Saturday, June 27th, 2026: Join us tomorrow, Sunday, to celebrate the Liturgy for the Feast of the Sacred Heart. A liturgy  created by Mary and Ed

Saturday, June 27, 2026: Please join us tomorrow  - Sunday the 28th of June  for our Emmaus Community Celebration. 

We start at 3:45 with a community greeting followed by liturgy at 4:00

Potluck following the liturgy

Join us In person at Christ Church United Methodist

1717 Yulupa Avenue, Santa Rosa, California 95403

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Liturgy for the Feast of the Sacred Heart

We tirelessly and ceaselessly search for Something, we know not what, which will appear in the end to those who have penetrated to the very heart of reality.

 – Teilhard de Chardin

“Teilhard’s vision of Christ is the beginning and the end; the Alpha and the Omega. The visionary idea that the entire universe, along with us, is being drawn, like a heavenly magnet, to Christ the Omega point. Such a hopeful vision; such a Christian Catholic vision, one we desperately need today." – Fr. William Hart McNichols

Opening Song: Land of Make Believe - Moody Blues

We're living in a land of make believe

And trying not to let it show

Maybe in that land of make believe

Heartaches can turn into joy

So fly little bird

Up into the clear blue sky

And carry the word

Love's the only reason why

Open all the shutters on your windows

Unlock all the locks upon your doors

Brush away the cobwebs from your day-dreams

No secrets come between us anymore

Oh, say it's true

Only love can see you through

You know what love can do to you

We're living in a land of make believe

And trying not to let it show...

Maybe in that land of make believe

Heartaches can turn into joy

Image 1: 

Mary: The Moody Blues have always been one of my favorite groups and the words to this song feel like a good connection to today’s theme. “Open all the shutters on your windows, Unlock all the locks upon your doors…only love will see you through…And carry the word, Love's the only reason why”.  

Since I was a little girl I have felt a connection to the idea of God expressing his love for us through the image of his Sacred Heart.  I’m sure this had a great deal to do with my grandmother, Mary O’Day, who had  pictures over her twin beds of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, each one pointing to his or her burning heart. She always wore a felt scapular of the heart pinned to her bra strap and made sure we made the nine first Fridays that insured a happy death and promised  other sorts of  indulgences.

I went to the Academy of the Sacred Heart for high school where the RSCJ nuns, referred to as the madames of the Sacred Heart, made sure to foster our devotion.  We were taught to end prayers of petition with the words, “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place my trust in you”, a practice I still follow today.  

Many of the religious pictures we see of the Sacred Heart show a sad, feminine, sentimental looking Jesus pointing to his heart, which is outside of his chest and dripping blood from a circle of thorns. The sentimentality and general “ickiness” of these images put many people off, but it might help if we see it the way Fr. James Martin tells it.  He says that when he asked a group of children why we so often see Jesus’ heart outside his body, one answered that it’s because Jesus loves us so much that he can’t keep it in.  

And Jesus is showing us by pointing to his heart that this is the way to go……to open all the shutters on our windows and unlock all the locks upon our doors.  Because only love will see us through. Love's the only reason why!

Image 2 

Reader: Ephesians 3:16-19

“May God grant you out of the riches of His glory, to be strengthened and spiritually energized with power through His Spirit in your inner self, indwelling your innermost being and personality, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through your faith. And may you, having been deeply rooted and securely grounded in love, be fully capable of comprehending, with all God’s people, the width and length and height and depth of His love, fully experiencing that amazing, endless love; and that you may come to know practically, through personal experience, the love of Christ which far surpasses mere knowledge without experience, that you may be filled up throughout your being to all the fullness of God, so that you may have the richest experience of God’s presence in your lives, completely filled and flooded with God Himself.”

Ed: We hear St Paul’s words to the Ephesians in which he prays that they, ‘rooted and grounded in love’, will know Christ dwelling in their hearts. The feast of and devotion to the Sacred Heart invite us to be strengthened by the love of God that dwells in the whole of creation, and to recognize and imitate it in our lives. For the Sacred Heart is nothing less than an image of the way that Christ loves us: fully, lavishly, radically, completely, sacrificially.

What would it mean to love like Jesus did? What would it mean for me to have a heart like his? How can my heart become more "sacred"? For in the end, the Sacred Heart is about understanding Jesus’s love for us and inviting us to love others as Jesus did.

Image 3: Omega

Reader: “How strange, my God, are the processes your Spirit initiates! When, two centuries ago, your Church began to feel the particular power of your heart, it might have seemed that what was captivating men’s souls was the fact of their finding in you an element even more determinate, more circumscribed, than your humanity as a whole. But now on the contrary a swift reversal is making us aware that your main purpose in this revealing to us of your heart was to enable our love to escape from the constrictions of the too narrow, too precise, too limited image of you which we had fashioned for ourselves. What I discern in your breast is simply a furnace of fire; and the more I fix my gaze on its ardency the more it seems to me that all around it the contours of your body melt away and become enlarged beyond all measure, till the only features I can distinguish in you are those of the face of a world which has burst into flame.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: The Mass on the World 

Mary: 

● Share the image you have of, or any memories or connections you may have, to the Sacred Heart, either positive or negative.

