JUNE272025

In the seventeenth century Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, began to look on God as a wrathful and punishing deity. The most famous sermon delivered in what is now the United States was delivered by Jonathan Edwards entitled “Sinners in the hand of an angry God.” Devotion to the Sacred Heart developed at this time to counteract this view of God. Jesus came as the image of the love of God in the world.  Since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath, according to St. Paul. God is love proclaims St. John. The Lord is the Good Shepherd leading us to green pastures. Remnants of thinking that God is out to get us persist to this day. God does love us and asks us to love in return. Honoring the Sacred Heart or Divine Mercy are means to lead us to the correct understanding of God as “rich in mercy and abounding in kindness.”