X — DEVOTION TO THE HEART OF JESUS

Presence of God. — O Sacred Heart of Jesus, teach me to know You, teach me to love You.

Meditation

1 — The object of devotion to the Sacred Heart is properly the Heart of flesh of Jesus, which, being part of his most holy Humanity hypostatically united to the Word, is worthy of adoration. Nevertheless, the ultimate object of this devotion is the love of Jesus, of which his Heart is the symbol; in other words, “under the symbolic image of the Heart, we meditate on and venerate the immense charity and liberal love of our divine Redeemer” (Pius VI). This is precisely the meaning of devotion to the Sacred Heart, by which the Church proposes that we honor the Heart of Jesus as the visible image of his invisible love: “your charity,” sings the liturgy of the feast, “willed that You be pierced by a visible blow of a lance, so that we might venerate the wounds of your invisible love” (Roman Breviary, hymn at Lauds). The principal object of devotion to the Sacred Heart is therefore the love of Jesus: the uncreated love with which He, as the Word, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, has loved us from all eternity and from all eternity decided to become incarnate for our salvation; and also the created love of charity with which He has loved us, as man, even unto death on the Cross, meriting for us by his love that same charity by which we might love Him in return. This is the deepest sense of devotion to the Sacred Heart, a sense so well understood by St. Teresa Margaret of the Heart of Jesus, who made this devotion the center of her life. The Saint - say the Processes - “regarded the Heart of Jesus as the center [the source] of the love with which the divine Word, in the bosom of the Father, has loved us for all eternity, and with which in time He has merited that we, with that same participated love, might love Him in return on earth and in heaven” (2).

2 — The other devotions to the Redeemer have as their object mysteries or particular aspects of his life, such as the Incarnation, the hidden life, the Passion, and so forth; whereas devotion to the Sacred Heart aims at a more general object: the love of Jesus, love that is the deep and essential motive of all his mysteries, the first and only cause of all that He has done for us. In this sense devotion to the Sacred Heart touches, so to speak, the depth of all the Redeemer’s mysteries, touches the essential depth of his life and his Person: it is love that explains the Incarnation of the Word, it is love that explains the existence of the God-Man, it is love that explains his Passion, his Eucharist. It is impossible to understand the mystery by which the Son of God became flesh, died on the Cross to save men, and made Himself their food, unless we admit this infinite love that moved God - the Most High, the Creator - to find the way to give Himself wholly for the salvation of his creature. Precisely in this sense the Church expresses herself in the Matins hymn repeated throughout the octave of the Sacred Heart: “Amor coegit te tuus mortale corpus sumere,” love impelled You - indeed constrained You, if we take the Latin word in all its force - to take a mortal body in order to restore to us what Adam’s sin had taken away. And the hymn continues by now exalting the eternal love of the Word, now the human love of Jesus, loves that in fact cannot be separated just as the Most Holy Humanity of Jesus cannot be separated from the Word that assumed it. Jesus is at once God and man, and so his love is at once divine love and human love; Jesus has loved us and continuously loves us as God and as man. His created human love is sublimated by the eternal love of the Word; indeed it becomes the very love of the Word who makes it his own, as all the sentiments and actions of Christ-Man are his own. And his divine love becomes for us sensible, comprehensible, tangible through the manifestations of his human love. It is always the Humanity of Jesus that reveals to us his Divinity; and as through this Most Holy Humanity we know the Son of God, so through the human love of Jesus we know his divine love.

Colloquy

“For this reason, O Jesus, your side was pierced: that an easy entrance might be opened to us. Your Heart was pierced so that, free from outward turmoil, we might dwell in it.

“But moreover, You were pierced so that, through the visible wound, we might see the invisible wound of love; for he who burns with love is wounded by love. And in what way could You better show us this your love than by allowing not only your Body but even your Heart to be torn open by a lance? The bodily wound thus indicates the spiritual wound.

“And who, then, will not love this Heart so pierced? Who will not love in return One who so loves us? Who will not embrace such a chaste Spouse? Surely, O Lord, that soul loves You in return which, feeling herself wounded by your love, cries out: ‘I am wounded by charity.’ We too, pilgrims in the flesh, as far as we can, love, love in return, embrace our Wounded One, whose hands and feet, side and Heart were pierced. Let us love and pray: O Jesus, deign to bind with the bond and wound with the dart of your love our still hard and impenitent heart” (St. Bonaventure, Mystic Vine, 3, 5).

“O Jesus, one of the soldiers opened your side with a lance so that in your open side we might learn the love of your Heart, a love that reached unto death, and that we too might enter into that ineffable love for which You came to us. Draw near, then, O my soul, to the Heart of Christ, great Heart, hidden Heart, Heart that thinks of everything, Heart that knows everything, Heart that loves, indeed that burns with love. Make me understand, O Lord, that the gate of your Heart has been opened by the vehemence of love, and admit me to enter into the secret of your love hidden from eternity but now revealed by the wound of your Heart” (cf. St. Bernardine of Siena).