying.”


So the problem is not others. It is not that others aren’t open. The question is our openness: are we open to the desire of the others to hear the Gospel? Or have we locked them into a stereotype? And are we open - to share, with prudence and love, the contents of what we live with Christ? Do we even pray for opportunities? The Lord will give them - if only we are open to them.

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About the Podcast

The Furnace
The Furnace is a free brief daily homily podcast by a priest of the Emmanuel Community for the Archdiocese of Sydney. The aim of the podcast is to proclaim the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the "glowing furnace of love" (St Gertrude the Great).
Why The Furnace? Quite simply because most people in Australia, and the
world, can no longer get to Mass, or even into a church. The point of these
podcasts is to bring people a share of the Mass in the Word of God and prayer.
But why the name? Because the Heart of Jesus is a “Furnace of love”. This
is how St Gertrude the Great describes it. As she prays:

O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
fountain of eternal life,
Your Heart is a glowing furnace of Love.
You are my refuge and my sanctuary.
O my adorable and loving Saviour,
consume my heart with the burning fire
with which Yours is aflamed.
Pour down on my soul those graces
which flow from Your love.
Let my heart be united with Yours.
Let my will be conformed to Yours in all things.
May Your Will be the rule of all my desires and actions.
Amen

The point of these homilies is first of all to share this with everyone - to
share the love of God’s heart with every human heart. There is nothing original
about that. This is, basically, all priests are ever trying to do. And it’s the only
real point of the Catholic Church: invented by Christ to share Christ, starting
from his pierced heart on the cross on Good Friday. It’s only fitting that at this
time each of us are being refitted with slightly larger crosses that our creator
comes to meet us from the cross with his own heart pierced and broken.

There is so much I could say about the Heart of Jesus - but I would have
to go on forever, because his Heart is infinite. So I’ll finish with the invitation of
another of the great saints of the Sacred Heart, St Claude la Colombiere:
May the Heart of Jesus Christ be our school! Let us make our abode there . . .

Let us study its movements and attempt to conform ours to them.
My friends, lets enter Jesus’ heart together.

It’s not just me recording it, or just you listening to a recording.

I rely on your prayers, and as I write and talk I am praying for each of you. And
in any case, there is no such thing as a Christian doing something by themselves:
like the Trinity, where one is, the others are. So let’s enter together, for Jesus is
standing in front of us now, with his heart wide open, to enter and experience
his love, his healing, his teaching, authentic freedom - and eternal life with him.