● How do we form a devotional life without getting caught up in sentimentality and superstition?

What do we bring to our Table: Mary

Eucharistic Prayer:

Ed: We sing your praise, God, with greater joy than ever, because you so loved this world you sent your son to be our friend to reclaim, restore, and renew each of us. Because you so loved us, you called us into the light of your friendship and claimed us as your very own.

Mary: Jesus, you spoke to all of us from your heart at the last supper when you said: “I no longer call you servants but friends.”

All: Jesus, make me your friend by opening my heart. With my heart closed I cannot walk beside you as a companion. With my heart caught up in worldly values, I cannot follow you as my divine guide. With my heart hardened against anyone at all, I am no longer loving toward you.

Ed: Jesus, show us many ways to open, every day, every moment. Don’t wait for us; open us now. Show us what space has opened.

Mary: I know your heart is open with compassion for humanity. Let ours open that way too. Your open heart is inclusive. Your openness is a radical acceptance of differences. May we accept everyone as he or she is rather than being critical, blaming, or unkind.

All: Jesus, I am open now and here to every mysterious way you reach out to me. Let your love take effect in my heart. May my heart’s desire become the same as your Heart’s desire. Let my participation in the Eucharist take effect by opening my heart to the cries of the world: transubstantiate me.

Ed: This means that we give up all the biases of our childhood and include everyone in the infinite circle of love you drew with your heart.

All: I feel your heart aching to beam its love through me.

Mary: Don’t let our own self-centeredness prevent your love from reaching the farthest corners of our world and every person in it, through my every thought, word, and action.

All: May I be able to honor myself, be who I am in the world, and express that God-given power without fear. Jesus, I know your heart opened on the cross. May mine open when I have a cross to bear. Like you, I know that to love is to suffer sometimes. You took on all human suffering and gave it back as redemption. Let me be fearless to do the same.

Mary: Your heart is the heart of the universe, on earth as it is in heaven. We do not see the world until we see your heart through it, with it, and in it. Help us hold the vision of a world of heart. Let us incarnate that vision and then celebrate that vision by being a person of heart.

Ed: Jesus, you still want the world to look like your heart. Your heart, Jesus, is an opening for social change. May we join you in that work. May that happen in and through us in any way possible.

All: You never give up even when I do. I trust that you have not stopped creating me, redeeming me, sanctifying me. May I join in that work by my devotedness to your heart.

I have not yet found my heart until it is like yours. I point to my heart right now and say “Here you are, most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Stay through me, with me, in me.” May your Sacred Heart exhilarate my capacity to love.

May all beings meet in your heart.

Mary: Jesus, speak to us words of truth and love. Open our eyes to see goodness. Open our hearts to know love. Your Spirit inspires us to invite you into our presence, to ask you to come and stay with us. And amazingly, graciously, you come and remain.

Ed: How great, how considerate, you are. How gentle your touch. How forgiving your heart. Like the disciples, our eyes are opened, our hearts assured, by the presence of Jesus with us, through the mystery of the breaking of the bread.

All: We remember Jesus on the night before he died gathered with his friends for one last meal. While they were at supper, he took some bread, gave thanks, broke it, and passed it among them saying:

Take this, all of you, and eat. This is my body given up for you.

Then he took the cup of wine, said the blessing, and gave it to them saying:

Take this, all of you, and drink. This is the cup of my blood, poured out for people everywhere. This is a new and everlasting covenant. Do this in memory of me.

Ed: Communion Prayer

Everyone is welcome to this table. 

Our God, whom the universe cannot contain, 

is present to us in this bread.

The God who redeems us and calls us by name

now meets us in this cup.

So, come, take this bread,

Drink this wine,

In them, God comes to us, 

so that we may come to God.

Image 3: Omega

Communion Song: How Can I Keep From Singing

My life flows on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentation.

I hear the real though far-off hymn

That hails a new creation.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth,

How can I keep from singing?

Through all the tumult and the strife,

I hear that music ringing;

it sounds and echoes in my soul;

How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,

And hear their death knells ringing;

when friends rejoice both far and near,

How can I keep from singing?

Closing Prayer:

All:

Something,

We know not what,

Is always and everywhere

Lovingly at work,

We know not how,

To make the world more than it is now

To make us more than we are yet.

That Something is at once:

Divinity, life force of the universe, and our own unique aliveness:

One Sacred Heart

Never apart.

– David Richo

Mary: And this beloved Emmaus community says 

All: AMEN!!