A warm welcome to today’s Guest Blogger, Andrea Wenderski, Catholic Coach. Andrea’s message around this month honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a beautiful reminder that we have been called and equipped to live and love like Jesus. Sit back, relax, and listen as we share and cultivate how God moves in and through us as we navigate the many different seasons of a woman’s life.

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For Catholics, the month of June celebrates the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jesus’ profound love for us is demonstrated through His willingness to sacrifice His life for our sake. The love from His heart motivated all His actions. His inner life is manifested in His demonstrated virtues and sacrifice. Yet this great love is often received with ingratitude, even by the faithful. The purpose of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is to focus our hearts on receiving and returning His love with gratitude — with all of our heart, soul, and strength — that He may be glorified. An integral component of that glorification is transforming ourselves to be more like Him.

God designed human beings in His very image and likeness for a relationship with Him. Those very carefully crafted characteristics and traits that He uniquely endowed each one of us with will help to lead us back to Him. Additionally, they will build up the Body of Christ on this earth as we navigate our journey back to the true homeland: Heaven, so as to be in complete peace and happiness forever.

Therefore, then, it stands to reason that a healthy or mature relationship is one in which we recognize that we are made in the image of God and so is every other person on the face of this planet, correct? Thus, every person deserves respect—to be treated with dignity and worth—and be affirmed in their unique and separate existence from anyone else, right? Consequently, because we should be seeing others in the light of their God imagery and interacting with them as such, we love and value them, correct?

Theoretically, all of the above points are correct. However, because we live in a broken and self-centered world, most of humanity tends to treat people as objects – a means to an end, a tool to be used and discarded – rather than a fellow human-being containing the image and likeness of God within His body. Recognizing the truth that every person is made as an Imago Dei, who has a unique and unrepeatable vocation, is crucial to emotional maturity—something this world powerfully lacks. People demand that others view the world the way they do, believe that only they have the *right* way. This mindset is a clear illustration of why St. Augustine of Hippo defines sin as “incurvatus in se”— meaning “caved in around oneself.” To be in sin is to be “caved in” around the ego and its narrow concerns.

Accordingly, then, true relationships can only exist between two people willing to connect despite their differences. When I love someone well—treating them as a being worthy of dignity and worth—God’s presence is manifest because I—an image of God—am loving you—another image of God. Part of this love is a mature resolution of conflicts as we acknowledge other people’s perspectives, no matter how wrong we think (or know) them to be. Yet, this tends to be a problem area for many because of false peacekeeping.

Huh? What? What is this false peacekeeping I am speaking of? One of the most misunderstood verses of the New Testament is Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” People believe that Jesus is ordering us to be pacifiers and appeasers, keeping the peace, ignoring difficult issues and problems, and making sure things remain stable and serene. However, when we avoid conflict out of fear and to avoid conflict, we are engaging in false peacekeeping.

Here are some examples:

Sally loves her parents, but they are very critical about how she handles her children. Every time they get together, especially during the holidays, the air could be cut with a knife. Sally doesn’t say anything to them because she wants to honor them (4th Commandment) and she’s afraid of hurting their feelings. False peacemaking.

Gordon is having lunch with his co-workers who are slandering their boss. He disagrees with what they are saying but keeps silent because he doesn’t want to be the only one speaking favorably of someone that so many, obviously dislike and he’s afraid of having to defend himself, too. False peacemaking.

Joan’s boyfriend, Roger, is irresponsible, but she feels bad for him thinking, “He’s got a rough home life with a lot of pain and heartache. I can’t add to his burden,” and shies away from telling him how she believes his behavior is killing the relationship. The relationship dies a slow death. False peacemaking.

Rose is upset by the behavior of her husband, Carl, who constantly comes home late after work, yet says nothing because she believes that she is being like Christ by not saying anything. She does, however, give Carl the cold shoulder. False peacemaking.

Lori is engaged to be married and is having second thoughts. She wants more time to think about this life-altering decision, but is afraid that her fiancé and both of their families will be angry and upset. She goes through with the wedding. False peacemaking.

There can be other examples as well, but the point is clear: True peace will never come through pretending that what is wrong is right. Jesus models for us the fact that true peacemakers love God, others, and themselves enough to disrupt false peace. In fact, in Matthew 10:34-36, He said:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’”

Why is this the case? Simple. You cannot have the true peace—the shalom peace—of Christ’s kingdom with lies and pretense. Those things must be exposed to the light and replaced with the truth.

This means that we must learn to communicate well: Listening and speaking with intention and clarity. We must treat and speak to others as we want to be treated and spoken to—with respect and dignity. We need to learn to establish and clarify expectations and stick to them without changing them mid-way through completion. Vulnerability is an important and necessary tool in peacekeeping, too. As part of the listening skill noted above, we must stop assuming we know what people are saying or are going to say—listen with your entire being—or that we know what they mean instead of asking for clarification. In fact, assumptions cause a lot of problems and lead to the false peacekeeping narrative. Why? Because when we leave reality for a world of false assumptions, we leave the presence of God because God does not and cannot exist outside of reality and truth.

In closing, in order to begin partnering with God to heal this world, we must take a lesson from Jesus’s playbook. Jesus refused to separate the practice of the presence of God from the practice of the presence of the people. And, no, it wasn’t because He was God: He never once asked His followers to do something He hadn’t/wouldn’t do. In fact, He actually told them they would be doing greater things than what He’d done. Instead, He summarized the entire Gospel message, indeed, the entire reason He came in just these few lines: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40) This means, then, we must emulate Our Lord’s actions, and always in love.

How are you going to draw nearer to Jesus’ Sacred Heart this month, and practice speaking the truth in love rather than opting for false peacekeeping?

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