Appendix III. The Adoration of the Sacred Heart

The Sacred Humanity hypostatically united to the Word, and all parts thereof, especially the Sacred Heart of Jesus, are the object of divine adoration.23

I. CHRIST God and Man is to be adored with one and the same divine adoration in both natures. The material object (objectum materiale) of this divine adoration is Christ, God and Man; the formal object (objectum formale), by reason of which this divine adoration is given to Him in both natures, is the Godhead of the Incarnate Son.

II. The Sacred Humanity, or Human Nature, inasmuch as it is the human nature of the Word, is the partial object (objectum partiale) which is adored

22 De Incarnatione, dis. v. sect. lii. art. 1.

23 Franzelin, De Verbo Incarn. cap. vi. th. xlv. p. 453.

with divine worship; for as the Person of Christ, including His human nature, is the object of divine adoration, the worship which is due to His Person is due to all that is united to His Person: for this cause the Fifth General (Ecumenical Council condemned the Nestorians, who introduced two adorations as to two separate natures and to two separate persons. It condemned also those who, as the Apollinaristae and Eutychians, affirmed the adoration to be one, because one nature alone was to be adored; viz. the Divine, excluding the humanity. The Council affirms that one adoration is to be offered to the Word together with His flesh, so that the flesh also is the object, because it is the flesh of the Word who is adored as one whole object.

III. The calumnies of the ancient Nestorians and Monophysites were renewed by the Jansenists, who affirmed, with the ApollinaristaB, that the human nature could not be adored because it was a creature, and therefore denounced the Catholics as sarkolatrce and anthropolatrce (i.e. worshippers of the flesh and worshippers of man).

IV. The Incarnation is the manifestation of God. S. John says expressly, * The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory;'24 and,

2* S. John i. 14.

again, ' That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life; for the life was manifested, and we have seen and do bear witness.'25 The Incarnate Word, therefore, manifests Himself to us to be adored in His human nature. We may adore Him in all His divine perfections, in His infinite goodness, love, mercy, wisdom, omnipotence, manifested in His Incarnation. We may adore Him also as He manifests Himself to us in all the actions and sufferings of His Incarnate Person, in His Nativity, His Infancy, His Passion, His Death, His Resurrection, His glory at the right hand of the Father. S. Thomas adored Him in the manifestation of His Five Sacred Wounds; we adore Him also in His Sacred Heart.

V. Of this devotion Franzelin says, that it was ' assailed by the Jansenists with incoherent clamours and calumnies not less absurd than impudent.'26 He adds, that certain Catholics in the time of the Synod of Pistoia joined in the cry. His answer to them is as follows: It never came into the mind of anybody but of certain absurd accusers that the Sacred Heart of Jesus is to be worshipped « S. John i. 2. »« De Verbo Incarnate, p. 465.

and adored either divided from the humanity or separate from the hypostatic union or the Divine Person whose humanity it is. This false and wanton accusation was condemned in the Bull Auctorem Fidei, by which also the Synod of Pistoia was condemned in the following words: ' The proposition which asserts "to adore the humanity of Christ directly, much more any part of it, would always be to give divine honours to a creature," inasmuch as by this word directly it is intended to reprobate the divine adoration which the faithful give to the humanity of Christ, as if such adoration by which the humanity and the life-giving flesh of Christ is adored, not indeed for its own sake and as if mere flesh (non quidem propter se et tanquam nuda caro), but as it is united to the Divinity, would be divine honour given to a creature, and not that one and the same adoration by which the Word Incarnate with His own flesh is adored according to the Fifth General Council of Constantinople, canon ix., is a proposition false, captious, derogatory, and injurious to the pious and due adoration given and to be given by the faithful to the humanity of Christ.57¹ as new, erroneous, or at least dangerous, if understood of this devotion such as the Holy See has approved, is false, rash, pernicious, offensive to pious ears, and injurious to the Holy See.28

' Also, inasmuch as it censures the worshippers of the Heart of Jesus even by that name for not perceiving that the sacred flesh of Christ, or any part of the same, or even the ivhole humanity when separated and divided from the divinity, cannot be adored with the worship of latria — as if the faithful do adore the Heart of Jesus separated or divided from the Divinity, while they adore it as it is the Heart of Jesus, the Heart, that is, of the Person of the Word, to whom it is inseparably united in the same way as the bloodless Body of Christ in the three days of death was adorable in the sepulchre without separation or division from the Divinity — (is a proposition) captious and injurious to the faithful who worship the Heart of Christ.'20

After quoting certain extravagant absurdities of this kind, published by Camillus Blasius in 1771, Franzelin justly adds: ' The pestilence which is called party- spirit at times renders even acute men furiose stupidos.'30

VI. Among other objections to the worship of

28 Prop. 62. 2<» Ib. 63. 30 De Verb. Incarn. p. 467 note.

the Sacred Heart is one which comes from those whose common sense and Christian faith preserved them from the absurdity of feigning a heart separate or divided from the Incarnate Word. They admit that divine worship is due to the Sacred Humanity in the Person of the Incarnate Word, and to the Sacred Heart in that Sacred Humanity; but they affirm that the object of this devotion is the Sacred Heart, not in itself, but as a mere symbol of the love of Jesus. If then the Heart of Jesus is worshipped as a symbol of the love of Jesus, how can it be that the object of this worship is not real? The Heart of Jesus cannot be worshipped as a symbol of charity without worshipping the Heart of Jesus itself. But this question is doubly set at rest, first by Pius the Sixth in the Bull Auctorem Fidei above quoted, in which the Pontiff declares that the faithful adore the Heart of Jesus as it is the Heart of Jesus, the Heart,, that is, of the Person of the Word, to whom it is inseparably united, in the same way as the bloodless Body of Christ in the three days of death was adored in the sepulchre without separation or division from the Divinity. And, once more, Pius the Ninth, in the Apostolic Letters of Beatification of Blessed Margaret Mary, August 19, 1864, says: ' Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, desired nothing more than to kindle the flame of charity by which His Heart was burning in all ways in the hearts of men;.... but that He might the more kindle this fire of charity, it was His will that the veneration and worship of His Sacred Heart should be instituted and promoted:... to Blessed Margaret, fervently praying before the Most August Sacrament of the Eucharist it was made known by Christ our Lord, that it would be most grateful to Him if the worship of His Most Sacred Heart, burning with the fire of charity for mankind, should be instituted.'

The Sacred Heart, therefore, which we adore is the human Heart that the Son of God took from the substance of His Immaculate Mother, and in taking deified it. It is the Heart of God, living and life-giving, adored with divine worship in heaven and earth, at the right hand of His Father, and in His real presence in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

II.

Footnotes

1. The doctrine which rejects the devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as among devotions described 27 Const. Pii VI., Auctorem Fidei, prop. 61. ↩