The Heart of Jesus
Some of you may have heard of the Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus especially during the month of June. In fact, even the Catholic Church in La Grange is called Sacred Heart. But what is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, what does it mean? How does an emphasis on Jesus’ Sacred Heart help us to love our Lord and Savior even more?
The human heart is a fragile place – a place of great love, but also great pain. The heart is a place of many feelings of different kinds, but also the place we point to when speaking about free-will. A heart can expand, it can be wounded, it can break, it beats uniquely, and it is the place where we say God resides.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church #2563 says, “The heart is the dwellingplace where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw.’ The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.”
And when our God freely chose to take on our humanity, in what we call the incarnation, Jesus also took on a human heart, with all of the heart’s beauty and complexity. A human heart that experiences great love and great suffering, but most of all, it is a heart that yearns for souls. The heart of Jesus thirsts for souls that are lost, souls that are yearning, souls that are wounded, souls that were created to find rest in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.
When Jesus was hanging on the cross, at the moment He won our salvation, it was not the nails that kept Him on the cross: it was His love for you and His love for me. And in that most hallowed moment in our salvation history, when the Sacred Heart of Jesus was pierced by the soldier, and blood and water poured forth--as we read about in Gospel of John--we are reminded that the heart of Jesus, as the great prophecy of Isaiah foretold, “was pierced for our transgressions.” The Sacred Heart of Jesus was pierced and an endless, unconditional love poured forth.
In chapter eight of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans we read: “What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? … No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through Him who loved us.” The Sacred Heart of Jesus pours forth divine love and is greatly needed in our families, in our country and in our world as humanity seeks to destroy itself by division, hatred, and self-absorption. The late Pope Francis said, “It is only by starting from the heart that our communities will succeed in uniting and reconciling differing minds and wills, so that the Spirit can guide us in unity as brothers and sisters. Reconciliation and peace are born of the heart. Our hearts, united with the heart of Christ, are capable of working this miracle.”
I know for myself, when I first got to La Grange, I was trying to love God’s people with my own heart instead of the heart of Jesus. Then in a time of prayer of heart speaking to heart, Jesus reminded me to love with His heart so that Jesus can love His people through me. Asking for this special grace to unite Jesus’ heart with our heart will allow us to love more fully, forgive more quickly, and cast off the darkness with the fire of Jesus’ love. Ultimately, devotion and growth in the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, helps us to fall even more in love with our God who has a human heart, to become more like Him, and to love others as Jesus loves them. Oh Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart more like yours!