Pray with the Pope Reflection - June 2025

Fr. Edmund Lo, SJ

Friday, June 13, 2025

My brothers and sisters: In this month of June, the Holy Father invites us to pray that the world might grow in compassion, that each one of us might find consolation in a personal relationship with Jesus, and from his Heart, learn to have compassion on the world.

This month’s prayer intention matches up perfectly with the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is traditionally linked to the month of June. This devotion should not stop at merely hanging a portrait of the Sacred Heart in our homes as a lucky charm. It needs to be rooted in a personal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Pope Francis’ encyclical Dilexit Nos serves as a great introduction to and a deepening of this particular devotion. We find consolation in this relationship with Jesus because his love for us is both healing and transformative. Learning from the heart of Jesus is learning how to love as he does. As Jesus says to his disciples during the Last Supper: No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Learning from the heart of Jesus helps us to be less inward-looking, but to be more outward-looking; less preoccupied with how we want to receive and be received, and more preoccupied by how we desire to give. It is on this foundation that we can speak of having compassion on the world.

As the root word of compassion – com-passio – indicates, compassion goes beyond mere sentimentality, but it is a love that propels us to suffer with. Suffering with others out of love gives meaning to something that we often try to avoid at all costs.

It is in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that he redeems the act of suffering. This is ultimately the destiny of loving as Jesus loves, and it is a noble and life-giving destiny. May God bless you today.