He Loved Us (part 1)

Jesus loves every person deeply. He desires to spend all eternity with each of us. He wants us to share in His joy.

So many people are unable or unwilling to see this. It is the great tragedy of our time. Pope Francis wrote his latest encyclical, He Loved Us, to call the world back to Jesus, to share with the world the unfathomable love of Jesus, expressed in a particular way through His Sacred Heart, and to invite the faithful to share the love of Jesus with everyone they meet.

Pope Francis begins his reflection by considering the importance of the heart:

“The symbol of the heart has often been used to express the love of Jesus Christ. Some have questioned whether this symbol is still meaningful today. Yet living as we do in an age of superficiality, rushing frenetically from one thing to another without really knowing why, and ending up as insatiable consumers and slaves to the mechanisms of a market unconcerned about the deeper meaning of our lives, all of us need to rediscover the importance of the heart.

“The heart is also the locus of sincerity, where deceit and disguise have no place. It usually indicates our true intentions, what we really think, believe and desire, the ‘secrets’ that we tell no one: in a word, the naked truth about ourselves. It is the part of us that is neither appearance or illusion, but is instead authentic, real, entirely ‘who we are’.”

Quoting Father Romano Guardini, Pope Francis writes, "Only the heart creates intimacy, true closeness between two persons. Only the heart is able to welcome and offer hospitality. Intimacy is the proper activity and the domain of the heart.”

Pope Francis concludes this section by saying, “If love reigns in our heart, we become, in a complete and luminous way, the persons we are meant to be, for every human being is created above all else for love. In the deepest fibre of our being, we were made to love and to be loved.”

The love of Jesus for us expresses itself in a particular way in the Eucharist. Pope Francis draws on the wisdom of the saints throughout He Loved Us. Here he cites Saint John Henry Newman’s reflection on the Eucharist: “O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus, Thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and Thou beatest for us still… I worship Thee then with all my best love and awe, with my fervent affection, with my most subdued, most resolved will. O my God, when Thou dost condescend to suffer me to receive Thee, to eat and drink Thee, and Thou for a while takest up Thy abode within me, O make my heart beat with Thy Heart. Purify it of all that is earthly, all that is proud and sensual, all that is hard and cruel, of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the time may have power to ruffle it, but that in Thy love and Thy fear it may have peace”.

The life of Jesus further witnesses to the intense love He has for us in His Sacred Heart:

“Jesus came to meet us, bridging all distances; he became as close to us as the simplest, everyday realities of our lives. 

“This becomes clear when we see Jesus at work. He seeks people out, approaches them, ever open to an encounter with them. Christ shows that God is closeness, compassion and tender love.

“If Jesus calls you and summons you for a mission, he first looks at you, plumbs the depths of your heart and, knowing everything about you, fixes his gaze upon you. So it was when, ‘as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers... and as he went from there, he saw two other brothers’” (Mt 4:18, 21).

Reflecting on the depth of emotions Jesus displayed during His ministry (being moved with compassion for the crowds, weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, His agony in the garden), Pope Francis ponders the Cross: 

“The cross is Jesus’ most eloquent word of love. A word that is not shallow, sentimental or merely edifying. It is love, sheer love. That is why Saint Paul, struggling to find the right words to describe his relationship with Christ, could speak of ‘the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal 2:20). This was Paul’s deepest conviction: the knowledge that he was loved. Christ’s self-offering on the cross became the driving force in Paul’s life, yet it only made sense to him because he knew that something even greater lay behind it: the fact that ‘he loved me’. At a time when many were seeking salvation, prosperity or security elsewhere, Paul, moved by the Spirit, was able to see farther and to marvel at the greatest and most essential thing of all: ‘Christ loved me”.

“The Christ we see depicted with a pierced and burning heart is the same Christ who, for love of us, was born in Bethlehem, passed through Galilee healing the sick, embracing sinners and showing mercy. The same Christ who loved us to the very end, opening wide his arms on the cross, who then rose from the dead and now lives among us in glory.

“We cannot attain our fulfilment as human beings unless we open our hearts to others; only through love do we become fully ourselves. The deepest part of us, created for love, will fulfill God’s plan only if we learn to love. And the heart is the symbol of that love.

“Entering into the heart of Christ, we feel loved by a human heart filled with affections and emotions like our own. Jesus’ human will freely chooses to love us, and that spiritual love is flooded with grace and charity. When we plunge into the depths of his heart, we find ourselves overwhelmed by the immense glory of his infinite love as the eternal Son, which we can no longer separate from his human love.”

Pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day for the salvation of souls.