The Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus reveals the most critical aspect of our Christian life: Our faith is a love story.

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque received visions and words from Jesus between the years of 1673 and 1675. The first revelation took place on the feast of St. John the Evangelist (Dec. 27, 1673). Margaret Mary explained that she was caught up in prayer. She was enthralled in deep intimacy with Jesus. She explained, “He made me repose for a long time upon His Sacred Breast, where He disclosed to me the marvels of His Love and the inexplicable secrets of His Sacred Heart.”

On the celebration of the disciple who placed his head on the heart of Jesus at the Last Supper, Margaret Mary experienced Christ’s Sacred Heart for the first time. This fact highlights a key aspect of the Sacred Heart celebration. We must contact the Lord in order to truly experience his radical love.

It was St. John who opened his first epistle communicating the physicality of discipleship. He began by explaining the entire reason for his faith, “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life” (1 John 1:1).

John was able to say such a thing because he placed his head on the Heart of Jesus. He was able to speak in this way because he experienced Jesus as a real, living Person who spared nothing in loving him. The appearance of Jesus to Margaret Mary on the feast of St. John is no coincidence. Christ wanted to grant her the privilege of proximity that John experienced.

Jesus explained to her that he found the present moment to be the time for him to express his love even more emphatically: “My Divine Heart is so inflamed with love for men, and for you in particular that, being unable any longer to contain within Itself the flames of Its burning Charity, It must needs spread them abroad by your means.”

Here we can view the second key element of the Heart of Jesus. He can’t help himself — he must draw close to us. Once he does draw us in to experiencing his love, he seeks to make us missionaries of his heart. All of those who have known Jesus have also known that Jesus yearns for others to also experience him through them. St. Margaret Mary was given the unique task of spreading the message of the Sacred Heart to the entire world, but you are called to spread it to those in your immediate circumstances.

There is no one else in the world who has the same web of relationships as you do. When we spend intentional time in prayer and take the position of receptivity, we will draw more closely to Jesus’ heart. That ought to push us to spread his message and love to others because Jesus begins to live through us all the more. In order to accomplish this divinely ordered task, we must rely on Jesus above everything else.

For this reason, he said to Margaret Mary: “I will be your strength. Fear nothing, but be attentive to My voice and to what I shall require of you that you may be in the requisite disposition for the accomplishment of My designs.” These words supply the holy recipe for continuing to be open to the love of God.

We must abandon ourselves to trusting Jesus in all things, to never be afraid of what this world might throw our way because our God is always faithful. Abandonment to God and trust in him only works, however, if we are acutely aware of hearing the voice of the Lord each day. Abandonment breeds Christian fearlessness, and fearlessness makes us more able to hear the voice of God in the midst of the noise of this world.

That is what the Sacred Heart of Jesus most wants for us. He longs for us to encounter him personally. So today, enter the love story — and place your head on his heart.