The heart of the Good Shepherd “is mercy”, “never surrenders”, “goes out to us”. This has been said by Pope Francis, for the Day of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the sermon during the Mass he celebrated today on the parvis of the Vatican Basilica to celebrate the Priests and Seminarians’ Jubilee. “We are called – the Pontiff states – to aim at the heart, that is, at the inner world, at the strongest roots of life, at the core of people’s affections, in a word, at the centre of the human being. And today we look at two hearts: the Heart of the Good Shepherd and our heart as shepherds”. The Heart of the Good Shepherd, he explains, “is not just the Heart that takes mercy on us, it is mercy itself”, where “I feel sure I will be welcomed and understood” with “all my limits and all my sins” and “I will enjoy the certainty of being chosen and loved”. “By looking at that Heart, I feel my first love again”. The Heart of the Good Shepherd says that “His love is boundless, does not get tired, and never surrenders. There we see the endless giving of oneself, boundlessly; there we find the source of faithful and meek love, which lets one free and makes one free; there we rediscover every time that Jesus loves us ‘to the end’, He will not stop earlier, without ever imposing itself”. A Heart, the Pope points out, “that goes out to us, ‘polarised’ especially by those who are most distant; there He stubbornly aims the needle of His compass, there He reveals a special weakness of love, because He wishes to go out to everyone and lose no one”.