He Loved Us (part 2)

In his recent encylical, He Loved Us, Pope Francis connects the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Father and the Holy Spirit:

 “When the Son became man, all the hopes and aspirations of his human heart were directed towards the Father. If we consider the way Christ spoke of the Father, we can grasp the love and affection that his human heart felt for him, this complete and constant orientation towards him. Jesus’ life among us was a journey of response to the constant call of his human heart to come to the Father.

“The Holy Spirit at work in Christ’s human heart draws him unceasingly to the Father. When the Spirit unites us to the sentiments of Christ through grace, he makes us sharers in the Son’s relationship to the Father, whereby we receive “a spirit of adoption through which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Rom 8:15).

“Saint John Paul II taught that, ‘the Saviour’s heart invites us to return to the Father’s love, which is the source of every authentic love’. This is precisely what the Holy Spirit, who comes to us through the heart of Christ, seeks to nurture in our hearts.

“Saint John Paul II said, ‘The men and women of the third millennium need the heart of Christ in order to know God and to know themselves; they need it to build the civilization of love’.’

Pope Francis identifies a heightened need to seek the heart of Jesus today: “Amid the frenetic pace of today’s world and our obsession with free time, consumption and diversion, cell phones and social media, we forget to nourish our lives with the strength of the Eucharist.

“This leads me to propose to the whole Church renewed reflection on the love of Christ represented in his Sacred Heart. For there we find the whole Gospel, a synthesis of the truths of our faith, all that we adore and seek in faith, all that responds to our deepest needs.

“The pierced heart of Christ embodies all God’s declarations of love present in the Scriptures. That love is no mere matter of words; rather, the open side of his Son is a source of life for those whom he loves, the fount that quenches the thirst of his people. 

Saint Francis then reflects on the many saints who grew in holiness through a strong devotion to the sacred heart of Jesus. The witness of the saints is a continual invitation to emulate them in their faith.

“Saint Bernard takes up the symbolism of the pierced side of the Lord and understands it explicitly as a revelation and outpouring of all of the love of his heart. Through that wound, Christ opens his heart to us and enables us to appropriate the boundless mystery of his love and mercy.

This insight from Saint Gertrude of Helfta is especially interesting: “Saint Gertrude of Helfta, a Cistercian nun, tells of a time in prayer when she reclined her head on the heart of Christ and heard its beating. In a dialogue with Saint John the Evangelist, she asked him why he had not described in his Gospel what he experienced when he did the same. Gertrude concludes that ‘the sweet sound of those heartbeats has been reserved for modern times, so that, hearing them, our aging and lukewarm world may be renewed in the love of God’. Might we think that this is indeed a message for our own times, a summons to realize how our world has indeed “grown old”, and needs to perceive anew the message of Christ’s love? 

“Saint Catherine of Siena wrote that the Lord’s sufferings are impossible for us to comprehend, but the open heart of Christ enables us to have a lively personal encounter with his boundless love. ‘I wished to reveal to you the secret of my heart, allowing you to see it open, so that you can understand that I have loved you so much more than I could have proved to you by the suffering that I once endured’.

“For Francis de Sales, true devotion had nothing to do with superstition or perfunctory piety, since it entails a personal relationship in which each of us feels uniquely and individually known and loved by Christ. ‘This most adorable and lovable heart of our Master, burning with the love which he professes to us, [is] a heart on which all our names are written… Surely it is a source of profound consolation to know that we are loved so deeply by our Lord, who constantly carries us in his heart’.”

“[Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, to whom Jesus revealed His Sacred Heart, wrote,] ‘It is necessary that the divine heart of Jesus in some way replace our own; that he alone live and work in us and for us; that his will… work absolutely and without any resistance on our part; and finally that its affections, thoughts and desires take the place of our own, especially his love, so that he is loved in himself and for our sakes. And so, this lovable heart being our all in all, we can say with Saint Paul that we no longer live our own lives, but it is he who lives within us’.

“At the beginning of the third week of the [Spiritual] Exercises, Blessed Claude de La Colombière reflected: ‘Two things have moved me in a striking way. First, the attitude of Christ towards those who sought to arrest him. His heart is full of bitter sorrow; every violent passion is unleashed against him and all nature is in turmoil, yet amid all this confusion, all these temptations, his heart remains firmly directed to God. He does not hesitate to take the part that virtue and the highest virtue suggested to him. Second, the attitude of that same heart towards Judas who betrayed him, the apostles who cravenly abandoned him, the priests and the others responsible for the persecution he suffered; none of these things was able to arouse in him the slightest sentiment of hatred or indignation. I present myself anew to this heart free of anger, free of bitterness, filled instead with genuine compassion towards its enemies.’”

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