"Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours."
— St. Teresa of Ávila 

This morning, the Brother Martin High School community gathered in the Robert M. Conlin Gymnasium to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in celebration of Foundation Day of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart. Our school community joined a number of international Brothers schools in celebration of Foundation Day.

Today, we paused in thanksgiving for the vision of Father Andre’ Coindre, the Brothers' founder, and the charism bestowed upon him by the Holy Spirit. His vision and this charism spread from Lyon, France to over 30 countries across the world.

We were blessed to have Father Tony Rigoli preside over our liturgy today. During his homily, Fr. Rigoli took out a statue of Jesus that did not have hands and paraphrased St. Theresa of Avila, "Christ has no hands on Earth but yours," encouraging us to take up the mission of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart to "strive to make the love of Jesus Christ known to young people throughout the world."

Excerpts from Preaching Notes of Father André Coindre, 45

The Greatness of the Love of God
Yes, in creating you, God loved you as a father,
so you could enjoy the sensation of living,
so you could surge forth
from the nothingness of eternal silence,
out of murky vagueness and into light.

In deciding to create you, God loved you as a father.
No, I say he loved you as more than a father,
because the love of a father begins
only at the instant of birth.
God’s love began eternally long before that
without the slightest interruption,
without a moment of indifference.
God has loved you constantly in the mystery of eternity.
You began in his mind’s eye a century of centuries
before you were born.

You began in his heart of hearts before there was time.
It was his dream to place you among his chosen ones,
in his holy nation.
Before the world was born, faithfully, eagerly,
God had in mind to give you the grace of holiness,
of wholeness,
so you would walk in his presence alive with his love.

In deciding to create you, God loved you as a father.
No, I say it again, as more than a father.
A father’s love is mixed with self-interest and duty.
God’s is free, gratuitous.
He loves you tenderly, pure and simple.

In deciding to create you, God loved you as a father…
as more than a father,
because as tender as a father’s love is,
he does not choose his children.
But God loved you with the love of choice,
with preferential love.
He preferred you. He wanted you in particular.

I am not talking about all the ways he has spoiled you and favored you, sparing you from harsh climates and disasters which so many endure, saving you from persecution, suffering, and death.

I am talking about the grace of God’s choice
to create you in preference to millions of others
he could have created,to desire you instead of the hundreds, even thousands of worlds and beings which could have fired his love, and which could have responded more generously than you,
but which, compared to you,
will forever remain
uncreated, in eternal neglect.

Have you ever realized that your heart
was created in the place of so many hearts
which might have been much holier,
much more ardent in returning God’s love?

And yet, your heart, as simple and as small, as narrow
as you might feel it to be: God prefers it to all those others.

Never, ever doubt the love in the heart of God for you.
Could he have put into the heart of your father
or into the heart of yours friends who love you dearly
a feeling that he did not first have in his own heart?

Could the tender heart of your mother have showered on you
such love and caring all day and all night
during your infancy without God’s first giving her
the energy of his restless love?

Admit it and proclaim it, then: God is more than your father. He is a father deeply in love with you. compared to him all fathers and mothers are only a reflection, a shadow. He is a father whose heart is a roaring hearth, an intense fire. He is a father whose love makes the most loving and dedicated persons you might know or imagine seem like nothing more than the faintest spark. Admit his love, proclaim it. And pray with me:

I make the prayer of Andre Coindre my own
My God, despite my pettiness, my sinfulness, you love me. The goodness, the gentleness of your love is too good to be believed too easily. How is it that you love such inconstant, such small creatures as us? Are you forgetting that only goodness and beauty are worthy of such love? At least that’s how we are. We love only what is good, or at least only what seems good to our limited and sinful affections. We reject what is ugly and unpleasant. But you who see everything, whose gaze penetrates into our darkest selves, into the hardest parts of our hearts, you love us. You love us with our refusals and selfishness, with our vices and addictions. You love us while we are sinners! My God, how sublime and mysterious! I have come to take your love for granted. I have come to count on your love. I have come to expect you to love me even in my most outrageous moments of insult and vengeance.

O incomprehensible love, how can I keep speaking about your love unless you pour into my heart great tongues of fire? How can I speak another word unless you gather up and fill me with the love in the hearts of all mothers who ever existed, of all the saints who have ever loved, of all the angels who adore you. Give me the grace to love in return, to respond worthily to your heart forever open and forever full. Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.