A reflection on Pope Francis’ Devotion to the Sacred Heart
Pope Francis’ Encyclical Dilexit Nos on the love of the Sacred Heart is more like the writing of earlier Popes than his other Encyclicals. He quotes freely from earlier Popes and theologians, refers less to such current issues as war, global warming and artificial intelligence, and his words generally lack the saltiness we have become accustomed to. The passion characteristic of all his writing, however, shines through.
In it he reflects on the importance of the symbol of the heart for understanding what it means to be human. He offers an account of the history of the devotion to Jesus’ heart from its foundation in Scripture to its expansion by Christian writers and mystics and Popes, and later to its familiar form associated with St Margaret Mary Alacoque. He then shows its contemporary relevance.
He also reflects briefly on why the devotion has become marginal in the Catholic Church today. Older Catholics will remember the pictures in every home in which Jesus pointed to his heart, the indulgences attached to attending Mass on nine First Fridays, and the prayers and hymns to the Sacred Heart. The pictures reminded people living hard lives of God’s love for them. The devotion faded away in a more affluent society and a less tribal Church in which devotion to the Sacred Heart was seen to belong to a past age.
In response Pope Francis explores the depth of the devotion and the shows how it is not simply froth on the surface of Catholic faith but its core. The central point of the Encyclical is its insistence that the image of the heart is central for understanding human life. It represents the deep and never fully graspable centre of every human life in which thought and desire come together. It is the place in which another person can move from being an ‘it’ to become a ‘Thou’, a place of bonding. In it, too, our personal history takes shape through the desire to be loved and to love. It challenges our culture that separates the mind and heart at the risk of narrowly emphasising the individual will and technological intelligence.
Pope Francis insists that Christian faith must touch the heart. Its centre is God’s love for us and our response. That love for us is shown in God joining us in Jesus’s human life which fleshes out love. Our natural response to such love is gratitude. Our understanding of human life and relationships is then found in Jesus and in his relationship to us. He is at the centre of our prayer, the place where his heart and our heart are joined.
The heart is also the place where reconciliation and peace are built. They need to be built in our personal lives because our hearts are wounded. It is also the place in which our personal and social relationships must be shaped. Christ’s human life is a story of reconciliation and of energy. As we allow the stories of his life and death to move us our hearts are drawn into friendship with him and we learn what it means to live by love. Pope Francis emphasises the calling to go out in service, on mission and ‘to carry it out confidently, generously, freely and fearlessly’.
Jesus’ heart represents the love of Christ both as Son of God and as our brother, and fuses together these two aspects of love. Pope Francis discusses how through Christian history it has been symbolised in his heart. In his account, which stretches inclusively from the Scriptures to St Faustina and Divine Mercy, the revelations to St Margaret Mary have a small but important part. The devotion always emphasises intimacy, love and trust in our relationship to God, often in the face of currents of Christian thought which stress distance, fear and duty. This emphasis on simplicity and confidence is perhaps most strikingly represented in the quotations from St Thérèse de Lisieux.
Pope Francis also deals with a misreading of devotion to the Sacred Heart which focuses on what we must do, and not on gratitude for what God had done. The words attributed to Jesus by Margaret Mary ‘Behold this heart that has so loved men but has received so little love in return’ can be seen as emotional blackmail, shaming us to make up for this lack of love. Making reparation then becomes a duty.
Within his deeper understanding of the heart, Pope Francis sets reparation into the context of affection and not of duty. Following St Ignatius, he shows that an overwhelming experience of being loved by Jesus and of thanksgiving for his love will naturally overflow into returning love and the desire to share Christ’s own life. Reparation is not the fulfilment of duty but the overflow of a love deeply felt and responded to in gratitude. That response to Christ’s love then also shapes our relationships with others. It is a brick placed in the rebuilding of the world based on love. In that sense it is reparation. But it is also at the heart of mission.
Dilexit Nos carries on Pope’ Francis’ thinking about Christian faith and its relationship to our contemporary world. It takes us into the heart of things and invites Catholics to treasure and nurture relationship with Christ, with one another, and with people in need.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ writes for Jesuit Communications and Jesuit Social Services.
